Private Sessions Overview

What is it like to work 1:1 with Zel?

Private sessions are a wonderful way to integrate personal healing and growth into your life via individualized wisdom and healing practices, customized pathways to your own empowerment, and deeper relationship with yourself with the support of a trusted guide.

Private clients typically seek support during a larger healing journey and would like guidance to find the best combination of practices to help them cope, heal &/or radically align with their heart-centered purpose. Privates are a wonderful support system for those looking to amplify, solidify or shift their healing practices, and anyone looking for complementary & supplementary approaches to conventional therapies.

To learn more about Zel, and their background, credentials & lived experience, click here!

A note from Zel:

I work 1:1 with people who prefer a relationship-based, integration-centered approach. I believe strongly that healing happens in community. The guides we welcome into our healing journeys must honor our sacred journey. As one of your many guides, I am more able to honor that journey if I can bear witness to your growth over time.

As such, private sessions are available in 3 month commitments only and books will open quarterly. Please sign up for privates when a 3 month commitment feels exciting and nourishing to you.

There are 5 client spaces available per quarter, and each cycle typically fills up. Commitment varies from monthly to weekly sessions, depending on the modality. Click here for more information! If we both feel we're a great fit, you'll receive priority for signing up for the next quarter!

If you are unable to submit, that means I am currently booked for the quarter. You can join the waitlist here.

Scholarships

Looking to work 1:1 with Zel, but can't afford it?

Scholarships are available to queer, trans* and disabled peers who have already attended classes, courses or workshops with Zel. If you haven't practiced with Zel yet, check out Cuties Monthly Meditation.

Breathwork Sessions

What is Breath Work?

Breathwork is an energy practice guided by the intentional manipulation of the exhale. Also known as pranayama in yogic traditions, different breathwork techniques have different energetic impacts:

• cleansing and purification
• grounding and calming
• clarifying
• fire-building
• endurance-building
• connection
• embodied awareness of thought patterns
• embodied awareness of physical patterns
• and more!

What is Tantric Breath work?

Zel is trained in tantric breath practices, which focus on:

• Concentrating, containing and dispersing vital life force for therapeutic benefit
• Directing awareness to particular body parts in need of opening and expansion via visualization & breath
• Becoming aware of how our patterns of thought live in the breath and the body

Using different techniques, tantric breathing intentionally shifts the energetic imprint of our current experience to:

• create activation, movement and awakening
• create digestion, rest, and processing
• create balance and peace

During Sessions

We'll engage in light movement before beginning breathwork. Breathwork can be intense, and the body should always be prepared first through movement! No mats needed. This movement will be intuitive and can be done seated. Fun fact: Yoga Asana is meant to prepare the body to engage in breathwork and meditation—physical practice was never meant to stand alone!

Zel will determine based on intake forms, conversation, consent check-ins and intuition what kind of breathwork

• will be most effective for your current somatic needs
• has impacts that are within your nervous system's window of tolerance

Meditation

What does a session look like?

• Our sessions will help you identify a baseline awareness of your breath patterns and body patterns. We typically begin with very simple, intuitive movements to prepare the body and begin deepening the breath (no mat required!). We'll choose a point of focus ahead of time, and then Zel will guide a meditation based on that point of focus (concentration).
• Reflection is important — it can be easy to forget what meditation teaches us if we don't record it somehow. Zel encourages bringing a journal or other accessible record-keeping device to help you record important information that came through as a consequence of the practice.

There are many different types of meditation, through which we experience meditation as a practice, not a goal.

Meditation is

• the passive state reached as a consequence of one-pointed focus
• a state in which our awareness is no longer impacted by the senses
• a total connection with Pure Consciousness
• typically experienced via Concentration practices after Preparation practices!

Examples of concentration include:

• focusing on the inhale and exhale
• focusing on an object
• visualization
• chanting sanskrit mantra or an affirmation
• and more!

Examples of preparation include

• breath-centered movement (e.g. asana)
• purification
• and more!

