Welcome!
My name is Regan Brashear (they/she). Originally from Virginia, I now live with my partner in Santa Cruz, CA. I have worked for many years in documentary film, as a director, impact strategist and producer. You can learn more about my film work here. What I love most about documentary filmmaking is the sacred act of deep listening to another as film participants share their stories with me.
Over the past four years, given world and personal events, I felt moved to explore the powerful healing and transformational world of somatics. To summarize a very long journey, living in a larger body that has experienced chronic pain, migraines and multiple chemical sensitivities for half of my life, I had internalized a lot of pervasive body-shaming, ableist cultural messages that had cut me off from my own inherent sense of dignity and self-worth. For years, I felt “only when my body is X (healed, thinner, etc) then I’ll be worthy/deserving of dignity… and until that day, body shame and internalized ableism was my constant companion. I’ll be real – this sucked a LOT of my life energy and precious time on this planet, distracting me from what really matters: being alive, loving hard, and fighting like hell for a better world.
I remember in my first in-person somatics training, despite having already done lots of healing work over the years, I still carried the belief that the road towards my own healing and transformation, towards feeling happier in my own skin, was incredibly long with some vague notion of it being “far, far out there” somewhere and maybe, just maybe, if I worked hard enough I could reach this golden oasis of self-love someday…
After a few days of learning and practicing this particular form of somatics, I had a profound “somatic opening.” As I felt more connected with my body, it became more clear how my mind had created this long-road narrative of what healing must look like. Instead, I experienced a powerful feeling of coming home to my body, to my spirit. I heard the words from a place deep within: “Welcome home, I’m so glad you’re here!” What clicked is realizing – and even more, feeling in an embodied way – that the road from my mind to my body is indeed quite short and that I was learning a powerful set of tools that would help me “return home” in a deeply satisfying way. There began my deep dive into this body of work and planted the seed for what would become Welcome Home Somatics.
Since that moment, somatics has helped me feel far more equipped for the challenges of these times, connecting with a deeper sense of purpose, dignity, and resilience in my own life, as well as more ease, joy and connection with my body, even while living with chronic pain. In short, I quickly became a convert and felt moved to seek out training on how to share somatics with more people! Now after years of study and deep engagement, I’m excited to share this work with my communities! Sound intriguing? Feel free to schedule a free discovery call to learn more!
A few of my core beliefs:
- I believe that there are many interlocking systems of oppression (racism, sexism, ableism, fat phobia, transphobia, ageism, etc) designed to make us hate our bodies and to feel disconnected from our bodies, from each other and from the earth.
- I believe that, despite what we might tell ourselves, we are all whole beings, deserving of love, dignity, belonging and safety, and that we all possess an inner wisdom that is calling us home. And yet, we are often at odds with ourselves and/or others or feeling stuck in how to make our dreams a reality.
- I believe that life is short, precious and sacred and that connecting with our life energy (or aliveness) is a potent source of power and transformation and is always there for us to tap into.
- I believe we need each other to heal, grow and transform this world into one where we can all thrive.
My communities
My dear friends, old and new, and my family are my redwood circle, our roots interwoven, holding each other up through the storms of this life…
My neighbors… after moving dozens of times in my life, I am deeply grateful to be putting down roots in a neighborhood where there’s a sense of care and community with my neighbors, many of whom I now consider friends…
My political and organizing communities… especially SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) Bay Area and Santa Cruz County chapters who have offered my partner and me a political home, as well as my wider political community in the Bay Area with folks coming from a wide range of grassroots social change orgs, as well as Catalyst’s Anne Braden alumni network, who all help me ground, grow and deepen in my political commitments and vision for collective liberation.
My emerging fat liberation community who help heal and empower me in pushing back on fat phobia and body shaming in my work and in my life, reclaiming dignity for all bodies.
My documentary film community, especially my film distribution cooperative, New Day Films, where I’ve been a member since 2014, who inspire me with their creative commitment to serving movements for justice through film.
My disability/chronically ill/pain community who have, over many years now, helped me heal my internalized ableism and to claim the space to feel dignity and belonging in my own complicated body, as it is today, and to fight for others to be able to have access to their dignity as well.
My growing community of somatics teachers, fellow coaches and practitioners, to whom I am deeply grateful for sharing and deepening in this vast body of work, what has now become a lifelong path for me of somatic inquiry and practice. I am forever changed.
My somatics coaching clients, to whom I am endlessly wowed by and honored to be witnessing and supporting you on your own journey “home.”
And to this miraculous, ever-expanding universe, to the oaks and redwoods, the ocean and rivers, the mountains and canyons, to the owls who hoot in the wee hours of most mornings and the red tail hawks that circle overhead most afternoons, to the whales that dazzle us from the shoreline with their plumes of cool breath and massive bodies joyfully leaping from the water, and the rafts of otters, preening and frolicing amid the sea kelp, just one mile from my home…
You have all helped me heal, learn and grow so much over the years. I am humbled and deeply grateful to be on this path, returning to center, over and over again, with you all.
