Awaken whole body aliveness. Inspire health and resilience.
Hello. Welcome!
My name is Amanda.
I am grateful to be a space holder, embodiment practitioner, and changemaker in these dynamic times. I feel grateful to be steeped in skills of supporting folks to be with, move and tend that which is dear to them; to support growth and resilience in service of collective liberation.
There are so many ways to name myself into this space, so I’ll start with a few.
(You can read my positionality statement, as well the biography I use for professional engagements below.)
I am deeply committed to collective liberation and co-creating life affirming, anti-oppressive, decolonial white culture.
Through my lived experience, as well as my experience as a practitioner and educator, I understand that change happens with, through and in the body.
Change is centered in relationship, with each other, ourselves and our bodies.
I recently began to think of myself as a midwife, in the metaphoric sense of supporting transformation and birthing new ways of being: personally, interpersonally, collectively and systemically/structurally. I’m just trying that title on for now, as I was inspired by this Social Change Ecosystem Map to find myself in the web of changemakers.
I care deeply. I am a forever learner. I don’t always get it right, but I orient to learning and accountability, and keep showing up.
I like to say that my first teachers in embodiment were horses. I will forever be grateful to learning through their strength, grace and incredibly attuned listening, and the ways I needed to match and mirror that in my own body to be in right relationship with them. As a child they were a safe haven for me amidst a lot of storm.
Sagittarius, Sun. Leo, Moon. Virgo, Rising.
Enneagram #1 with 9 wing.
Within the BodyMind Centering(BMC) framework, I’m most connected to bones, blood marrow, connective tissue/fascia and the enteric nervous system.
I am woven within an incredible mycelial network of humans and more than humans that anchor me, my work and guide my learning process.
Some of these are:
Prentis Hemphill, Sonya Renee Taylor, adrienne maree brown, Resmaa Menakem, Sherri Mitchell, Stephen Porges, Miriame Kabe, Christine Cole, Cecile Green, Staci Haines, Daniel Siegel, Abbi Jaffe, Lane Fury, Mea Tavares, and so many more.
Mountains, the rivers and streams I frequent, Hemlock groves, Moss!, horses, the big wide open sky of the land where I was born, my ancestors, dance/movement, and of course, my body.
My name is Amanda.
I am grateful to be a space holder, embodiment practitioner, and changemaker in these dynamic times. I feel grateful to be steeped in skills of supporting folks to be with, move and tend that which is dear to them; to support growth and resilience in service of collective liberation.
There are so many ways to name myself into this space, so I’ll start with a few.
(You can read my positionality statement, as well the biography I use for professional engagements below.)
I am deeply committed to collective liberation and co-creating life affirming, anti-oppressive, decolonial white culture.
Through my lived experience, as well as my experience as a practitioner and educator, I understand that change happens with, through and in the body.
Change is centered in relationship, with each other, ourselves and our bodies.
I recently began to think of myself as a midwife, in the metaphoric sense of supporting transformation and birthing new ways of being: personally, interpersonally, collectively and systemically/structurally. I’m just trying that title on for now, as I was inspired by this Social Change Ecosystem Map to find myself in the web of changemakers.
I care deeply. I am a forever learner. I don’t always get it right, but I orient to learning and accountability, and keep showing up.
I like to say that my first teachers in embodiment were horses. I will forever be grateful to learning through their strength, grace and incredibly attuned listening, and the ways I needed to match and mirror that in my own body to be in right relationship with them. As a child they were a safe haven for me amidst a lot of storm.
Sagittarius, Sun. Leo, Moon. Virgo, Rising.
Enneagram #1 with 9 wing.
Within the BodyMind Centering(BMC) framework, I’m most connected to bones, blood marrow, connective tissue/fascia and the enteric nervous system.
I am woven within an incredible mycelial network of humans and more than humans that anchor me, my work and guide my learning process.
Some of these are:
Prentis Hemphill, Sonya Renee Taylor, adrienne maree brown, Resmaa Menakem, Sherri Mitchell, Stephen Porges, Miriame Kabe, Christine Cole, Cecile Green, Staci Haines, Daniel Siegel, Abbi Jaffe, Lane Fury, Mea Tavares, and so many more.
Mountains, the rivers and streams I frequent, Hemlock groves, Moss!, horses, the big wide open sky of the land where I was born, my ancestors, dance/movement, and of course, my body.
Positionality:
Amanda is a 5th generation US born white, queer, abled, AFAB (assigned female at birth), settler of Slavic and Germanic descent. Amanda grew up working class in the rural Midwest on lands of the Osage, Kickapoo, Peoria and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples and has lived as a renter in the unceded territory of the Western Abenaki since 2007. As a somatics and trauma educator, body worker, embodiment activist, community organizer, witch, and tender of the Alive (food, medicine, relationships, non-human kin, community culture), Amanda is committed to learning and unlearning the lived and woven places of privilege and oppression, embodied and enacted through each of these roles. Guided by their positionality and through trauma informed/resilience oriented, anti-racist and decolonial practices, Amanda is invested in re-culturing whiteness, redistributing power, and re-centering relationship to address the past and present harms they, and their ancestors, have perpetuated.
