About Alexis
Alexis, MA (she/her) is a threshold guide, minister, facilitator & educator and former psychotherapist working at the confluence of healing and social change. For over twenty five years she has been accompanying youth and adults, individually and in groups, in times of transition and change, to reimagine relationships and deepen intimacy with the self, each other, the natural world and the mystery. Her work, rooted in peace making, place making and living culture, weaves together decades of experience in depth oriented practices and frameworks – including depth psychology, somatics, trauma work, mindfulness, ecology, dream work, grief tending, ancestral inheritance, nature intimacy, equity and social justice, permaculture and rites of passage.
Alexis is committed to an eco-social collective liberation and has partnered with a variety of people, communities and organizations to create spaces of deep listening, authentic communication and transformative community practices. Including with non-profit organizations, retreat centers, women combat veterans, assisted living facilities, community mental health clinics, public and private schools and universities, juvenile detention centers, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, international peace projects, a variety of wilderness settings and private practice.
Her work is informed by her own healing journey, the importance of containment and accompaniment, anti-racism, anti-oppression and justice frameworks and a long apprenticeship to the wild within and without. Alexis brings presence, compassion and humor to the human experience.
Alexis received her master’s degree in Depth Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute (where she teaches from time to time), and was licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist for fifteen years. She serves as Adjunct Faculty at Antioch University where she teaches courses at the intersection of social justice, psychology, and ecology, specifically Decolonizing Mental Health, Soul & Wholeness and Ecopsychology. Alexis is a council trainer with Beyond Us and Them, and trained with School of Lost Borders and The Ojai Foundation (now Topa Institute), where she previously served as a guide. Alexis is also an ordained interfaith minister and as a ceremonialist and celebrant officiates weddings, funerals, baby blessings, coming of age and other important rituals to honor life’s passages. She is a former yoga teacher, truck driver, psychotherapist and loves natural building, and hopes to return to her days of beekeeping and pottery.
A descendant of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Ashkenazi and Nordic relatives, Alexis lives in the Santa Ynez watershed in the chapparal woodlands of Southern California in the traditional territory of the Chumash people.
My life’s work has arisen directly from an early and deep heartbreak at how we treat one another and our living earth, and a long lasting apprenticeship to shame, while at the same time experiencing the utter enchantment, beauty and wonder of this earth and living world in devotion to the holy in nature. Initiated in my dreams, in the absence of intact cultural traditions from my ancestors, I sought out mentors and guides who offered another path outside of what was put forth to me from the dominant paradigm. I am indebted and beyond grateful for their wisdom, courage and guidance. I have spent my adult life in steadfast commitment to love, healing, peace and justice, dismantling structures of oppression within and without, and cultivating gestures of reciprocity and respect with all beings in the human and non human world. I am a student of the social and contextual components of our inheritances, as well as the gifts from our ancestral wisdom traditions. Moving from separation to communion and belonging, partnering with the mystery and blessing of our world.
Gratitude to my mentors and elders, and all the people who have helped me along the way. Those I have worked with intimately, namely, Deena Metzger, Gigi Coyle, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller, Darrel Bob, Adela Barcia. Those I have had the opportunity to sit, learn and study with - Arkan Lushwala, Sobonfu Some, Malidoma Some, Martin Prechtel, Joan Halifax. Those who early on inspired me with their written or creative work - so many: Michael Meade, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Chellis Glendenning. I am deeply grateful for the love and support of my family, birth and otherwise. I have had many other inspirers, too many to name, including each of the people, of all the ages, I have had the honor to accompany. I am beyond grateful for the wild, wondrous and beautiful world.