Lysa Castro
I am a Certified Body Tales Teacher and Trainer, a graduate and former faculty member of the Authentic Movement Institute, and an imperfect human with a profound trust in the inherent wisdom of our bodies and the natural world. My primary devotion is working with individuals and small groups to plumb the depths of the personal, interpersonal and transpersonal realms. Like the joy of sighting a wild free animal, I treasure witnessing human creatures being as they truly are.
I live in Sonoma County / Northern California, with my husband, adult daughter, young grandson, live oaks, fruit trees, vegetable and pollinator gardens, dwarf goats, chickens, and a striped cat. When not in the witness seat, I’m most happy walking, dancing, swimming, lying on the ground looking up, and finding ways to be engaged in these times of devastating peril and immense beauty.
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I had the good fortune of finding Authentic Movement, and then Body Tales, in my mid-twenties. Authentic Movement helped me access a deeper and more honest connection to myself and to the mystical, in ways that were immediate and life-changing. Body Tales gave me a creative way to integrate and communicate my personal narrative, within an ecologically-based embodied spirituality. I’ve been immersed in these transformative somatic practices ever since.
In 1996, I moved with my young daughter from our off-the-grid homestead on the Big Island back to the SF Bay Area to study at the Authentic Movement Institute. I was a faculty member of AMI from 2002 until it closed in 2004. I have worked closely with Body Tales founder Olivia Corson since 1997, together developing and offering a comprehensive range of Body Tales programs. I’ve also completed and assisted the Hakomi Comprehensive Training and studied a variety of other somatic healing modalities, which I draw upon in my individual session work.
Over the years, I’ve had the occasional honor of being a guest presenter at universities, conferences and retreat centers including: Esalen Institute, John F Kennedy University, The Wright Institute, Sofia University, New College of California, Science and Nonduality Conference, Harbin Hot Springs, Northern California Dance Collective, and The International Expressive Arts Therapy Conference.
“To be alive in this beautiful self-organizing universe – to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – is a wonder beyond words”
— Joanna Macy