Amanda is a 5th generation US born white, queer, abled, AFAB (assigned female at birth), settler of Slavic and Germanic descent. Amanda grew up working class in the rural Midwest on lands of the Osage, Kickapoo, Peoria and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples and has lived as a renter in the unceded territory of the Western Abenaki since 2007. As a somatics and trauma educator, body worker, embodiment activist, community organizer, witch, and tender of the Alive (food, medicine, relationships, non-human kin, community culture), Amanda is committed to learning and unlearning the lived and woven places of privilege and oppression, embodied and enacted through each of these roles. Guided by their positionality and through trauma informed/resilience oriented, anti-racist and decolonial practices, Amanda is invested in re-culturing whiteness, redistributing power, and re-centering relationship to address the past and present harms they, and their ancestors, have perpetuated.
Biography:
Amanda is a politicized somatics educator, embodiment activist and changemaker working at the intersections of somatics, the trauma informed movement, social justice, environmental justice and cultural co-creation. They/She is a certified Somatic Body Practitioner and is an ISMETA certified Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist, as well as a certified Level II Collab trainer and facilitator. She/They collaboratively run The Everything Space, a somatic education studio weaving together personal growth and dynamic social change, co-creates/facilitates curriculum on Growing Resilience through being Trauma Informed, and leads a collective community Garden Project that reimagines community through tending the non-human Alive and growing food and medicine together.
Amanda has been a student, an educator, and a performing artist of various somatic movement modalities since 2000 throughout the United States, and in Canada and Russia. Her work weaves together many revolutionary forms as threads of a deep listening to the self as body in service of the Great Turning. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from Oberlin College and forever holds Missouri(lands of the Osage, Kickapoo, Peoria and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples), the place of her birth, dear to her heart.
Amanda is a politicized somatics educator, embodiment activist and changemaker working at the intersections of somatics, the trauma informed movement, social justice, environmental justice and cultural co-creation. They/She is a certified Somatic Body Practitioner and is an ISMETA certified Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist, as well as a certified Level II Collab trainer and facilitator. She/They collaboratively run The Everything Space, a somatic education studio weaving together personal growth and dynamic social change, co-creates/facilitates curriculum on Growing Resilience through being Trauma Informed, and leads a collective community Garden Project that reimagines community through tending the non-human Alive and growing food and medicine together.
Amanda has been a student, an educator, and a performing artist of various somatic movement modalities since 2000 throughout the United States, and in Canada and Russia. Her work weaves together many revolutionary forms as threads of a deep listening to the self as body in service of the Great Turning. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from Oberlin College and forever holds Missouri(lands of the Osage, Kickapoo, Peoria and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples), the place of her birth, dear to her heart.
Current offerings:
- Trauma Informed Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Sessions- bodywork, movement repatterning, education and practice
- Tending Our Grief: community grief rituals
- Re-Embodiment Training- personalized somatic coaching
- Becoming, Together: a praxis group for re-humaning white bodies (in gestation)
- Somatic Integration: Weaving Somatics into your Practice- a professional development course for somatic integration (coming 2023)
- Growing Resilience: Becoming Trauma Informed (on pause until further notice)
- My Grandmothers Hands Learning Community (next sessions begin Summer 2023)
- The Garden Project
- Polyvagal for the Poly People
- Somatics for the People! Clinic
- Group facilitation, Organizational consultation and more
BOOK YOUR SOMATICS SESSION NOW!
COVID-19 Related Disclosure:
I am fully vaccinated. I do not require client vaccination or status disclosure.
You can read more about our covid policies and practices here.
I am fully vaccinated. I do not require client vaccination or status disclosure.
You can read more about our covid policies and practices here.
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Education:
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Organizer/(Co)Curator:
The Everything Space- co-creator/curator, facilitator, practitioner since 2014, as well as community event co-organizer including Contact Improv weekly jams, annual decolonization educational events, the Work that Reconnects, Community Practices of Resilience, and Embodiment Activism: what is it and why does it matter? The Garden Project Organizations/Events I’ve supported/been a part of:
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What folks are saying:
"Amanda has a gift for reaching deep into the somatic field and activating one's own potential for healing, growth, and increased capacity. Her ability to convey healing and understanding through touch, word, and movement offered me solace and support through a difficult time. Her sessions always leave me grounded, more resourced and instill more capacity in me to listen to and care for myself.”
~C.G.
"Learning how to listen means actually practicing listening. The meaning of “listening” was expanded for me by this course to encompass different body systems and hubs of intelligence."