What I'm here for:
- An end to white supremacy and all forms of systemic racial terrorism
- An end to all forms of eugenics including diet culture, fat-shaming, ableism, and all forms of body-shaming or body-hatred
- For building a world that nourishes and sustains us all, including the earth
- For collective liberation!
- For repair and transformation, specifically, for white folks doing the deep inner work of healing from generations of embodied white supremacy and collective harm-doing, and showing up wholeheartedly in our work as part of multiracial movements for collective liberation, for Black liberation, for Trans liberation, for Disability Justice, for Environmental and Economic Justice, and so much more!
- For coming home to, and allying with, our sacred, wondrous bodies, our whole beautiful beings, with the hard or painful parts and all;
- For coming more deeply into community and a felt sense of mutual dignity and authentic connection with others
- For feeling deeply connected to and interdependent with this resilient, vital earth and the pure magic that is being alive.
My teachers
I am deeply grateful to my somatics teachers Stephanie Meux, Wendy Haines, B Stepp, Staci Haines, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Erika Lyla, Kai Cheng Thom, Manuela Miske-Reeds, Fran Booth, and many more.
In addition to my family and dearest friends, my life has been most profoundly touched by the work of Mary Oliver, Audre Lorde, Eli Clare, James Baldwin, Leslie Feinberg, and Joy Harjo, as well as Ann Lane, Joan Gaunt, and Bonnie Arroyo.
Thank you all for sharing your brilliance with the world and me.
My Training
Strozzi Institute Somatic Coaching Program
Teachers: Wendy Haines, B Stepp, Stephanie Meux, Anjali Sawhney, and Tyler Grillo, 8-month in-depth program, 2023/2024.
Strozzi Somatic Supervision Group
Supervision group with 6 fellow Strozzi somatic coaches, led by Strozzi teacher and Professional ICF coach Stephanie Meux, fall of 2024.
Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy
Teachers: Nkem Ndefo, Kai Cheng Thom, Manuela Mishke-Reeds, Staci Haines, Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Gabor Maté, Deb Dana, Fran Both, and more, Embody Lab, 120 hour training, fall 2024, currently in process.
Embodying the Coherent Self: Allying with Innate Somatic Intelligence for Trauma Healing
Teacher: Manuela Mishke-Reeds, Academy of Therapy Wisdom, 20 hour training, fall 2024.
Embody Lab Mind/Body Coaching Practitioner Program
Teachers: Kai Cheng Thom, Manuela Mishke-Reeds, Staci Haines, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, and more, Embody Lab, 120 hour training, summer 2023
Somatics, Trauma and Resilience Intensive
4 day, in-person intensive, w/ Staci Haines, Erika Lyla, Iman Boundaoui, Namiko Uno and Tyler Grillo, Strozzi Institute, June 2023
Embodied Conflict Resolution
Teacher: Kai Cheng Thom, 25 -hour intensive through Embody Lab, May 2023
Integrative Somatic Parts Work Levels I-III
Teacher: Fran Booth, IFS teacher, through Embody Lab, fall 2024
Ally, Blend and Build Somatics Series
Teachers: generative somatics cofounder Staci Haines, and generative somatics trained teachers Brandon Sturdivant and Erika Lyla, summer 2024
Make a Centered Impact Somatics Class
Teacher: generative somatics- trained teacher B Stepp, Strozzi Institute, 2024
Healing Embodied White Supremacy Somatics Series
Teachers: generative somatics-trained Dona Hirshfield-White and Sue Kuyper, spring 2024
Politics of Trauma Somatics Series
Teachers: generative somatics cofounder Staci Haines, and generative somatics trained teachers Brandon Sturdivant and Erika Lyla, fall 2023
Embodied Transformation - Introduction to Strozzi Somatics
4 day, in-person intensive, Strozzi Institute, March 2023
Declaring a New Future - Intro to Strozzi Somatics Series
Teachers: Staci Haines and Iman Boundaoui, Strozzi Institute, fall 2022
Embodying Freedom: Somatics, Healing and Justice
Teachers: generative somatics-trained Ream, Erika Lyla and René Rivera, June 2021, East Bay Meditation Center
Advanced Massage Therapy Program
Heartwood Institute, 9 month intensive program in Deep Tissue, Alchemical Hypnotherapy, Swedish Massage and Polarity Therapy, 1993-1994
UCSC Social Documentation Masters Program
University of California at Santa Cruz Masters Program in Social Documentation (Documentary Film), graduated in 2008
UCSC, BA in American Studies
University of California at Santa Cruz BA in American Studies; graduated in 2002 with highest honors