I worked with SoMa Integrative Wellness for 5 weeks to address aspects of racial equity work. The first two weeks were focused on my own ancestral wounds, needs for healing, and how these wounds contributed to my own patterns of anti-Blackness. The last three weeks were focused specifically on my anti-Blackness and the shadow work that is mine to do. In the first two weeks, I worked with nisha. I experienced nisha as holding a gentle container for exploration, where I could reconnect with my breath and the watery space that exists within me. nisha’s South Asian lineage and our shared commonalities gave me breathing room to tap into aspects of my stored memory. I had been unable to access these memories alone, and I do not know that they would have awoken with a non-South Asian practitioner. In the last three weeks, I worked with MeLisa. I experienced MeLisa as a sturdy shadow mirror. MeLisa held a firm container for me to become increasingly present with my unacknowledged anti-Blackness, my discomfort, and locating my autonomy in doing this work. My work with MeLisa reminded me that we do shadow work in order to move deeper into our light. Since working with MeLisa, I have had conversations with my Black beloveds that I have not in decades worth of friendship. I am a facilitator and bodyworker, which means any elements of internalized white supremacy come with me into the spaces I hold and detrimentally impacts my clients. Since working with MeLisa and nisha, my self-awareness is more nuanced, but there is a lot left to explore. I do not know the lengths this journey will take or the nature of the fruits it will yield. What I do know is that any lessons that are harvested will be a direct reflection of the ongoing effort and commitment that I invest. I am grateful to these practitioners for their work with me and their work in the world.

Meenadchi

My Radical Deep Love (racial healing and equity) one-to-one sessions with MeLisa supported me through an incredibly difficult time of investigating and peeling back additional layers on my relationship with white supremacy culture. Our work together held space for and catalyzed so much change, and the upheaval that is inevitable with real shift was made possible by MeLisa’s dual grounding in self-compassion and accountability to truth. Our most notable work centered in guiding me to witness the ways that, within my attempts at educating myself into a place of radical anti-racism and speaking publicly about the same, I was still embodying white narcissism.
MeLisa is deeply thoughtful and intuitive, acknowledged me as worthy of showing up for and with, and treated me with a gifted and expert combination of compassion and rigor. Our work together was hard, confronting, and at times frustrating, but we worked through everything that arose with real human intimacy and radical deep love! These sessions were a deeply healing and humanizing experience. I feel much more able to show up in the friction points of racialized society, less fragile, and more humble and human.

Jessie Susannah Karnatz, “Moneywitch” Intuitive Financial Coaching

I really enjoyed the 7 week program, was able to feel the connection with the facilitators and other class participants. Would recommend this program to anyone really ready to make a spiritual life change and be provided with tools and methods for change.

Sakhet

nisha is a warm, kind and empathic practitioner, and a very lovely person. More than using her knowledge to help me become more in-tune with my body’s physical needs, through her thoughtful understanding, she has also encouraged me to cultivate compassion for my emotional and spiritual self and the journey that I am on. While this task often feels daunting, nisha has made it seem more doable by suggesting practices that I can integrate into my daily routine. Thank you for your guidance and support, nisha!

Shivon Y

SOMA: I greatly appreciated Nisha and MeLisa’s talented facilitation on our workshop on relational racism, and especially the tone that they set: welcoming and warm while also going to the heart of the matter. Workshop participants were largely academic folks who work in universities, and so Soma’s attention to people’s bodies, hearts, and spirits (and not just minds) was important and impactful. The workshop activities themselves brilliantly made room for everyone to have a meaningful learning and growth experience, but not at the expense of anyone else in the room (i.e., no one had to feel put down or ashamed for someone else to be lifted up).

Working one-on-one with MeLisa: My experience of working one-on-one in counseling with MeLisa was transformative. She helped me develop far greater insight regarding my personal relationship to racism, and anti-Black racism in particular. As a white woman who is engaged in social justice work, including leading capacity-building for others related to privilege, this work with MeLisa helped me better understand the ways that I inadvertently reflect and reproduce racism at the same time as I’m working to dismantle it. I knew that I had work to do regarding my own complicity in racism, but I struggled with how to do it – and was very lucky to find MeLisa to guide me through this process.

-Stephanie: Associate Professor, Vice-Chair of Education/Dept. Physical Therapy

Working with MeLisa from Soma has been such a big blessing as I journey towards more clarity in my life-vision. She held a safe, calm, and generous container for me to un-earth and look at challenging aspects of my past/ self. After working with MeLisa, I received some powerful signs and dreams, as well as feelings of decisiveness & clarity. All of this helped me to release fear and reach towards some big life-visions. It’s no doubt that some of the personal growth I’ve experienced is due to the guidance, presence & clearing that MeLisa offers so generously in her sessions. She is a truly compassionate practitioner & I highly recommend sessions with her as part of healing past traumas, aligning to life-visions, or connecting with an essential part of your-being that has been forgotten, hidden, or lost.

