Hi, I'm Heather
Bright Eyes is my personal homage to the body, and a tribute to the power of somatics to catalyze change in the best ways possible.
About Me
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I’m a public health nerd who found my way to somatic practice intuitively. I then trained formally with the Strozzi Institute, completing hte Somatic Coaching Program in 2021 and trained with somatics practitioners in the lineage of Generative Somatics.
I've spent most of my career working at the intersections of the personal and systemic, starting out as an AmeriCorps Member providing HIV prevention-intervention services, then making my way to graduate school after falling in love with the potential of public policy and systems change to shift the conditions in which we live. I hold a master’s degree in public health from Portland State University.
In 2019 I left public service to work full-time as a consultant with Tusk where I still serve as a managing partner in the firm.
Bright Eyes is my personal project, an homage to the body, and a tribute to the power of somatics to catalyze change in the best ways possible.
To read more about my professional journey, check out my LinkedIn page.
Why Bright Eyes?
“Bright eyes” is the nickname given to me by my father. He was the only one who ever called me bright eyes, named because of my bright green eyes, and the way I stayed open to the world as a child.
Bright eyes became a calling card, and a shorthand love note, that let me know I mattered utmost to him. It signifies the special, lifelong relationship I had with my father.
Somatic Journey
Somatic practice is a continual return to my body’s sovereignty, wisdom, and power.
My first formal somatic training was a remembering and a reclaiming. I remembered how, as a very young child, I knew my body so well. I relished and loved its entire topography, which felt in such contrast to the many years I adapted for the sake of safety and belonging, not my own power and pleasure.
The somatic practices I was taught in that first session woke up something untouched in me and started me on a multi-year journey to reclaim that knowledge of my own body, including the knowledge that my body is a site of changing topography, learning, wisdom, connection, healing, possibility, story, and longing.
I also felt, saw, and heard how somatic practice made healing and transformation possible for others, and by the end of that first training, I was in a room with the same humans but also completely different people who were (re)connected to their own dignity and possibility.
My whole body said, “This is a yes for me.” I have been formally studying and practicing somatics ever since.