About Jackie

I facilitate people to empower themselves.

Advanced breathwork is one of the most effective and rewarding ways I know to do this. For me, this is sacred work I am honored to partner in with you. Facilitating breathwork requires courage, presence, and understanding grown from meeting the most challenging places inside ourselves. By challenging I mean difficult, uncomfortable, painful, confusing, overwhelming, and unwelcome feelings that roil inside—often beneath conscious awareness—until we feel, accept, and transform them. This is a bridge we have to cross to come into connection with our authentic selves. Then innate joy, power, and creativity bloom and we can bring our gifts freely to the world. I’ve learned to trust this process myself, and that allows me to hold a space for you to be sustained, encouraged, and utterly accepted in your journey to wholeness and peace.

I’m a certified Breathwork Facilitator and Decision Processing Facilitator through Transformative Education International in Sydney, Australia. My training is certified to meet the standards of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance (the international organization for professionalism, ethics, and training standards in breathwork). The course comprised approximately 560 hours of coursework and experiential training, including receiving at least 50 sessions, giving at least 50 sessions, weekly group work, and monthly weekend intensives. The technique combines three powerful elements: the advanced breathwork session oriented toward working with difficult emotions, an understanding of personality defense structures (informed by neo-Reichian characterology), and a coaching technique complementary to breathwork that helps explore past decisions in relation to behaviors.

I would like to be able to give a clear description of my healing practice lineages for the sake of transparency and gratitude. This is complicated by the way the breath has been used in healing ways through human history and in numerous indigenous cultures in ways documented and undocumented. In modern times, there is cross-pollination between different practices, occasional loss or distortion of the historical development of practices, and the way my own practice is influenced by innumerable experiences, healers, and teachers of all kinds, formal and informal, conventional and unconventional. For now, the partial and inadequate lineage I can describe includes formal training with breathworkers Jaan Sanaam (who trained with rebirthing breathworker Michael Ademedes, who trained with Leonard Orr) and Jim Morningstar (who trained with Leonard Orr and others). Informally, my breathwork lineage includes Stan Grof and Leonard Orr. My lineage also includes the neo-Reichian teachings of Jaan Sanaam and Jim Morningstar (formally), and Alexander Lowen and Barbara Brennan (informally). I have also been blessed by a community of teachers of Buddhism: broadly the Buddha-Sangha, most directly Willa Thaniya Reid, and locally David Lawson. I also want to acknowledge my breathwork training cohort and advanced students at Transformative Education International who so deeply contributed to my healing and my growth as a facilitator. Deep gratitude to all these teachers and more.

I was born in 1970 in Asmera, Eritrea, and grew up on a farm near where I now practice in Michigan, on the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples, as well as the Meskwahkiasahina (Fox), and Peoria peoples (see the Native Land Digital project). As a descendant of German immigrant farmers, my location here is premised on a traumatic history of serfdom, colonialism, racism, forced and enslaved labor, capitalism, exploitation, and displacement. I’ve wound up living on five continents. I spent about five years living and training in Buddhist monasteries in the Theravada forest tradition. I continue to practice and teach Buddhism and meditation, and have trained in interfaith hospital chaplaincy. For me, practice includes a commitment to community organizing for a just world without racism, immiseration, or humans in cages. I have a bachelor’s in environmental policy and a master’s in sociology, and worked in labor organizing and social research. I identify as genderqueer and use she/they/he pronouns. My family, friends, and all the brave people in the world sustain and inspire me. My stepson and my cat keep me honest.

My commitments

I commit to serving all with radical respect and integrity. I aim to make my practice a safer space for all, including people with a history of personal or multi-generational trauma, Indigenous people, Black and Brown people, LGBTQIA+ people, people of all ages, people of all abilities, people who use substances, people of all body shapes and sizes, people of all means, justice-involved people, people of all faith backgrounds or none, and people with all concerns whether physical, mental, emotional, relational, spiritual, or other. At the same time, I can only act from the particularities of my conditions and flaws, and welcome sincere feedback. Depending on your circumstances, we will discuss whether or when advanced breathwork with me may be beneficial and appropriate for you, or whether another type of breathing or service may be better. Please let me know if you require accessibility accommodations (e.g., seated session, ASL or other language interpreter, etc.).

For Black women seeking a Black woman-led and centered space, consider Black Girls Breathing. For various healing modalities in a healing justice framework locally, consider Healing By Choice!

I maintain strict confidentiality and observe the Ethical Standards for Breathworkers of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance. I continue my education in breathwork and other healing modalities. Currently, I’m studying for a diploma in classical homeopathy from the Canadian College of Homeopathic Medicine in Toronto.

Disclaimer

Advanced breathwork is not a substitute for medical or psychological diagnosis or treatment. I do not diagnose medical or psychological conditions, perform medical treatment, prescribe substances, provide psychotherapy, or interfere with the treatment of licensed medical or psychological professionals. The information on these pages is offered as a tool for spiritual and personal growth and not as medical or psychotherapeutic advice. I make no claims to heal medical or psychological conditions; any healing subsequent to advanced breathwork practice or other services here is a result of self-healing.