-Sai: Naturpathic Doctor

MeLisa has offered me an opportunity that is unique, extremely effective and absolutely vital to restoring health, justice and harmony.  Being cared for with compassion while I face a history of trauma, while also being encouraged to look deeper into my responsibilities of white privilege is an incredible mix that offers me ground and healing and determination.

MeLisa is vital in this world and anyone who works with her would receive a caring presence and a solid ground upon which to learn, evolve and raise consciousness. The work we do has been deep healing, joyful exploration, and challenging honesty. It still continues beyond our sessions, into my daily life.  

-Lamia: Co-founder + Acupuncturist at Six Degrees Health

MeLisa is a truly gifted healer, teacher, and guide. In just 3 sessions of racial healing work I had several breakthroughs, all experienced within the safe space fostered by MeLisa and her compassionate and challenging questions and insights. Through our conversations, I felt safe and deeply motivated to dig into self-inquiry and healing. She facilitated insights that have led to more compassion and commitment to how I show up in the world.

Rachel: Children’s Yoga Instructor

MeLisa and nisha are passionate, caring and strong practitioners. Under their guidance, I worked through some exercises that helped me to conceptualize my connections to my ancestors in a way that strongly resonated with me and my personal practices. As a woman of colour, it was especially important to me that this type of work take place with practitioners who can relate to my experiences and family history. The sessions have helped to create a framework of understanding that I am continuing to unpack and explore. I am especially thankful for the opportunity to work with practitioners who approach this work in a manner that explicitly connects to issues of social justice.

Beeta:  Student + Yoga Instructor

MeLisa combines an incredible range of skills, knowledge and experience which provide a unique offering for anyone looking to start or deepen practices in unpacking my white privilege, racism, racial equity,  and anti-Black racism. I’ve found her approach rigorous, compassionate, grounded and very practical. Through our sessions, I’ve gained both insights and tools in how to be responsible for creating a different world with racial justice and healing as it’s core. MeLisa has a huge well of compassion and is able to hold space for trauma within the work – she’s a nuanced practitioner and I deeply appreciate the work I’ve gotten to do with her, and I’m looking forward to the next stages.”

-Sunny: Actor, Playwright, Facilitator

I purchased a consulting hour with MeLisa to discuss social media and get feedback on the best ways to respond/engage or even participate at all with conversations surrounded race, appropriation and white supremacy on online platforms (specifically Facebook).

I felt a bit defeated when reading a social media article that sparked a heated and lengthy conversation around celebrity allies in racial relations on a Facebook post and noticed no one of colour was part of the conversation. I wanted to contribute, but as a white woman, felt I wanted more guidance or education on how to do that, as it brought up self-reflection on my motivations behind it, and what actual education I had to begin with.

It was definitely a small part of a larger conversation, but within my hour with MeLisa, she provided a safe space right from the get-go, with a mutual understanding that I may say something ignorant – that was okay – and if so, I was educated on that ignorance. Beyond valuable. I was able to spew out all my questions at the beginning and we tackled them one-by-one for the rest of the hour, diving into further conversation and opening up other questions.

I left our session feeling a bit of relief, knowing that no – I didn’t now know everything – but the conversation was at least started, in my opinion, with the right person, in the right space and it had heightened my awareness on the subject. These conversations are never easy, but felt that I had acquired additional tools that would help me in future conversations with others. Thank you MeLisa!

-Emilia: Web Designer

MeLisa + nisha of SOMA, offer something incredibly valuable: healing services to deal with the ways that systems and legacies of racism impact our humanity including those of white folks. To have any integrity, MeLisa reminded me that our political work must be aligned with personal transformation. What SOMA offers is just that–a supported and open space to do that embodied work of personal transformation, which directly impacts my justice work. What makes it so effective is MeLisa’s “big vision” of all of us as spiritual beings harmed by systems of white supremacy. SOMA’s 1:1 coaching and facilitation helped me to work on my own integrity, understand how I was embodying racism, connect to the ways that racism is impacting my actions and make meaningful and supported change. Her work is rooted in a generosity of spirit.

-Chanelle: Community Worker

Working with MeLisa  invited me to access deep cellular inquiry.  The questions she asked created a rich dialogue which we used to explore the experience held in my body.  In addition, she opened up a more explicit expression of my experience through methods of sound, energy healing, and visualization.  I found her practices to be not only unique and innovative but also deeply moving and effective.

– Tuku: Musician, Tarot, + Numbers Expert

I began seeing Nisha for Ayurvedic medicine in early 2018 and found her to be a knowledgeable, thoughtful and caring practitioner who goes above the call of care. I would highly recommend her.

– Keisa