Sacred Listening

Sacred Listening is a conversational practice in which Zel listen's for the energetic imprint of your words and offers either:

• direct energy work in the moment to either amplify, diminish, balance, direct, or expose what is coming through
• explanations of self-guided energy practices for you to engage with at home
• insight and perspectives that may be helpful in re-framing and re-claiming your truth

Zel's clients typically consider this an extremely effective complement or replacement* to psychotherapy because of it's focus on both conversation and practical somatic processing. Zel only recommends considering this a “replacement” for therapy when the right therapist or therapy style is not accessible or affordable, or when a person has already engaged in other therapies and is ready to apply that knowledge in a somatic context.

These types of energy work may include:

• A specific breathing style
• An affirmation
• An open sanskrit mantra
• A physical posture(s)
• Tapping
• A personalized ritual
• A specific cleansing or purification practice
• A specific herb to be in relationship with
• A specific protection practice
• Guidance on a 40-day practice
• A journaling prompt

The suggestion is rooted in Zel's deep and practical knowledge of somatic energy practices, energetic body maps, trauma studies, and peer support rooted in both training and lived experience. Zel is highly skilled and and leads from a place of:

• neurodivergence-affirmation
• disability justice
• honoring sociocultural & sociolinguistic impacts
• honoring the impact of systemic oppression
• consent
• honoring boundaries
• grounding and parasympathetic nervous system activation
• protective techniques
• honoring barriers and limitations
• immediate care techniques in the event of activation or trigger

In these sessions, navigable activation is common, but true triggers are rare. Anti-carceral emergency contact mechanisms are in place for people who are more likely to experience triggers, and this will be discussed in the context of consent and boundaries at the beginning!

Sacred Movement

Zel is trained in Yoga via the Sri Vidya tradition. Their primary teachers have been Tracee Stanley and Chanti Tocorante Perez. Zel has completed:

• 200hr yoga training
• Yoga Nidra training
• Yogic Meditation training
• 40-hour Accessible Yoga training

They are also the co-founder of Trans Futures Collective (formerly Trans yoga Project) and is the Accessible Yoga 2023 Advocate of the Year.

Zel's Approach

Zel's approach to sacred movement is not rooted in physical fitness. Instead, Zel facilitates breath-centered and breath-connected movement meant to bring awareness to the emotional, mental, physical, and energetic bodies.

The energetic impact of the pose is centered, not the “difficulty.” There are no levels or “advanced” physical poses. “Advanced” is related to the type of breath and degree of relaxed focus able to be maintained while in a pose

Sacred movement, inspired by yoga asana, is meant to help you:

• develop embodied self-awareness
• recognize embodied emotional patterns and physical imbalances
• improve breath capacity
• focus the mind
• support purification
• release stress
• generate pain relief
• improve strength and flexibility for safety

Accessibility

Movement includes seated and standing poses; however seated-only is available, too!

• Modifications, accommodations and supports are centered

• Choosing seated-only for a 60-min session will involve “changing the base seat” several times (unless your seat is dictated by your mobility device!)

• Encourages props, such as:
• bolsters
• straps
• blocks
• the wall
• chairs
• and more!
• Great for
• recognizing patterns in the body and mind
• deepening and strengthening the breath
• improving mobility and reducing pain
• strengthening the core — central to improving flexibility
• moving stored energy (including emotions) that is exacerbating stress
• building physical and mental endurance
• encouraging sweat and circulation
• and more!

Card Reading

Card reading is an intuitive divination practice that calls on the power of shared cultural and natural archetypes to help create clarity around important questions.

Card “decks” contain a cohesive visual approach to supporting inquiry. The images on the cards as well as the reader's personal intuitive practice combine to provide helpful information related to your question, and sometimes advice and prediction.

Zel supports people in receiving information about a specific area of curiosity.

• Yes or no questions are not welcome, however the information received in response to a broader area of inquiry may lead to a clear yes or no!
• Zel will help people coming from a place of “I don't even know what to ask!” or “I don't even know where to start!” land on an area of curiosity via breath and prompts.

