About

Hi, I'm Stevie Leigh!

I am a somatic practitioner, ritualist, writer, and a caretaker in many forms. In service to body-based awareness and literacy, I help people find their way back to themselves. Supporting people in finding what they truly need in times of transition is what lights me up and guides me, both personally and in practice.

The people I most enjoy working with tend to be interested in depth work and self-study, have some experience with traditional therapy, have a growing spiritual or artistic practice, and are curious about somatic (body-based) trauma healing.

I am also a white queer femme of largely mixed European ancestry, who practices at the intersections of mindful somatic therapy, ritual observance, ancestral work, and trauma healing.

Somatic work is reclamation work

Reclaiming our connection with our bodies, our wildness, our spirituality and/or ancestral ways, is healing for the individual as well as the collective. This is what I explore here through Weaver + Rose. The following is a little bit of my background as it relates to what I do now and how I got here.

I began working as a full spectrum doula (this includes all birth outcomes including abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, and free birth) in 2016 and through that work discovered the marvels of the human body. During this time, I opened and ran a feminist spiritual collective called Hathor House which provided ritual observances, ceremony, and educational workshops centering around spirituality, birth, sexuality, and ancestral healing and connection.

It was a very rich and full time in life both personally and professionally. Hathor House saw 2-3 workshops or circles a week (led by myself or other birthworkers, mystics, and practitioners in the Los Angeles area) while I maintained a full client load as a doula. It was a time of vibrant community and rapid growth. I learned a lot about group dynamics, spiritual modalities, and ritual from having been in this position in my community for those years.

From this position, I also became acutely aware of how cut off we are from our bodies. From our emotions that live inside of them, from our sexuality, to how we express ourselves in the world. This disconnection from the body prevents us from really knowing ourselves and our own power. It prevents us from making embodied decisions about what we want in life. Systems of domination rely on this.

At the end of 2018, I began to dive into trauma work. I began to witness the ill effects of unprocessed trauma in my own body and in the bodies of those I was serving. I eventually stepped back from the active roles I was in as a birthworker and community organizer, and began tending to my own trauma. I began studying somatics, attachment theory, parts work, and trauma healing while exploring other areas of care work.  I also started incorporating somatic sex eduction, sexological bodywork, and pleasure activation into my studies. As a queer person who has experienced sexual abuse and violence, learning about my anatomy and getting in touch with my womb and the network of my pelvis has been incredibly healing.

Shortly after beginning my studies in somatics and trauma in this way, I found a personal somatic therapist who introduced me to the Hakomi Method. As a client, this method put me in touch with myself in a deeper way than I’d felt before and I fell in love. I felt I was accessing myself and my healing in a way I somehow knew was possible, but hadn’t been able to see or touch. I promptly began studying with the Hakomi Institute of California (newly operating under the EmbodyWise umbrella) and found the method to be incredibly intuitive, natural, and deeply resonant with the work I’d been doing as a birthworker. Holding a strong container while moving fluidly with the client and the energy of what’s emerging was something I’d loved doing in a birth room and Hakomi offered a modality where I could translate those skills into a therapeutic setting.

This work has helped me build the capacity to hold my history. Through reclaiming my relationship with my body, I’ve been able to become a fuller, more centered, and more expansive version of myself. 

I’m now a Hakomi trained somatic practitioner who blends the Hakomi Method with ritual, ancestral connection, trauma healing, and politicized somatics. My work is dynamic and varied depending on the needs and interests of my clients and I take great pleasure in the fluidity and play this work can offer, as well as the deep unwrapping of old stories, traumas, and patterns.

Weaver + Rose Healing is about supporting people during their own trauma healing, or times of deep transition, and providing body-based (somatic) frameworks for how to return to yourself.

I believe that under the right circumstances, our bodies orient towards healing and connection. I believe in collective liberation for all bodies, and that a somatic practice is for everyone. Simply by having a body, you inherently have embodied wisdom. At Weaver + Rose, we find what that looks like for you, together.

Currently, my main offer is 1:1 Somatic Counseling sessions. This is the deepest container I provide and the place where I do most of my work. When I’m not in session, I enjoy teaching. I currently offer RETURN: Somatic and Emotional Tools for Coming Back to the Self in the Spring and Revive! Ancestral (Re)Connection and Folk Customs for the Dark Part of the Year in the Fall and Winter.

Lineages

My ancestral lineages, my spiritual lineages, and my somatic lineages are all woven together. I would argue that this is true for most people! We just need to bring awareness to this and spend time exploring it in order to understand it and speak on it. I am still learning how to do this. I spend a lot of time thinking about the intersections I stand at and how that informs my praxis.

