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Meet your facilitator, Jessa

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Jessa Hooley

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What I do.

Hello, I'm Jessa. I'm a Somatic Trauma Specialist – helping people heal from traumatic experiences using body-based methods such as yoga, breathwork, bodywork, somatic integration, meditation, and more. I currently offer 1-on-1 and group healing sessions, both in-person and online.

 

In addition to my trauma work, I am the author and publisher of The Emotional Literacy and Mindful Fables picture book series – written to support children and their grown-ups in the process of embodied healing and trauma prevention.

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My training.

I only offer modalities that I have had 1) personal healing experience with and 2) supervised training to safely facilitate for those impacted by trauma. I am formally trained to facilitate survivors through:

  • Biodynamic Breathwork and Trauma Release®

  • Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma

  • Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Meditation

  • Somatic Exploration for Trauma​​​​

  • Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises®

  • Sound Healing

I am not a licensed mental health provider, nor do I diagnose or attempt to treat any mental health conditions. I am here to create a guided container for you to navigate your own healing with trauma-sensitive embodiment tools.

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Why this matters to me.

I come to this work from a very personal perspective. I was raised in a cult-religion that romanticized trauma and protected my abusers. My mother died from suicide when I was eleven after having struggled through her own abusive relationship for over a decade. 

 

I have a long history of developmental and interpersonal trauma that brought me to my knees in my early twenties. I was first diagnosed with anxiety at 20, obsessive compulsive disorder at 27, and depression at 28. From my teenage years and through my twenties I was plagued with untreatable chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and ongoing panic attacks. 

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I found yoga and meditation in the midst of those precarious years, and they kept me alive as I struggled with my own thoughts of suicide.  

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It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I found a trauma specialist who helped me acknowledge my history of serious developmental, religious, and sexual trauma that left me with complex PTSD. Overtime I learned how to take a holistic view of my experience, ditch the pathologizing labels placed on me, and discovered stability and vitality in my life for the first time.

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It is a great joy for me to help bring the experience of healing to other survivors.

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What I believe.

I believe that the path to healing involves a holistic approach. I am an ardent advocate of traditional psychological therapies and psychopharmacological medications in conjunction with other treatments. They have saved my life on multiple occasions.

 

However, it is also my belief that the western-medical approach to healing is harmfully incomplete. I believe the most powerful paths to healing include the modernity of science and the wisdom of our ancestors and collective consciousness.

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A critical axiom to my approach to healing is that it should always be client-centric. My work is not prescriptive, it is collaborative. Healing belongs to you as the client and I cannot guide you to a place that you don't want to go.

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Certified through the institutions listed below and insured by Alternative Balance.

Transparency in my continued education:

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