~ L.S. artist
"I just completed the Re Embodiment Training with Amanda Franz and I could not recommend this course enough. Amanda holds amazing space and offers an incredible amount of information and resources to allow the information of study around the nervous system to sink in and land in the body. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to understand why they feel the way they do in their body, anyone who wants to understand how to support others going through traumatic experiences or people processing past experiences. Amanda's work as a somatic educator and facilitator of embodiment practices is very unique and profound. She is very talented in connecting with her clients as well and offering incredible resources and educational excerpts to intellectually understand concepts that can also be embodied. Amanda is a practitioner I would recommend to anyone ."
~ S.K., doula & personal trainer
"Amanda, your ability to listen deeply, guide me to my growing edge, and facilitate the integration/application of my new awareness to my creative process were so graceful and impressive. You wrapped this course around my goals, creating a foundation for me of new somatic awareness in the first half of the course, and then stepping to the side to allow me to explore this foundation, while continuing to support me to listen for what needed to happen next.
This training has supported me to become so much more conscious of my what my body is doing, saying, needing, desiring. It has helped me to experience my bodymind as integrated with my headmind. It has retrained me to hear the messages of my body, which come to me through sensations that I have been somewhat estranged from my whole life, as a result of conditioning to value most highly the way my head-brain thinks about and responds to life. "
~L.S., educator
"Amanda held the space so tenderly and with so much care, it is obvious that she cares deeply about her work and her clients. Working with her allowed me to experience my body in a new way, a way that felt much more liberated and empowering. Not only will I be using what I learned during this course in my personal life, but will also be bringing this to my own work to be able to better serve my own clients."
~S.B., herbal educator
"Re-Embodiment Training revolutionized my relationship to my body, my sense of self, my work, and my connections with others. Through the 10 week process I was expertly guided by Amanda through a balance of information and experience that gave me language and tangible tools for the processes of my body - both in the moment and as habitual patterns of being. Through this work I was able to release old, restrictive patterns, both in my body and in my relationship to myself and others, and to find greater range of motion and freedom physically, mentally, emotionally and relationally. Re-Embodiment Training was a transformative process of liberation and radical self acceptance that, I feel, has provided deep healing and opening to new potential that has only just begun. If you have a body, give yourself this experience. Your journey will be your own, the miracle is within you. This work will guide you home."
~M.T., bodyworker
"Amanda has a gift for reaching deep into the somatic field and activating one's own potential for healing, growth, and increased capacity. Her ability to convey healing and understanding through touch, word, and movement offered me solace and support through a difficult time. Her sessions always leave me grounded, more resourced and instill more capacity in me to listen to and care for myself.”
~C.G.
"Learning how to listen means actually practicing listening. The meaning of “listening” was expanded for me by this course to encompass different body systems and hubs of intelligence."
~ L.S. artist
"I just completed the Re Embodiment Training with Amanda Franz and I could not recommend this course enough. Amanda holds amazing space and offers an incredible amount of information and resources to allow the information of study around the nervous system to sink in and land in the body. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to understand why they feel the way they do in their body, anyone who wants to understand how to support others going through traumatic experiences or people processing past experiences. Amanda's work as a somatic educator and facilitator of embodiment practices is very unique and profound. She is very talented in connecting with her clients as well and offering incredible resources and educational excerpts to intellectually understand concepts that can also be embodied. Amanda is a practitioner I would recommend to anyone ."
~ S.K., doula & personal trainer
"Amanda, your ability to listen deeply, guide me to my growing edge, and facilitate the integration/application of my new awareness to my creative process were so graceful and impressive. You wrapped this course around my goals, creating a foundation for me of new somatic awareness in the first half of the course, and then stepping to the side to allow me to explore this foundation, while continuing to support me to listen for what needed to happen next.
This training has supported me to become so much more conscious of my what my body is doing, saying, needing, desiring. It has helped me to experience my bodymind as integrated with my headmind. It has retrained me to hear the messages of my body, which come to me through sensations that I have been somewhat estranged from my whole life, as a result of conditioning to value most highly the way my head-brain thinks about and responds to life. "
~L.S., educator
"Amanda held the space so tenderly and with so much care, it is obvious that she cares deeply about her work and her clients. Working with her allowed me to experience my body in a new way, a way that felt much more liberated and empowering. Not only will I be using what I learned during this course in my personal life, but will also be bringing this to my own work to be able to better serve my own clients."
~S.B., herbal educator
"Re-Embodiment Training revolutionized my relationship to my body, my sense of self, my work, and my connections with others. Through the 10 week process I was expertly guided by Amanda through a balance of information and experience that gave me language and tangible tools for the processes of my body - both in the moment and as habitual patterns of being. Through this work I was able to release old, restrictive patterns, both in my body and in my relationship to myself and others, and to find greater range of motion and freedom physically, mentally, emotionally and relationally. Re-Embodiment Training was a transformative process of liberation and radical self acceptance that, I feel, has provided deep healing and opening to new potential that has only just begun. If you have a body, give yourself this experience. Your journey will be your own, the miracle is within you. This work will guide you home."
~M.T., bodyworker