RELATIONAL ECOLOGY
Life, Outside the Box
Experiential Methods for Liberation of Life-Force
Somatics, Movement-based Expressive Arts, & Improvisational Play
hello, dear human
WELCOME.
May you find some nourishment here.
I’m a playful, gentle, creative therapist and mentor, and I’d be happy to walk along with you awhile.
I’m a somatic psychotherapist, trained in the lineages of Hakomi, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, dance-movement therapy, and yoga. I am also a registered art therapist, movement-based expressive arts therapist, and contemplative dance-movement teacher.
I am a trainer of therapists with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and the Kutenai Art Therapy Institute, and hold trainings, groups, and classes as well as offering psychotherapy, consultation, and mentoring.
I weave life-affirming collaborations with folks across the life-span through lineages of Somatic Psychotherapy woven with Arts Therapies, Soul Motion Contemplative Improvisational Dance, Body and Earth practices, Authentic Movement, Experiential Anatomy, Feminist Social Justice Praxis, and Relational Ecology.
I have been practicing in these rivers professionally for over 25 years, and have found endless delight in the potency of creative and somatic methods for healing what is tangled, releasing what is bound, and unfolding what is longed for.
I believe that rivers of embodied creative expression are for everyone, across the lifespan: they are part of our ancestral socio-cultural wisdom and are profound sources of Health for our body, heart-mind, and spirit.
"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling, or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to be less afraid, more accessible. To loosen my tongue until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I chose to risk my significance, to live, so that which came to me as seed goes on the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit". Dawn Markova, fully alive.
"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling, or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to be less afraid, more accessible. To loosen my tongue until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I chose to risk my significance, to live, so that which came to me as seed goes on the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit". Dawn Markova, fully alive.
“The most important thing each of us can know is our unique bundle of gifts and how to use them in the world….in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to become strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others….In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
I work with folks of all ages who feel afraid, anxious, tentative, depressed, in grief, at a loss, overwhelmed, bored, collapsed, numb, longing, or ready to do something different.
I help people reclaim their bodies, voices, desires, sense of wholeness and inherent belonging in Life, and their unconventional, authentic, out-of-the-box ways of being.
I help folks free their playful and creative life-force.
I help people move through the crusty and crushing impacts of trauma and stress, including the impact of multigenerational, familial, and painful cultural forces of interwoven oppressions and colonial nonsenses.
I help folks practice and develop embodied leadership and reinvent their careers into something more creative.
I help couples untangle entrenched patterns of conflict and disconnection, to rekindle wildly nourishing curiosity about one another and find a way into sustaining harmony, loving, and playfulness in their relations.
Learn to accompany and explore your own experience of Life, as it is unfolding in the present moment, rather than freezing up, numbing out, fawning, fleeing, or feeling overwhelmed.
The present moment is the only place where we can create change, and there is So Much Magic that unfolds when we slow down with curiosity, notice here and now, and bring our shared embodied creativity to what is emerging.
Voyager, you do not have to travel alone.
“We have to consciously study how to be tender [with ourselves and] each other until it becomes a habit….”
dear one, an invitation to your heart: come move, play, rest, restore, tend your body-mind and spirit on Salt Spring Island
dear one, an invitation to your heart: come move, play, rest, restore, tend your body-mind and spirit on Salt Spring Island
Body As Earth Song:
Vitality, Voice, and Vision, Residential Retreat
Movement-Based Expressive Arts in the collective, woven with Soul Motion Contemplative Dance, Relational Ecology, Authentic Movement, and Gentle, Improvisational Somatic Inquiry
5 days at Stowel Lake Farm, on Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada
July 31-Aug 4th, 2025
I rest in the knowing that our lives matter, that our movements can have generative impacts beyond what we know and can measure.
We can tend the places that ache and support new growth there.
Solidarity is powerful praxis.
Kind attention helps unfold places where we have been compressed.
Our human hearts, our embodied psyches, need rituals, ceremonies, practices of mending, releasing, grieving, celebrating, strengthening, co-creating and…
we can create this deep healing beauty together through our creativity.
Yes, humans have created many patterns that are exploitative, shame-based, and painful: systems of domination and brutality. We are a species who have waged many violent battles against one another through time, and who carry deep reactivity that . And, we are in the midst of many heartbreaking horrors and dangers unfolding around us.
And, we are also Life breathing, groundswell rising, rivers flowing, wind dancing - we are also Earth-dwelling creatures with warm hearts who thrive in kind places. We are also beings with voices to sing together, hands to clap rhythms together, carrying practices of solidarity and lineages of wisdom - creative practices, that help us heal, together and make meaningful magic for collective change.
I am interested in how we deepen our wisdom and supple-heartedness with each other, how we repair the torn fabric of our relationships. I am in interested in how we nourish our vitality and aliveness, and strengthen our collective capacity for loving, creative responses, with one another and Earth, in the midst of the serious danger of the times we live within. I am interested in radically changing our human culture into something loving, collaborative, and Earth honoring. Y/our dignity matters to me.
“Katrina's enthusiasm and joy for fostering community and healing is a gift unto itself.
She offers gentle guidance to your own unfurling, creating space for you to blossom in your own time and in your own way.
Leading by example, she illuminates an approach that celebrates aliveness, interconnectedness, sacred stillness, and the wild wonderful reaches of the self."
— J., an Artist
“Katrina is a bright and inquisitive woman committed to an inviting and caring approach, an avid learner with deep integrity. A body storyteller, sensitive photographer inspirator, and life singer.
She embodies a practice of healing restoration that integrates a belief in deep connection and belonging to ourselves and each other.”
— Laia Jorba, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Faculty
“It is with great pleasure I introduce to you my good friend and Colleague Katrina. I was blessed to meet Katrina over twenty years ago, when we participated in and completed a two-year Hakomi training program. In all my years I have never met someone so present, someone that can sit in the silence of the moment.
Katrina has the ability to create and hold a safe space while honouring the sacredness of each individual she works with. She has a beautiful way of building relationship and establishing heart felt trust. I hold deep respect for the healing work she does.
As a proud Indigenous Woman, Mother and Kokum, I have always felt “seen” and validated by Katrina.”
— June Graham, Registered Clinical Counselor
Katrina lives on the Ancestral, Traditional Lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. The lək̓ʷəŋən People have lived in these Lands for over 10,000 years, and continue to care for and carry ceremonial relations with this Land to this day.
This is unceded land, never willingly surrendered land stolen through colonial imposition and many broken promises. This relational injury is still aching.
We are all needed in the healing. Our shared curiosity and creativity is necessary and valuable in this work of tending our shared relational wounds rooted in old crusty historical harms.
These beautiful Coast Salish Lands, surrounded by Ocean, are inhabited by many animal kin: Bear, Cougar, Wolf, Salmon, Orca, Humpback, Raven, Eagle, Cedar, Douglas Fir, Arbutus, Garry Oak, and Calla Lilly.
Katrina (she/they) is First-Generation Canadian, with ancestors from Denmark, the South-West of England, Scotland, Unilaterally Deaf, Queer, white-bodied, and playful in gender orientation. She is a student of Indigenous teachers of decolonization, actively learning about complexity, curiosity, and shared, loving, collective improvisations for healing the wounds of history of Genocide.