Integrating Long-Held Trauma: Her Somatic Awakening with Gina Duran

Free Your Soma with Aimee Takaya

Gina Duran started out on a Somatic Journey which evolved into a SOMATIC AWAKENING. She has been on a healing journey for years: yoga, talk therapy, EMDR, art, massage therapy and plant medicine. However, her body was holding a lot of physical pain (related to her life experiences). She had learned to soldier on, to live with it and had various ways to find relief temporarily. She had taken few of my classes years ago and we had connected as yoga colleagues. She felt drawn to somatic bodywork and finally reached out to initiate the conversation. As we embarked on a 10 week series of sessions, her pain began to lessen and eventually vanish. In the process, Gina was able to recover memories and come to terms with trauma that she has been holding unconsciously. In this beautiful interview Gina shares about: -Her work as an Artist, Activist and Poet -The experience of consciously revisiting and integrating traumatic life events -Noticing her body deeply shift and change, her voice and her expression become more authentic -Her use of plant medicine as a way to open up to self-love and integrate somatic bodywork -Collective love and self-love and how communities need both to thrive and evolve and so much more! Working with Gina has been deeply inspiring and exciting for me, she was holding so much and it's deeply satisfying to see her feeling free, happy and at ease in her body. I look forward to seeing what incredible work she bings forward in this new chapter of her life.

Listen to Gina's show The Collective on Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/0049OfHUNa8l1iTTfaRPTj?si=hAkrWpAYS2i1K0x9p09ZmQ

Get a Copy of 'And So The Wind Was Born'

https://www.flowersongpress.com/store-j9lRp/p/pre-order-and-so-the-wind-was-born-by-gina-duran

and connect with Gina on IG @byginaduran As an artist, poet, and trauma informed educator with a focus on marginalized youth, Gina Duran is a Theatre Of Hearts/Youth First Artist-In-Residence, founder of the IE Hope Collective; an outreach that helps people living on the streets and in shelters, which provides poetry, art, and yoga workshops for low-income, homeless, foster, refugee, and LGBTQ2S+ youth. She was the Guest Editor of Boundless 2022, of The Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival and is currently the Host for The Collective on KQBH and Spotify. Duran teaches yoga, mindfulness, poetry and art workshops for EOPS, NextUp, CalWorks, the CARE Program, and Foster Youth at Chaffey College, and has taught workshops at the University of Redlands, Pitzer College, Ontario TAY Center, Joshua Home: an LGBTQ Youth Safe Haven, and the Pomona School District. Works from her debut collection of poetry “…and so, the Wind was Born,” published by FlowerSong Press (2021) can be found in the Her Story Mixed Tape Collection at the Autry Museum of the American West, in LA and Life in Quarantine project, at Stanford University. Her research Sexual Violence and the Assimilation Response of LGBTQ2 Female Identified Latina and Indigenous Americans, published by the University of Illinois Urbana-Chanpaign (2018) informs her art, poetry, and efforts for marginalized youth. When she's not making art and building community, Duran is a first semester MFA Grad student at Antioch University (in LA) while she works as a Substitute teacher, Yoga Instructor, Massage Therapist, and youth program director. She feels art and community can and will lead to positive change

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