Facilitator & Teacher Spotlights
Dana Dajani
Dana Dajani is an award winning Palestinian writer, performer, and humanitarian advocate known for presenting a theatrical style of spoken word poetry which spotlights themes of social justice in creative appeals to our common humanity. Additionally, Dana is one of the founding members of the Spiral Sessions, a 6-stage accelerator program to enable individuals and organizations to take positive change towards climate action and social welfare.
As an advocate and activist, Dana has worked with numerous INGOs supporting causes such as: climate action, clean water access, education for women, youth empowerment, rights of refugees, medical care for Palestinians, and more. She has given inspirational Keynote addresses on topics such as: Dreaming into an Empowered Education, Pathways to Success, Finding your Voice, Women in Conflict, Time Banking, Women in Action on Climate Change, and others. 
Omar Aena
Omar Aena is an Iraqi-American DJ, dancer and community organizer based in NYC. He is the founder of Off The Dance Floor & Dance Lab, a Brooklyn-based collective that explores dance as a form of somatic therapy.
He is also the creator of 'LILA' - a series of documentaries, events and group trips around the world exploring the roots of Ecstatic Dance and traditional cultures that integrate music, dance & spirituality. As a DJ he creates dynamic mixes weaving together traditional world music and electronic sounds, with a particular focus on songs from his Middle Eastern heritage.
Valerie Chafograck
Valerie Chafograck is a Black/mixed heritage, California-based embodiment and conscious dance facilitator. She has been teaching since 1992 and is the founder of Movement Liberation. Blending Soul Motion™ practice, somatic and social justice perspectives, she offers classes and workshops in the USA and abroad to advance personal & collective transformation, healing, and liberation.
Movement Liberation is a project for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) curating embodied and somatic healing workshops and retreats for people of color. Movement Liberation has the power to bring about radical healing, and guide the way into a new global and racial paradigm, not just on the dance floor but in every aspect of its operations and partnerships, including fundraising.
Dominique Cowling
Dominique (she, her) is a Black Queer femme and Bay Area native dedicated to transforming trauma and violence into opportunities of freedom. For the past decade, she has been honored to learn & share liberatory tools for healing. Her former work as the Healing Justice Program Director at Community United Against Violence supported low income to no income queer and Trans survivors of intimate partner violence, hate violence and police violence through direct service and organizing. At CUAV, she provided peer counseling, seasonal healing programs, mentorship and community trainings.
Her relationship to spirit and the natural world guides her work. She is the founder of Black Seeds Project, where she provides private and group sessions in the outdoors. Through these offerings, she weaves her studies in psychology, ecotherapy, mindfulness and trauma informed yoga to explore deeper intimacy. Each session is tailored to specific needs around emotional and spiritual health. Her heart swells thinking about the courage it takes to accept the invitation of building an authentic relationship with self, community and mama earth.
Itaf Awad
Itaf Awad is an international trainer and leader in Diwan/ The Way of Council and Capacitar, two modalities that enhance individual and collective well-being with deep roots in Arab culture. Diwan, known in the West as The Way of Council, is a group communication tool that fosters relationships and encourages deep listening and the expression of one’s true self. Diwan allows us to see, develop and align connections with one another, supporting our authenticity and empowering us to accomplish what we wish in the world. She earned my Master’s degree in politics from the University of Haifa. For the past 20 years, she has facilitated hundreds of councils for businesses, NGOs, educators, and private groups in many places from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Fluent in both English and Arabic, she introduced the Way of Council and Capacitar to Arab communities worldwide and have translated the first-ever Way of Council training material into the Arabic language.
Melina Laboucon-Massimo
Melina Laboucan-Massimo has worked on climate justice, Indigenous sovereignty and women's rights for over 20 years. Melina is Lubicon Cree from Northern Alberta, Canada. She is the Founder of Sacred Earth Solar and co-founder and Senior Director at Indigenous Climate Action. Melina is the inaugural Fellow at the David Suzuki Foundation where her research focused on Climate Change, Indigenous Knowledge and Renewable Energy. She is the Host of a new TV series called Power to the People which profiles renewable energy in Indigenous communities.
Melina holds a Master’s degree in Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria with a focus on Renewable Energy. As a part of her master’s thesis Melina implemented a 20.8 kW solar project in her home community of Little Buffalo which powers the health centre in the heart of the tar sands. Melina has studied, campaigned and worked in Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Canada and across Europe focusing on resource extraction, climate change impacts, media literacy and Indigenous rights & responsibilities.”
Wendy Elisheva Somerson
"As an activist and organizer, I have been working for the past twenty years to help shift our larger culture by organizing campaigns, workshops, and rituals.
