Psychedelic Chaplain, Somatics Practitioner
Rites of Passage, Death and Grief work, Earth-Based Ritual
Spiritual and Somatic Guidance
Training
Masters in Divinity Starr King School for the Ministry
Interfaith Minister in Good Standing The Chaplaincy Institute
Hakomi Mindful Somatics Comprehensive and Primary Attachment Mindful Experiential Training Association
Assistant for Hakomi Comprehensive Training Hakomi California
Relational Somatic Healing Embodied Touch Work
Somatic Resilience and Regulation Module 1 Kathy Kain, Steve Terrell
Biodynamic Craniosacral STAR Institute [certification in progress]
Integrative Somatic Parts Work The Embody Lab
Four Shields Model of Nature Based Therapeutics The School of Lost Borders
The UNtraining healing personal and social oppressions
Hospice and Bereavement Intern Providence Hospice, SoundCareKids
Death Doula Training, Death Companion A Sacred Passing
Member of National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA) Proficient
Holistic Abortion + Pregnancy Loss Care training Molly Dutton Kinney, CPM
Certified Energetic Clinical Herbalist The Blue Otter School of Herbal Medicine
Plant Medicine Spirit Apprenticeships Fire Rose Farm, Essence of the Desert & Luna Fina
I’ve learned that healing happens in relationship - within our own selves, with the loving presence of another, with our ancestors and guides, in the web of human community, and with the wild and tended earth. I offer compassionate, gentle relationship and guidance on your healing path, supporting your innate wholeness, inner healing intelligence and reconnection to the web of relationship.
Where I may be able to support you: trauma informed body-based, mindfulness, spiritual methods and tools that resonant with your unique self and circumstances - cultivating a practice of loving-kindness, radical acceptance, compassion and curiosity toward your inner world and in relationships with others - identifying and fulfilling your life's intentions and goals - reinvigorating your daily routines and transforming limiting beliefs and outdated habits - starting or deepening your spiritual practice - weaving rituals into your daily life + nature’s seasonal rhythms - rites of passage (ceremony for big life transitions) - connecting with herbal medicine and flower essences - preparing for and integrating expanded consciousness and psychedelic experiences + micro dosing protocols - end-of life emotional and spiritual care - support in grieving loss, death - existential anxiety, climate change despair and anxiety - grief rituals - post abortion and miscarriage care - burn out and trauma healing support for activists and front line workers - somatics with a social justice analysis - early childhood, relational developmental trauma, intergenerational trauma - ancestral reconnection.
In a trauma informed container, we weave together the work that is right for you, at a pace that is right for you.
I hold central that holistic transformation is not possible without the undoing of what womanist author bell hooks calls the "cisnormative, heteronormative, imperialist, capitalist, [ableist],white supremacist patriarchy" the systems and impact on our individual and collective bodies.
Walking my own trauma healing, neurodivergent, underworld initiatory path has led me to want to be in service to others in healing and the collective reclaiming of our birth rites as human beings:
A secure sense of self, interconnected with all beings and the Earth.
Access to fierce compassion, loving-kindness and equanimity.
Ancestral reconnection, sacred accountability, reciprocity and repair of cultural and ancestral wounds.
Relationship with Death - bringing us into deeper presence and intimacy with life.
Grieving well and with others.
Liberatory Joy, Eros, pleasure and play!
Let’s follow the call of remembering our belonging to the earth in this time of great change.
Psychedelic Chaplaincy
I offer day-long spiritual retreats (+ preparation and integration sessions) for individuals and small groups. These retreats are held in the San Francisco Bay Area and Yachats, Oregon.
I provide preparation + integration support for psychedelic medicine and expanded state experiences, including help with integrating "bad trips," traumatizing, and overwhelming experiences with psychedelics.
I offer support in creating a microdosing protocol and practice.
In special circumstances and depending on availability, I am able to travel to other locations around the United States for retreats, particularly for individuals unable to travel.
Spiritual and Somatic Guidance
I offer 60 minute sessions held over zoom, phone, or in person.
With compassionate, gentle presence, and non-judgmental curiosity, sessions are a process of self-discovery.
I offer assistance in learning trauma informed healing rituals and tools.
In session we may bring mindful noticing to the body, emotions, breath, imagery, memory, body language, parts of self, relationships, nature, ancestors, and spirituality. Reconnecting to your innate wholeness and following your inner healing intelligence, we may process and repattern limiting beliefs, outdated habits, and trauma held in the soma (Greek for the body living in its wholeness). With mindfulness, we have the opportunity to deepen relationship, insight and agency in the present moment. When appropriate, I’m trained in the use of healing touch in the context of Relational Somatic Healing - a method for healing relational developmental trauma, which is trauma that happens within the first years of life, within the child-parent relationship. 'RSH holds the intention of awakening through the experience of healthy, loving, authentic relationship. Embodying our humanity one relationship at a time.'
