Beyond Allyship

Embodied Resilience and Emotional Regulation
for the good hard work ahead.

Thursdays - online
January 5 - February 23, 2023
4:00pm - 5:30 pm pst | 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm est

registration is closed. a new cohort will start in Fall 2023.

Beyond Allyship is an 8-week course designed to help you find more ease, joy, and support as you expand your capacity as an ally, accomplice, comrade and co-creator of a more equitable, just, and inclusive world.

Using trauma-informed somatics, movement, and mindfulness, you will learn to recruit your body wisdom to expand resilience and emotional regulation to engage in the good hard work ahead with less burnout.

Can you relate?

✦ Do you care deeply about the work towards racial, social and environmental justice, but are sometimes intimidated by how hard it is to be a good ally, day in and day out?

✦ Do you feel committed to Diversity Equity and Inclusion, but feel discouraged about how heavy, serious, and difficult DEI trainings can be, and long for more connection, joy and community to make the work easier?

✦ Did you feel guilty reading that last part, because you’re unsure you deserve/are allowed to feel connection, joy or ease in this work? (hint - you do. you are)

✦ Are you someone who’s been working tirelessly in DEI, and are facing real burnout from being in the struggle all the time?

✦ Do you feel isolated sometimes, like you’re the only one in your family/community/place of work who cares about this good hard work?

✦ Maybe you know you still have more work to do as a white person and you don’t want to burden BIPOC folk, but don’t know where to turn for support.

✦ Maybe you’ve been tirelessly educating yourself about how to be a good ally and accomplice, but get overwhelmed by your feelings of guilt, shame, frustration, grief that are surfacing.

✦ Maybe you’re struggling to regulate your feelings of anger and hopelessness at “stupid white people”  and it’s preventing you from being a better ally and communicating with them in a helpful way.

If any of this resonates, this is the course for you.

If you’re interested in joining the program, the first step is to have an Alignment Call with me. This serves as the application for the program. From there, if we have mutual alignment, I’ll provide you with the payment form to complete in securing your spot.

In our 8 weeks together, you’ll learn concrete tools and pathways to support your nervous system, emotions and whole self to show up better in the work of equity, inclusion and social justice.

Cultivating a compassionate and dedicated container, we come together to support our collective dismantling of white supremacist and patriarchal programming with loving accountability.

You’ll learn how to:

✦ Transmute your feelings of guilt, shame and hopelessness into actionable energy that contributes to a more equitable world.

✦ Move from having debilitating feelings that stall your efforts, immobilize or isolate you, to feeling effective, easeful, a sense of belonging and acceptance of your whole self.

✦ Grow your capacity to be in difficult conversations around marginalization, oppression and privilege.

✦ Feel included in and supported by a community of people with shared values and goals.

✦ Feel more resilience in your ability to navigate conflict and difficult emotions.

✦ Discover more more joy, connection, community and ease to make the “good hard work” also deeply rewarding, gratifying and purposeful. 

✦ Feel all of you included and fully accepted in a community of imperfect, improving humans.

✦ Find more compassion for yourself and others.

✦ Release the chronic tension and burden of this work to free up your life force for effective contribution.

✦ Move beyond allyship and into embodied equitable and inclusive community.

About the facilitator

Somatic. Embodied. Trauma-Informed. Liberatory. 

Hi I’m Odessa, and I’ll be facilitating our journey together for these 8 weeks. I’m a trauma-informed somatic psychotherapist (Registered Associate MFT, see full credentials in website footer) and social justice educator, and I combine these areas of expertise to bring you an embodied, wholistic approach to creating the communities we dream of.

My lived experience as a white-presenting, bi-cultural cis woman with origins in Europe, colonized Australia, and what is now known as Puerto Rico, I live with both white privilege and the recent intergenerational trauma imprint of my culture being erased by whiteness through the racism-instigated process of assimilation. This is an experience embedded in the lineage of many “white” people (through the immigration process into the US, or further back during tribal colonization eras in Europe), I just happen to have a more immediate relationship with this loss than many others. This uniquely positions me to help you locate and process the myriad emotions that emerge in our dismantling of white supremacy.

As I deepened into my exploration of my identity and my ancestry, I began to uncover complexity where simple “whiteness” was before. The complexity and richness I found within me catalyzed a longing for more diverse representations in my communities so that all of me could feel welcomed and at home. With this, I discovered an earnest and genuine reason why I wanted diverse spaces - not just out of my white guilt or progressive should-talking, but a genuine, personal longing to do my part to support diversity in all the spaces I move through - because I realized that my true sense of belonging actually relied on the true belonging of everyone. I knew that my path towards my own belonging was through dismantling white-body supremacy within myself.

I’ve been at this deprogramming for years now. I hold a certificate from Transformative Programs in Embodied Social Justice, where I’ve trained with many of the trailblazers in the field: Resma Menakem, Patrisse Cullors, Kai Cheng Thom, Nkem Ndefo, Bayo Akomolafe, Staci Haines, Rae Johnson, Dr Sará King and Rev. angel Kyodo williams. I serve as the co-lead for Inclusion and Belonging for SoulPlay festivals, and am part of the Healers Collective for the Decolonizing Wealth Project.

My journey into embodiment has helped me better know myself, my triggers, challenges and strengths. Through learning somatic embodiment, I have learned how to be more in my body, more aware, and more connected to myself. This has helped me navigate difficult emotions and conflict more easily, feel more connected to others, and experience more success in sharing my purpose and passion in the world.

