Sue Martin, MA, REAT 
Core Faculty

Sue Martin, MA, REAT, has over 40 years experience working in the field of trauma. In 1977 she cofounded one of the first shelters for battered women in the country and then, Futures Without Violence in 1980. Sue has taught students, professionals and community agencies for many decades. Known for her dynamic and passionate teaching, She served on the faculty of John F. Kennedy University from 2007 to 2020, teaching courses on Working with Trauma and PTSD, the Psychobioimmunology of Stress and Embodied Expressive Movement. Sue has supported hundreds of students to learn to listen to their body’s wisdom and to follow the depth of knowledge discovered therein. She is a proponent of simple practices that support embodying our essential/highest nature. Sue has a private practice in Berkeley, California and is a longtime student of the Diamond Heart School for Spiritual Development, where she is currently in the teacher-training program.

Camara Meri Rajabari, LMFT
Core Faculty

Camara Meri Rajabari (she/her) is an arts-based, somatic, ancestral psychotherapist, professor, activist practicing and living in the unceded lands of the Chochenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples called Oakland, California. Her private practice specializes in anxiety, depression and intergenerational trauma experienced by Black, Indigenous and People of Color. She is also trained psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist working offering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for clients experiencing complex ptsd. Camara’s approach is person-centered, imaginal and inclusive. Her work focuses on intergenerational trauma, ancestral resiliency and the exploration/liberation of consciousness.

Maryasha Katz, LCSW
Associate Faculty

Maryasha Katz is a Jewish Queer Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Dancer, and Life Coach. She is a member of the Adjunct Faculty in the Holistic Studies and Graduate Psychology Departments at JFK/National University and Palo Alto University. She has extensive experience working with trauma with a focus on sexual assault and domestic violence. In addition to her private practice, she provides supervision and consultation to other psychotherapists and organizations. Her skills in online course development have put her in high demand during these challenging times. She has also worked as the Counseling Department Supervisor and Sexual Assault Department Manager at Women’s Crisis Support~Defensa de Mujeres, as a Self-Defense Instructor, and as a Trainer.

Niralli D’Costa, MA, LMFT 
Associate Faculty

Niralli D’Costa, LMFT, MA, Somatic Ecotherapist, is a licensed psychotherapist, teacher and practitioner of integrative energy healing modality Syntara System. She believes that everything that we need in order to heal and awaken, is available to us in the natural world. Niralli draws upon her long-term study of yoga, meditation, and tantra to support people on their spiritual path and healing journey. She has taught at the intersections of social justice, embodied spiritual practice, and nature-based elemental healing at a range of institutions. She has served as adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley, John F. Kennedy University, Syntara System School of Energy Awareness, the Mind Body Therapy Certificate Program at Embodied Philosophy, and currently serves as affiliate faculty in the Spiritual and Depth Psychology Specialization at Antioch University. She currently practices online and in Chumash and Ohlone territories.

Patricia Rojas-Zambrano, LMFT
Associate Faculty

Patricia Rojas-Zambrano is a psychotherapist, activist, artist, and educator. She completed a B.S in Psychology at Universidad de Los Andes in her native Colombia where she worked in community-based programs. Upon relocating to the US to complete graduate studies at CIIS (EXA, 02), she focused her practice towards community mental health settings that serve immigrant and refugee communities. In her clinical practice she has specialized in the treatment of trauma using both Expressive arts and somatic approaches including focusing, movement-based, and mindfulness approaches such as Hakomi. She is the co-founder and Director of Wellness in Action at the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants, a community-based training program for unserved and underserved communities and mental health practitioners of color. Ancestral knowledge, relational wisdom and embodied practices are central to this work.

Bill Say, MA
Associate Faculty

Bill Say holds an M.A. in psychology, and certification in Process Work and Core Energetics. He is an adjunct faculty member at the Wright Institute, California Institute of Integral Studies, JFK University and the Process Work Institute. He brings many years of experience to private therapeutic practice, diversity awareness training, conflict resolution and community building, with work in the US, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Bill is Japanese Korean American, cis and male and straight identified, middle-class, spiritually oriented, socially introverted, married to Linda and parent to Gabe. His website is: http://www.billsay.com

Angela Porter, MA, LMFT
Associate Faculty

Angela Porter, MA, MFT is a somatic therapist, trauma treatment, and addictions specialist, with a primary focus in group practice, and work with other therapists and clinicians. She trained in Gestalt, body-centered, and Somatic Therapy at Esalen Institute, Counseling Psychology at The Wright Institute, and is both an instructor and practitioner of BREEMA and a practitioner of EMDR. Facilitating the connection between body and mind is the foundation of her psychotherapeutic work.  Angela also serves as adjunct faculty at JFK and CIIS graduate psychology programs, teaching courses in clinical supervision, group therapy, and somatic approaches for treating trauma. She has recently launched Blackbird Institute in Oakland CA, where she works training and offering clinical supervision to psychotherapy interns and associates interested in treating trauma through a developmental, somatic, evolutionary and transpersonal lens.

Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT
Associate Faculty

Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT is a leading authority on Healing Shame. She co-created the Healing Shame – Lyon/Rubin Method and has delivered talks, presentations and workshops across the country and around the world, at conferences from Canada to Romania. Sheila has been presenting Healing Shame workshops with her husband, Bret Lyon, for over 10 years; she has been presenting workshops for therapists about working with shame, eating disorders, and child and family trauma for over 25 years.

Albert Wong, PhD
Core Faculty, Program Director

Dr. Albert Wong is the former Director of Somatic Psychology at John F. Kennedy University and a leading clinician and educator in the field of somatics, healing trauma, and the body-mind connection. He served as residential staff at the Esalen Institute and as Core Faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he taught classes on Somatic Approaches to Trauma, Therapeutic Communication, and Theories and Techniques of Trauma Therapy. He has been featured on PBS, in Time Magazine, and his work has been published in titles ranging from the scientific journal Biological Cybernetics to the book anthology Radical Spirit. He is the founder of Somatopia, an online educational platform that is dedicated to creating an embodied world.

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