meet tayla shanaye PhD

tayla shanaye (she.her.they) here.

I’m here to pray, through word, movement and action, for social change. I offer my awareness to the Body to learn from Creator as they move through flesh. I offer my awareness to the Land to learn from Spirit as they speak through synchronicity and bird song. I offer my awareness to Complexity to learn from the Ancestors as they whisper wisdom to All Our Relations. I offer my awareness, the most precious thing I possess, to Creation.

I identify as a bicultural Black Femme, a mother, an artist, an activist. I am an able-bodied, neurodivergent academic. I am a hetero-presenting queer. I am a settler on Anishinaabek lands where I work, tend, and heal myself and folks in my community. I’m a terrible skier, a fabulous baker, and a biophilic partner to place. I am an apprentice to Fire, Wind, Water and Earth. I am an integral somatic decolonial feminist scholar and relational educator.

I’m just walking, and stumbling, through life as best I know how.

The Credential Bio:

I hold a Master’s in Psychological Studies with a concentration in Somatic Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. My master’s thesis focused on the ways racism and environmental violence perpetuate the embodied traumatization among marginalized communities. Utilizing somatic tools, I have and continue to supports individuals, activists and educators in understanding cultural trauma and somatic trauma resolution as a somatic therapeutic coach, consultant, and educator.

Upon completing my Master’s studies, returned to CIIS for my doctorate in Women’s Spirituality with concentrations in black feminist scholarship, spiritual activism (Anzaldula) and ecofeminisms. The dissertation will be published via proquest in the spring 2024.Centering again the body, my doctoral research is focused on Black maternal liberation potentiated by natural childbirth practices. I argue that birth is an expanded state of consciousness and dissect the ways white supremacy, capitalism, anthropocentrism, and hereropatriarchy seek to limit access to this transformative state of mind.

I work with as an educator for groups and individuals to develop somatic skills to help support a more liberated world.

Though I do not consider myself a trauma specialist in the traditional sense, my eclectic background has positioned me with invaluable skills in working with trauma and affect regulation. Drawing on my experience as a mother, dancer, theatre performer, yoga asana practitioner and instructor, folk herbalist, mystic, philosopher, social critic, educator, and activist, I work with individuals and groups to expand self-awareness and facilitate meaningful engagement with the co-creation of reality.