Somatic Lineage

The term “somatics” comes from the Greek root “soma” or of the body. It’s a broad term and there are many ways to practice somatics, stemming from various ancestral lineages and philosophies. We all have ancestors who practiced somatics- who practiced body-based awareness and healing in a way that was a part of everyday life. Colonization has created an environment where many of us have lost those practices. This is why somatics, as we now understand it, feels like a road back home to so many of us.

As we attempt to bridge the gap between body, mind, and spirit, we have to simultaneously understand the systems of oppression that created these gaps. This makes a somatic practice both an individual and collective one. In many circles, somatic teachings have become clinical and/or ignore (or flat-out appropriate) the wisdom of many BIPOC spiritual traditions and customs- many of which are still in tact.

I’m someone who is engaged in the active pursuit of understanding my own lineage traditions, while still drawing from accessible schools of thought around somatic teachings and practices. Finding ways to name, honor, and be in a state of reciprocity with the lineages that have informed my healing and my practice is still something I’m figuring out. I feel all of this needs to be named when we are speaking about somatics and wanted to touch on this before I name my teachers.

Additionally, my somatic practice (both personally and the way I engage professionally) is a living, breathing, ever-shifting thing. I draw from many different schools of thought and lineage practices and consider myself to be a forever student in this regard.

Much of what I’ve learned about somatics began indirectly through birthwork. The institution I learned from still engages in white supremacist and transphobic behavior so I will not name them here (but feel free to reach out if you are a new or aspiring doula and have questions). I have learned a lot from Sister MorningStar and from being with birthing bodies. I believe this is where I began to witness, firsthand, how to be in a deep relationship with the body. I’ve learned a lot about AFAB bodies and reproductive systems directly from Pamela Samuelson, to whom I am deeply grateful. I named it above, but understanding the mechanisms of my own body was a doorway for me into this work.

I’m also an artist. I have a background in visual arts and acting and was mainly working within the framework of the Chekhovian Method which is very body-based. Along with this, I’ve (informally) studied Jungian Psychology, symbols, and archetypes. This also plays a role within my somatic (and spiritual) practice. It’s something I draw from often with clients.

Formally, I’ve studied with the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education, Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy (and completed their two-year Comprehensive Training), and Manuela Mischke-Reeds through her Innate Somatic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Approach (or ISITTA) year-long intensive. As a Hakomi trained practitioner, Hakomi is where I find I’m most rooted somatically and in community. I have also learned a lot from people coming out of generative somatics, particularly around politicized and cultural somatics, though I haven’t yet studied with that organization formally.

I have also learned, and continue to learn, from the teachings of Resmaa Menakem, The Rooted Community, Shai LaVie, Manuela Mischke-Reeds, Ashley Ross, Staci Haines, and Marika Heinrichs.

Spiritual Lineage

My spiritual practice is a blend of what I named above and what I’ll name below. Earth-based practices and rituals are a crux of my spiritual practice. This includes observing the seasons and wheel of the year, cycles of the moon, folk herbalism, astrological transits, dream work, elemental beings, blood mysteries, and tarot.

Reciprocity with the Earth and the lineages I draw from is another part of my practice. Again, both spiritually and somatically. As a white person living on turtle island, I have absolutely been spiritually hungry and grabby! Leaning into understanding my ancestry is not only repair work to that end, but is also personally fulfilling spiritual work.

I do not come from a specific tradition or lineage. Much of what I know has been taught to me by other mystics, teachers, and healers. What I’ve learned from them, alongside my own embodied understanding of how to be connected to the ether, is where my spiritual practice comes from.

I’ve learned a lot from: Sister MorningStar, Demetra George, Margot Adler, Olivia Pepper, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Lara Veleda Vesta, StarHawk, corinna rosella, Ronald Grimes, Francis “Boots”, Malidoma Patrice Some, and Clarrisa Pinkola Estes.

From 2016 to 2019, I headed a feminist spiritual collective called Hathor House. I offered regular ritual work, moon circles, and ceremony, but mainly I ran the collective and booked healers, educators, birthworkers, and mystics local to the Los Angeles area. I had to close the doors to Hathor House once I started diving into somatics and trauma healing work, but the people I met through that experience and the bonds formed deeply shaped me spiritually.

I have also encountered a lot of bypassing, harm, and abuse from people within the spiritual community. I do not name those people here. I believe a spiritual community is a beautiful and valued thing and I see that a lot of these communities are fueled by white supremacy, capitalism, and other systems of domination we currently live under as a society. I’ve written extensively about this here if you wish to read. I do believe there is a future wherein we can practice spiritual community care, this is a vision I hold close to my heart and am attempting to learn how to create.

Ancestral Lineage

My mother’s side is comprised of mainly Celtic and Northern European people. Her line settled here in the early 1600s, they were some of the first to colonize turtle island and many of them ended up in Appalachia before moving to West Kentucky to farm tobacco. My great-grandfather Xury moved his family from rural Kentucky to California during the Great Depression to grow grapes and that’s how my grandmother, mother, and I came to be here in what is now called Southern California.

