Healer-Facilitator Leadership.
T. Aisha Edwards, LMHC
T. Aisha Edwards, LMHC (xe/she) is a somatic trauma therapist and educator based in Vancouver WA. Xe received xer Masters in Clinical Psychology from Pacific University and has concentrated on socialized oppressions, interpersonal violence, abuse and neglect in marginalized populations throughout xer decade-plus career.
Prior to private practice, xe worked in community mental health, high acuity treatment settings and was an adjunct faculty at Portland Community College.
Xe uniquely weaves Gestalt, Somatic Experiencing, Early Developmental Movement Therapies, NeuroEmotional Technique and concepts from Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western and Indigenous Herbalism into a holistic approach to mental health that fosters the primary relationship with the body as the vehicle to wellness, wholeness and connection.
Aisha is also the co-host of Emergent Liberation Collective, a podcast about somatics and spirituality as instruments for personal healing and collective transformation.
Radical Rest Founder, Vision Guide and Primary Facilitator
Our Facilitators
Through the Somatic Liberation Community Partnership program, Radical Rest partners with organizations and non-profits to deliver events that center trauma-informed experiential learning, participant connection, and somatic practices. In the Radical Return Immersion Retreat program, we seek to reconnect our bodies with the body of the natural world through collective time on land and programming designed to foster that connection.
Alivia Mercedes Feliciano
Healer-Facilitator Team
Alivia Feliciano (she/her/ella) is of Boriken ancestry, with the honor and joy of living on lands stewarded by the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla & Siletz. With over a decade of service as a Social Worker, Birth Advocate and Community Health Activist, Alivia comes to Radical Rest rootein the belief that all systems can be deeply affected by the massive power of Black, Brown and Indigenous love; Love for our traditions, love for our lands and love for our collective healing.
Alivia has woven these ideas into her work with the state health authority, county health department and numerous community-based organizations focused on the health and healing of historically exploited and excluded populations. She has experience building and leading health programs, creating coalitions, forming policy and facilitating. Alivia has an especially deep passion for traditional healthwork and the wisdom of plant medicine. Ultimately, her face is eternally turned towards a future where all levels of care are grown with the spirit of loving tenderness. Se Habla Español.
Jennifer Rose Marie Serna
Healer-Facilitator Team
Jennifer Rose Marie Serna (She/Her/Ella) is an Indigenous Aztec, Navajo and Irish "Latina folk herbalist", mother, regenerative farmer, land activist, skill educator, and owner of Wapato Island Farm. Learning from her great abuelita, Grandma Mary, a Mexican yerbatera and family matriarch, Jennifer began her journey with plant wisdom, healing, and food as nourishment at a young age. She has been learning herbalism for most of her life, which has deepened and grown into a practice of curandera, ancestral healing, and folk tradition practices with food, medicine, and deep soul work. Jennifer’s vision is to continue supporting BIPOC communities within the framework of healing justice, identifying holistic responses to generational trauma and violence. Currently, the farm is focused on working with migrant field workers and black + indigenous farmers to reimagine and build new food systems that foster food sovereignty within these communities. Jennifer is dedicated to honoring and protecting these sacred land she tends with her family and the people that come to Wapato Island Farm for healing, learning, medicine and wisdom.
Luna
Healer-Facilitator Team
Luna (they/she/he) is an initiated kontomble diviner and shamanic reiki practitioner who believes in the wisdom of Nature and the Otherworld. Through art, ritual, divination, and music, they endeavor to bridge the human world and the spirit world in order to facilitate greater harmony within individuals and their communities. They are queer and neurodivergent and in their free time enjoy learning new things and drinking hot cocoa. Luna is also an experienced piano and voice teacher.
Marisol Rascon
Healer-Facilitator Team
Marisol is an integrative bodyworker, healer, and spiritual coach that uses a multimodality approach to help clients achieve clarity, peace, and balance through transitional cycles in their lives. She provides a safe container for individuals to work with limiting holding patterns in their body, mind, and spirit by exploring beliefs, shadow, and connecting to Self and Source.
