Meet Michela
Thank you for your curiosity in my work -Sacred Bridges- & the lens I share my offerings through.
I believe every person has the right to experience a radically self-empowered existence - conception through death & all the messy, beautiful bits in between, & I believe we have the ability & resiliency to do it with intention.
I have been practicing bodywork in my community for over a decade, specializing in Neuromuscular Release, Myo/Neurofascial Release, & perinatal/infant massage. Having worked within dynamic health care teams including acupuncturists, chiropractors, PT/OT, MD's (general care providers, trauma specialists, & surgeons of many specialties), homeopathists & more, I'm able to support rehabilitation & recovery (whether a recent or past injury, surgery, or physical trauma), as well as facilitate connection through community practitioner referrals.
The clinical massage education I received at Cortiva Institute (Seattle), grounded my manual therapy practice in a physiological approach to pain management through tracking the root of an imbalance through the relationship between our bodily systems, & how to create change through unwinding the compensation patterns within the tissue for beneficial systemic (full body) effects & results.
My offerings are a bridge between the clinical & ancestral traditions I carry. To me, the perspective the clinical training I've received is an affirmation of the traditional teachings I've been honored to have shared with me.
My bodywork, birthkeeping, & deathkeeping practice are individually & collectively reinforced & informed by the more traditional medicine that may be integrated in one-on-one sessions & vice versa.
The land I'm blessed to call home & steward is on unceded Sinkyone Territory (Southern Humboldt County), & the community I'm a part of is the one I was born & raised in. It is here that I am a community aunt~tia, a lover & cultivator of plants, medicine maker & sharer, moon lover, & keeper of my ancestral traditions.
I carry what my ancestors have gifted me & honor what yours have gifted you.
I hold my bodywork practice in Southern Humboldt County.
I serve Humboldt & Northern Mendocino Counties for In-Person Support in my Birthkeeping & Deathkeeping offerings.
Being a seed of my ancestors, I am passionate about the reclamation & respect of all ancestral traditions. Mine are close to my heart & spirit & also frame aspects of my offerings. I am the Sacred Bridge of my maternal & paternal lines, my ancestors of the North (Gaelic/Western European) & those of the South (Indigenous Mexica) & I am grateful for the medicine both lineages carry & have asked me to hold this time around.
This life has helped me to cultivate a personal appreciation & reclamation of the sacred nature of holding Birth, our bodily experiences, & Death as individual rituals within the greater ceremonies of our lives as a whole.
Our birth (story) can affect our physiological body.
Our state of bodily comfort can affect our mental/emotional selves... or vice versa.
Our mental/spiritual states can affect our bodies as we approach/enter death & meet grief.
Our death can affect those still living and those yet to be born.
Our grief can affect our body-mind-spirit, those around us still living, or the energies of those that have transitioned.
It can all affect or bless.
We are the Sacred Bridges between our ancestors & our decedents, between our intangible and tangible selves, between our own initiation into & completion of our time in this body, between the experience and the medicine, between the hurt & the healing.