My father was adopted into a family whose lineage includes mainly French, Spanish, Mexican and native (Tongva and Chumash) people. His line has a long history of forced marriages and adoptions- stories of the oppressor and the oppressed. The land I currently live on is both his family’s native land and the land they colonized. I think about this a lot. And it took me a long time to even look into his adoptive family’s lineage since they weren’t “blood relatives”. But adoption is not new, it’s just become formalized- I’m still finding my way towards understanding how to honor the family and lineage that raised him. Especially while I’m living directly on the land that witnessed so much of his family’s ancestral story.

My ancestral practice is a spiritual practice. It’s an anti-racist practice. It’s a somatic practice. It, like everything else I hold dear, is in service to our collective liberation. Understanding our histories. How we got here and why. Who was, and is still, affected by that. When I engage in ancestral work, I am not only reclaiming the ways of the people who came before me, I am also actively in pursuit of dismantling the systems that created this need for reclamation work.

The name Weaver + Rose is a nod to how all of these practices are woven together. I practice them privately and here with clients and students. Additionally, I am constantly learning from new teachers, people I meet in passing, animals and plant kin, my community, and the people I work with. I have an active system of accountability with a few trusted practitioners who I speak with often and am in regular practice and consultation with Hakomi teachers and trainers.

Weaver + Rose is my professional work (it’s what I “profess” to the world) but it is also my personal work.

Other significant teachers or figures in my life who have influenced my beliefs and practice are:
bell hooks, Audre Lorde, adrienne maree brown, Octavia Butler, Sonya Renee Taylor, the art of Leonora Carrington, Emily Nagoski, Peter Levine, Bessel Van Der Kolk, Fred Rogers, Mia Mingus, Amber McZeal, Yarrow Magdelena, Lara Veleda Vesta and Esma Shay-Tajsar.

Education & trainings

  • Systemic Family Constellations Facilitator Training- International Family Constellations Training Institute (in progress)

  • Equine Assisted Therapy Foundations- Natural Lifemanship

  • Innate Somatic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Approach (ISITTA)- Manuela Mischke-Reeds (a year-long intensive training)

  • Essential Elements of Continuum Movement- Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz

  • Foundations in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry- Assistant- Marika Heinrichs of WildBody Somatics

  • Healings & Transitions- CF&I (I am a certified Life Cycle Celebrant)

  • Foundations in Celebrancy- CF&I

  • Hakomi Comprehensive Training Level 2- Hakomi Institute of California (I am a fully trained Hakomi Practitioner in ongoing practice groups and supervision)

  • Hakomi Comprehensive Training Level 1- Hakomi Institute of California

  • Beginning I- Somatic Experiencing

  • Foundations of Somatic Sex Education- Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education

  • Ancestral Healing Training- Ancestor Bridge (would not recommend)

  • Conscious Contraception Skill Share- Samantha Zipporah

  • Herbal Medicine in Midwifery- California Herbal School

  • Emerging Birth Stories: Disappointment, Power, and the Search for Meaning- Virginia Bobro

  • A Day for All Birthworkers with Sister MorningStar- Hathor House

  • Village Prenatal and Blessingway Ceremony with Sister MorningStar- Hathor House

  • Abortion Doula Training- LA Doula Project

  • Taking Back the Speculum- Assistant -Pamela Samuelson

  • The Feminist Alliance- Former Original Member- Pamela Samuelson and Carol Downer

  • Doula Mentorship Circle- Becca Gordon

  • Beyond the Double Hip Squeeze- Becca Gordon

  • Embodica Childbirth Education- Assistant- Britta Bushnell

  • Birth Doula Training- DONA

  • Postpartum Doula Training- DONA

  • B.A. in Psychology- Southern New Hampshire University

 
 

Currently, I live on unceded Yuhaaviatam land in the San Bernardino National Forest in California. “Yuhaaviatam” means “People of the Pines” and you can really feel that here, surrounded by trees. I’m still getting to know this land and spend most of my days in session with clients, on horseback, or honing ancestral crafts/skills.

Read more about my Core Values in practice or head over to my blog where you can read about some of my thoughts on somatics, cyclical living, ancestral work, ritual work, trauma healing and whatever else comes to mind.

You can also sign up for my newsletter. I write to subscribers about once a month, sometimes more if I’m offering something I think they’d like to hear about. Newsletters are often muse-y, feel like prose, and usually contain a piece of writing, a list of things I’m reading or participating in, and/or updates on my work.

If you have a question for me directly, I’d love to hear from you! You can get in touch with me through my contact page. I look forward to getting to know you.

❊Trans/queer/non-monog/kink friendly❊

❊I support all expressions of gender❊