Sessions draw on the modalities of Relational Somatic Healing, Hakomi Mindfulness Somatics, Eco-Chaplaincy, Biodynamic Cranial Sacral, Internal Family Systems, the Work that Reconnects, Spiritual Direction and pagan earth-based ritual and Buddhist practice.
Friends of Death Collective
Rites of passage, death and grief support, ceremonies for living and dying, earth-based ritual, The Red Tent.
I offer compassionate and gentle guidance as an interfaith minister and chaplain specializing in end-of-life and grief support, as well as spiritual and emotional care.
With a heartfelt background in Hospice and bereavement care, coupled with my role as a death doula and ceremonialist, my intention is to offer solace during life’s biggest transitions. Whether you are seeking support during end-of-life, terminal illness, or navigating the complex landscape of bereavement after losing a loved one, I am here to sit by you.
I offer expertise in helping you create rituals and ceremonies to accompany any rite of passage or big life transition.
About Me
My family have been guests on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Coast Miwok and Ramaytush Ohlone for six generations. My prayers and tithing of my income go toward supporting the sovereignty of indigenous peoples, the rematriation of indigenous land, and the protection of sacred sites. I recognize that, as the original stewards of this land, the Coast Miwok and Ramaytush Ohlone understood the interconnectedness of all things and maintained harmony with nature for millennia, and I honor them for their enduring commitment to Mother Earth.
My family historically lived in the San Francisco Bay Area's North Beach, Bayview Hunters Point, and Sausalito/Corte Madera as Roman Catholic Italian American settlers (Ligurian, Genovese, Tuscano, Sardinian). They started as agricultural workers in the late 19th century and eventually owned small businesses—a well-loved community hardware store and grocery store. My dad’s Roman Catholic family holds Celtic and German ancestry. My dad moved from Ohio to the Bay Area in the 1970s as an artist and hippie, eventually becoming a graphic designer. My mom is a socialist labor organizer, a loving revolutionary, a former drug user, and proud sex worker. Both of my parents identify as “recovering Catholics” with respect to those who practice in integrity - such as the Catholic Workers and many more. My parents met at the 1980s Howard the Duck movie after-party (my mom’s gig was putting the feathers on Howard, which I think is really funny!). I am the middle of two brilliant activist sisters—one an aspiring librarian and the other a public elementary teacher. I am who I am because of my family - the immense traumas and abiding love.
I hold deep gratitude and devotion to the San Francisco Bay Area, the land and waters here, and the communities of artists, activists, LGBTQ+ and working people that make the Bay what it is. I’m particularly grateful to my other-than-human teachers of this land—the Coast Live Oak I find counsel in, climb, and tend to; the Bay Laurel Trees whose smell brings me sharply into the present moment; the Redwood forests I disappeared into as a child; the springs and waterfalls giving life; the wildflowers giving beauty and delight; the Salmon and Monarch for teaching me of cycles, of death and rebirth, and so on.
My path has been out of the box with an emphasis on apprenticeship with teachers and methods that have supported my own healing - everything that I offer I know through my own soul work. I was once more of a traveling activist punk hippie type who has hitch hiked all over the states and prefers seasonal nomadic rhythms. I’ve lived in a few places that are home in my bones, including the Pacific Northwest and the Sonoran Desert. In recent years I spend part of my time in Yachats, Oregon. I help to steward a cabin on a river, close to the ocean, offering respite and healing for front-line workers, artists, activists, and any person in need of healing with forest, river, and ocean. Yachats is the ancestral homeland of the Ya’Xaik villages, the Alsean-speaking people who lived sustainably for millennia - the descendants of this areas first people are the Confederated Tribe of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribe of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians. See 'View the Future' for a more intimate story of this land.
I am a friend, daughter, and sister. I am a neurodivergent queer witch, animist, activist, artist, ceremonialist, and plant person. I’ve lived with chronic illness, complex trauma, depression and anxiety. I enjoy being silly, and hold the sacred with the profane. I aim to hold complexity and paradox, and work hard to reign in tendencies toward perfectionism, spiritual bypassing and healing that encourages individualism over the collective.
My practice is to embody slow moving water below the soil and stone; a grand living and dying Oak tree born of a small acorn; lava and fire from a once dormant volcano; sacred, rhythmic ocean waves; a mother gray whale protecting her babies from predators; a monkey, safe in the shade of a tree, helping to prune her primate pals.
Photographs by Julia Maryanska
Contact Me
I welcome you to connect! Send me a message here with what you’re wanting support with - from there we can schedule a free 15 minute consultation to see how we might work together.
You can email me directly Laurenroellig@protonmail.com or call (541) 250-0434
I offer sessions online over Zoom or phone. Currently offering in person hourly sessions and day long retreats in the San Francisco Bay Area and day long retreats in Yachats, Oregon - Covid-19 protocols required. My hourly rate is 150. Please inquire about daylong retreat fees. Sliding scale and payment plans available.