Many cultures have “reading” or divination practices using different visual archetypes. Zel reads:

• Tarot (non traditional decks)
• Oracle cards (created by trusted teachers)
• Playing cards (Hoodoo tradition)

Zel's card reading is heavily influenced by their palm-healing practice (link) and their ancestral practice, and involves both a laying of hands on the cards and communication with their ancestral guides.

What is Palm Healing?

Palm healing is a counter-colonial term for the somatic energy practices commonly known in "the west" as Reiki

• Reiki is a Japanese cosmology, rooted in palm healing, that has been heavily misappropriated — there's nothing wrong with calling it Reiki if that's what you're actually practicing. But is it?
• Palm healing exists in LOTS of different cultures, not only in Japan — think “laying on hands”
• Zel teaches the Sacred Energy Immersion specifically to help people learn palm healing in the context of their own ancestral practice to combat cultural misappropriation

Palm healing as Zel practices it, is an ancestrally-guided divination practice in which the practitioner scans the body with the hands to “read” the body's energetic communication. Are you aware that “the body keeps the score,” but don't know how to read the score card? Palm healing is very helpful.

The palm healer is able to receive information about:

• what the body is experiencing and how the body is holding emotional and mental experiences
• what communication may be available about relationships (all types)
• communication from ancestral guides (includes nature/land)

Yep, it's very esoteric! And very vulnerable. And very effective.

This offering is for people who already have a level of trust for non-western energy work. If you trust card-reading, palm-healing is a wonderful way to receive similar kinds of wisdom directly via the body instead of via the deck — it therefore often feels much more personal and grounded.

Will I be “healed” after palm healing?

Zel does not practice medicalized palm healing. Their goal is not to fix you, but to make you aware of patterns and areas of dense communication that will help you personalize, curate and improve the effectiveness of your approach to healing.

• This is always followed up with vocal/written communication that you can reference to make decisions about how to adjust / change/ shift your practices to promote over all healing.
• You will likely feel more empowered to deal with what you are feeling and clearer about what is happening inside your body on the physical and subtle energetic levels
• You will likely feel an energetic “shift.” The shift can be experienced as an increased sense of calm, awareness, motivation, clarity, or other emotional and energetic releases. This also often includes a decreased sense of pain (physical or otherwise).
• You will likely feel “seen” without judgment and without having to explain yourself, which can be liberating for folks who often mask or camouflage for survival
• You may receive direct communication from guides if you are open to it.

How Does It Work?

First, we’ll chat. This can be text-based if you are not speaking (for any reason). Then, Zel will guide you into a meditative or peri-meditative state. Then, you rest! People typically lay down, but you can choose any body position that supports deep relaxation. And Zel uses their palms and a variety of supportive rituals to divine.

Some people remain relatively present; some fall into a meditative liminal space; some people fall asleep. It’s all welcome. Then, Zel will guide you back to a grounded, present awareness.

You’ll have time to record any important insights you gained while resting. Then, we chat.

• Can be text-based if you are not speaking.
• Zel will let you know what information was “read” or communicated via particular parts and/or systems within the body
• Zel provides a summary with suggested follow up practices that will support any healing that the session opened you up to.

Guided Self Palm Healing

Guided self palm healing is a similar process as a full palm healing session, with some differences listed below. Anyone trained in palm healing can apply this skill to themselves. Even trained palm healers sometimes seek support in their self-practice. This can be really helpful for folks who have a sense of what to do, but for whatever reason, don't want to be alone in their practice.

• Instead of total rest, Zel will help you guide your own hands over your body based on the insights they are receiving.
• This may feel more comfortable for people still dealing with symptomatic, unprocessed trauma
• This may feel safer for folks who are learning how to navigate their own dissociation
• This may feel helpful to newer palm healers who'd like to connect their self-practice with a guided practice to increase their understanding and skills