Since 2010, I have been training in trauma theory, bodywork, and somatic healing to help folks transform from the inside out. I work at the intersection of healing and activism because I believe that individual and societal transformation are interdependent. Before training in somatics, I didn’t know how to shift my own behavior to bring it in line with my values. Talk therapy helped me gain insight into my past, but I was unable to think my way into new behavior. Activism gave me a framework for political work, but activist culture often replicated unhealthy dynamics of domination in the larger world.
When I first heard how generative somatics integrates body-based healing, political analysis, and movement work, I immediately knew this was the next step on my path.
Through somatics I was able to align my behavior and my values, and find a model and vision for promoting healing from trauma and oppression, including racism, antisemitism, ableism, and classism within our communities.
I am committed to bringing effective and politically relevant embodied healing of personal and collective trauma to social justice communities."
Saed Mansour
Saed is a Palestinian performance artist, dance teacher, and festival producer. At the moment, he nomads between Palestine and Europe. Saed aims to create spaces - be it as a performer, teacher, or festival producer - that focus on emotional, communal, and political processes.
In 2020, he created a dance solo called "Ethneen Shtaieem" that explored the political and collective story of where he comes from. He did this while creating a ritual for himself and the audience. This solo eventually gave birth to the "Dancing the Political" workshop - a collaboration with choreographer Héloïse Dell'Ava in November 2022 in Geneva.
He co-founded an underground festival in Palestine that is inspired by Burning Man's co-creational ethos and also created the first Palestinian dance retreat, Tajasud. He aims to push the festival scene in Palestine forward and build bridges in his community.
In 2024, he will be spending his time teaching in Palestine and Europe, choreographing a new performance piece: a duet about gender, and also producing festivals: Tajasud 2024 and a new one focused on the Arabic community in Europe.
Rawan Roshni
Rawan Roshni is a Palestinian/Balkan woman who has spread her wings across the world as a Global Citizen and always comes back to nourish her roots in the Middle East on a regular migration route.
She is a singer/songwriter, whirling dance workshop instructor, sound practitioner, program facilitator, and community mobilizer. She graduated in 2010 with a BA from the University of Toronto, Double Majoring in Political Science and Middle Eastern Civilizations. She then received her training as a Facilitator at the İnstitute of Cultural Affairs in Canada in 2011. In 2018 she completed her training in Sound Healing at The Dome Center in Alicante, Spain and received her Sound Healing Diploma from the International Association of Sound Therapy. In the same year she also completed her Dervish in Progress Teacher Training Program in 2018 under the mentorship of Contemporary Whirling Dancer & Instructor Ziya Azazi in Datca, Turkey.
The content of sessions she has facilitated in a large variety of programs is rich and diverse, having worked with teenagers to middle aged individuals. She uses her knowledge and tools in Sound and Movement in fusion with Facilitated Processes to guide transformational journeys for communities across the Middle East North Africa Region. She is consistently developing more material and intending to create ripples of impact in a natural and grounded way. 
Reem DREEEMY Abdou
Reem DREEEMY Abdou is an indigenous Egyptian interdisciplinary healing artist and community builder based in New York City, and activating internationally. She is known as a music producer, DJ, vocalist, spoken word poet, sound designer, arts curator, cultural worker, philosopher, mystic, writer, speaker, facilitator, educator, trauma-informed embodiment & meditation guide, and a healing justice activist at the intersection of transformational creativity and consciousness.
She is the founder of the global impact agency and empowerment ecosystem: The Collective BAE. DREEEMY will offer invocational embodied meditations that attune us to a sensory space of deep personal presence and widened collective feeling. Fusing clarifying breathwork with healing musical compositions from the Middle East and Africa along with somatic practices drawn from both her Kemetic and the Vedic traditions, these deep listening & movement practices will invite in a spaciousness to feel, learn, and remember in devotion to decolonization.
Astraea Bella
Astraea runs a thriving private practice in Oakland and Berkeley, California, specializing in relationships, sexuality, and trauma recovery. She works from a culturally sensitive, feminist, intersectional, and decolonizing perspective. For over 20 years, she's been helping people of all genders, sexualities, races, classes, religions, and spiritualities create safe, fair, loving, and joyful relationships. Because the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives, and trauma is the biggest obstacle, she works deeply with trauma prevention, recovery, and post-traumatic growth. She earned a B.A. in Cultural Studies from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.S.W. in Clinical Social Work from Smith College School for Social Work. She was awarded a Graduate Fellowship in Psychotherapy at Stanford University.
Her studies with the untraining in unlearning white liberal racism and with Rabbi Tirzah Firestone in healing Jewish intergenerational trauma root her in a compassionate approach that balances healing and accountability. She is committed to helping people end collusion with all forms of oppression. Her advanced postgraduate training has been in Relational psychotherapy, Somatic psychotherapy, Couples therapy, Somatic sex therapy, Non-violent communication, Ecopsychology, and Climate-aware therapy. Her home as a collective changemaker is in sacred activism. She is an active member of Jewish Voice for Peace N.Y.C.