It is exactly what it sounds like - a set of tools and frameworks to help people make changes in themselves and their lives, and to weather the changes happening to them. Through developing an understanding of power, and a series of alterations in patterns of thought, embodiment and relationships, skills for change helps people change and discover compassion, satisfaction, inner peacefulness, and freedom.

Created by Julia Keliher, Nancy Shanteau, and others, Skills For Change is a body of work bringing together Radical Therapy, Somatics, and Bodywork, focusing on the ways our social climate and material conditions intersect with our emotional health. The Radical Therapy Collective sought to debunk the idea that diagnoses were the primary reason people exhibit antisocial behavior. Members of the Collective observed instead that when people’s real isolation, alienation, and scarcity (money, work, food, housing, etc) was addressed, often their diagnosable behaviors shifted immensely. Skills for Change seeks to demystify the ways culture, politics, and systems of power are inseparable from the way we treat others, ourselves, and our mental and emotional health.

As Skills for Change practitioners, we help people understand why they’re struggling, problem solve real scarcity, offer tools that increase choice in the face of challenges, and teach people to de-construct the ways we take in society’s harmful, oppressive values without even noticing. We support people to change their lives so they are more aligned with values of their choosing - particularly cooperative, humane, conscious, tolerant values. We do not aid people with more power against those with less power. It is our commitment to side with the underdog to re-balance power for the benefit of all. To do this, we use a power-informed approach.

We use somatics, bodywork, and theory to help people get in touch with their bodies to create lasting, embodied change. We guide our clients to build resilient minds, bodies, and spirits, and we support them to feel happy, satisfied, whole and complete in their lives.

We work sitting down, laying down, standing up, moving, wheeling and walking around. We offer bodywork, mediations, partner practices, and skills-building homework. We support our clients to do what’s hard for them in sometimes unusual ways, and we constantly look for ways to create greater equality and greater cooperation in our communities and lives.*

*Some of this description is paraphrased or excerpted from Access to Power, the Skills For Change overview book, and writings by Nancy Shanteau. You can find Access to Power here.

How much power we do and don't have affects everything we do. We naturally respond to the use and implications of power, often without consciously understanding what “it” is. Skills for Change Practitioners seek to clarify & name the subtle, unspoken, unexamined ways power moves in everything we do - our communities, our relationships, our society as a whole, and our ability to tend to ourselves and determine our own paths.

The subconscious, instinctive emotional structures in our nervous systems tend to treat powerlessness as actual danger. This is a long lasting, but changeable imprint from our time as infants when our powerlessness to care for ourselves IS actual danger. This causes us great amounts of stress, anxiety, conflict, and upset, and often we never realize that what feels so bad about the situation is how much of it is out of our control. We help people to shift their relationship with powerlessness, and learn how to step into their power - a long lasting, life changing transformation.

Having a deep understanding of power means we're committed to maintaining awareness of how we use our power, and doing all that we can to make it explicit. This is something that sets SFC practitioners apart from other coaches, and mental health practitioners - we bring the subtle interactions of power between client and practitioner, and people in general, into the light, so clients get to truly consent to the way we work together, and don't get steamrolled into do things they don't want to do. It also makes us more able than some traditional mental health practitioners to work with the ways privilege and oppression affect clients lives. When we're clear and honest about how power is at play in the world, we can't actually pretend to be "neutral" when there are imbalances - that only serves the powerful.

Somatics are body oriented, often movement based practices that utilize the mind-body connection. We use somatics to interface with difficult and intense emotional experiences, and increase people's awareness of the ways their bodies respond to them.

Our culture loves to tell us that we should be able to control our emotions - that things shouldn't affect us so much, we shouldn't make such a big deal, that we should keep it together for others, and we shouldn't get our feelings hurt so easily. We also get the conflicting message that we should be “in touch with them”, and able to understand them. Either way, the truth is they have massive, tangible affects on our bodies, even if we don't show our emotions outwardly at all. We understand this instinctively - we know what it means when someone talks about their heart racing in fear, their stomach twisting in nervousness, shoulders slumping with defeat, blood pumping with anger, and so on. Unfortunately what we don't talk about more, is that research shows that tuning into our bodily sensations - becoming deeply aware of how our emotions affect them, and learning what they have to tell us - is one of the most reliable and effective ways to shift our emotional experience. Doing so increases our capacity to regulate ourselves, move through difficult times, and make more conscious choices in the face of adversity and conflict. We quite literally rewire our brains to find more emotional balance, and practice coming back to balance after we get knocked off.

In skills for change, we use a somatic orientation and movement practices to develop this natural ability, and get access to deep embodied knowing and change.

Yes! I love to work with people on any and all types of relationships. Romantic, familial, platonic, sexual - from monogamy to polyamory to relationship anarchy, and any boundary bending specific situation in between.

Skills for change is especially equipped to help people navigate the challenges inherent to practicing alternative relationships. We empower people to get clear about what they really, deeply want, actually ask for it, and how to negotiate agreements across differences. We help people get grounded in their yesses and no's, and develop understanding of what does and doesn't work for them in relationships.

Yes! I will always have a number of scholarship slots available for those who can’t afford my rates for any reason. If you’re interested, please reach out! I encourage you to really ask for what you want, and share your needs. It’s likely that if I have a slot, we can make something work. If I don’t have current openings, I can add you to my wait list, and check with colleagues for scholarship openings. To speak with me about these options, send me a message in the contact tab, or schedule a consultation.

If you pay full price for sessions with me, thank you for making it possible for me to offer this option!

I do most appointments remotely via video or phone call. In person appointments may be available upon special request.