Marisol has been practicing in the healing arts for over 20 years and has a tool kit that includes eastern practices (yoga, Ayurveda, reiki), shamanic earth medicine, and integrative bodywork which she shares with individuals 1:1 and in group classes.
www.solintegrative.com
@solintegrative
Monica Metzler
Healer-Facilitator Team
Monica Metzler (she/her) is a Queer Korean-American Systems Therapist, Youth Mentor, EDI Consultant, Performing Artist, and Musician. Monica received her Masters in Marriage, Child, and Family Therapy from Lewis & Clark and specializes in Expressive Arts Therapy using music, art, and play as forms of release, meaning making, and healing. Monica has over two decades of experience working in the PNW with marginalized populations and youth/families experiencing acute trauma and crisis.
As a trauma informed therapist who is committed to advancing social and racial justice, Monica incorporates Strength-based practices, Creative Arts, Experiential Activities, and Systems Therapy into a holistic framework, for healing and wellness, while examining the historical and continued harm of systemic oppression and white supremacy violence on non-dominant cultures, identities, and beliefs.
Monica is also a lifelong musician and practicing artist who enjoys playing with vibrations and frequencies. She enjoys sharing her love of music and creativity with others by finding ways to invite in more collaboration, exploration, anti-preciousness, and play.
Tara Miller
Healer-Facilitator Team
Tara (they/she) is a yoga and movement teacher, facilitator, community educator, and writer. Tara approaches her work and life with the belief that power dynamics are embodied, that in order to disrupt these and rebuild a world that centers liberation and justice, we must feel their effects in our bodies - in the ways we relate to ourselves and others - and then use that embodied awareness to see and shift the oppressive systems that govern our world. They also believe that this embodied awareness is only possible when in deep relationship with the earth, and so they weave earth-based practices and awareness into all of her work. Tara's practice and teaching, racial justice facilitation, writing, and coaching are deeply informed by their identities - they acknowledge and work to heal the ways they hold both oppressor and oppressed in her being and lineage.
Tara co-owns and stewards The Bhakti Yoga Movement Center, where she also teaches yoga & movement classes and co-directs the SOMA School of Yoga and Somatics. They have extensive experience in managing programs in the fields of higher education, grant-making, government, healthcare, and housing. Her deepest love and passion is writing - this currents through all of their work, both creative and systemic.
They hold a B.A. in Public Policy Analysis from Pomona College where they focused on deconstructing the concept of global development and transformative justice as an alternative to the current criminal legal system in the so-called United States. She also holds a 300hr Yoga Teacher Training Certification from the Bhakti Yoga Movement Center and many other yoga and movement continuing education certificates, including Advanced Hatha Yoga and Yoga Nidra training with Khushi Malhotra. They are also a graduate of the Brownswell Healing Coaching Program with Kirin Bhatti and former Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Art for Ourselves, an online publication focused on QTBIPOC communities. Tara is currently completing a Mind Body Coaching Certificate from Embody Lab.
Tiran Sahar
Healer-Facilitator Team
Tiran Sahar (they them) grew up mixed race between American-southern and Persian cultures. The developmental experience of being nonbinary QTPOC and in connection to my ancestors informs my practice as a Mental Health Counselor. I hold a 450 hour certificate in desert specific plant medicine and completed a BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design with a minor in Nature Culture Sustainability Studies. My life is informed by relationships with the non human world, dogs, horses, earth, and the waters that have held me.
Touk Keo
Healer-Facilitator Team
Touk Keo (they/them) was raised in Salem, Oregon, after both of their parents fled the Khmer Rouge in April of 1975. Through witnessing and experiencing the impacts of genocide, Touk has taken upon themselves to find mentors like Grace Lee Boggs, to help them understand the world they see themselves thriving in, by "re-spiriting, re-building, and re-imagining” what that could look like. To them, it has meant creating spaces like the Radical Meditation for BIPOC communities to see the deeper truth of what it means to decolonize, re-claim identities, rename oneself, and to reconnect with spirits of their country that have also been displaced by U.S. occupation.
Touk has their Bachelor's of Science in Gender, Sexuality Studies, and Master's in Education and School Counseling. They're grateful for the work that they've been able to do in graduate studies focusing on the need for BIPOC liberation, community-driven change, and while asking for more accountability from their educational institutions. Much of their work in the community is centered on empowering Black and Indigenous people through fundraisers, community gatherings, and with their farm animals.
Touk is also an avid farmer with an herbal labyrinth, a quarter acre with veggies grown through companion planting, and 8 chickens, 2 goats, 2 kittens, a doodle pup and an incredible partner, Jeevan and beautiful liberated child Nayeli Nira.