I’m not only a living example of the deep and profound benefits of embodiment and dismantling supremacy work, I also have masters-level expertise and the appropriate training to be guiding a group like this, which you won’t find with many coaching programs out there. 

“it’s OK to be exactly where we’re at”

“Odessa's containers feel incredibly safe to explore the often tender and raw experience of how it feels to exist in our own body, with our unique set of circumstances, experiences, and identity. Her offering comes at a moment in time when the consideration of privilege, positionality, trauma, and cultural conditioning, is essential for individual and collective liberation. 

Her invitations to explore this terrain are rooted in simple and accessible body-based practices that help us to feel where we're at in our process. She then offers continual presencing and encouragement that it is OK to be exactly where we are at, and to begin our journey from that place, with curiosity, compassion, and playfulness. 

She also makes accountability and responsibility feel approachable and lighthearted, without losing connection to the gravity of what it is that we are unwinding, and the opportunity for love that's available when we show up for that work in a brave way. 

Her guidance is clear and grounded, with a potent combination of kindness and fierce love that invites participants to approach social justice work from a place of connection to our inherent capacity for loving ourselves and each other through the most vulnerable of processes. 

Odessa has a deeply embodied understanding of the nervous system, attachment theory, and trauma healing practices, that makes for a potent collection of tools to help us resource ourselves to meet challenges from a place of resilience, presence, and a slow pace that serves integration and lasting change.”


~ Ashley Berry,
Gold Soul Coaching

“It’s so simple and so powerful.”


“It was a space to move through so many emotions and fears and anxieties. It’s one of the only times I have allowed myself to go into feeling and expressing grief about the internalized racism within me and in our society. There’s some thing about having that space, in a group, everyone being nonverbal, that gave permission to explore deeper more painful thoughts, feelings, and beliefs than I have in more talk-based workshops. I am excited to see where this work continues to evolve. It’s so simple and so powerful.”

~ Gabriel Diamond,
Filmmaker, workshop Facilitator

“eyes and hearts wide open.”

“In just sixty minutes facilitated by Odessa, I moved through so much grief - of a personal loss, and of the current state of the world. During the whole process we were encouraged to not stay stuck, to not shut down to overwhelm, and to face the challenges with our eyes and hearts wide open, our nervous systems regulated. I am so grateful for this work and all it has taught me in such a small potent amount of time.”

~ Selysa Love,
Founder of Sacramento Reiki Center

Who is this for?

This is for you if…

✦ You’re white-identified, white-bodied, or white-presenting, and have started to dismantle your own white-body supremacy (or have been doing it for a while) and want to continue the build towards a more inclusive and equitable world.

✦ You’re clear that systemic oppression and marginalization exists, and that it is up to each one of us to dismantle colonizer and supremacists modes of thinking within ourselves.

✦ You’ve read some books, taken some trainings, and know that you have unearned privilege, and understand that you can change some pretty lame aspects of this world by bringing consciousness to previously unconsciousness privilege and bias.

✦ You know that there are ways that you can change and grow personally, but maybe aren’t exactly sure how.

✦ Your job is connected to some aspect of social justice. 

✦ You’re an impact maker or change-maker, healer, community organizer, health care provider or private sector worker who knows that DEI is an important aspect of your business to nurture.

✦ You know that your personal healing is inextricably linked to the healing of racism, transphobia, sexism, all other isms and schisms, and the wellbeing of our planet.

✦ You are trying desperately to “get it right” and are exhausted by the hamster wheel that this work can feel like sometimes

Who is this not for?

This is not for you if…

✦ You like to “play the devil’s advocate” about why or why not diversity equity and inclusion are important values.

✦ You know that it’s “on brand” or you’re supposed to care about this, but it actually maybe makes you roll your eyes. 

✦ You don’t believe you hold any privilege, or have yet to take an inventory of your own unique intersection of privilege and oppression.

✦ You’re not sure that racism or sexism really exist anymore.

✦ You’ve been told by an employer that you need more DEI training, and you’re begrudgingly complying, and just need to find a program to “tick the box.”


*If you feel argumentative or still skeptical of “all this stuff,” that’s okay! Way to acknowledge where you’re at! Consider reading some books, or taking some entry-level DEI trainings. This won’t be an enjoyable container for you.

This is not your typical DEI training. 

This is a container of loving accountability.

This is a container of support and resource.

This is a container that promotes wellbeing
in the midst of the good hard work.

This is a space to unlearn self-deprecation, hardness,
self-flagellation, pointing fingers, and perfectionism. 

This is a space to learn relaxation, compassion, care,
nourishment, and celebration as vital parts of social justice.

This community is for those who believe that another world is possible,
one where the inclusion and belonging of all contributes
to a rich human experience beyond our wildest dreams.

What’s Included?

  • …on zoom. Each meeting will center on a different theme, there will be time for processing, reflecting, somatic practice and experientials, and embodied learning through sharing with each other.

  • Access to a video library of 10 somatic resourcing experientials and explorations to help navigate emotional dysregulation, burnout, stress, guilt, shame, and other challenging experiences related to dismantling white-body supremacy.

  • Drop in on our private group slack channel to be in community with other participants, share ideas, offer and receive support from each other, and prompts and reflection questions from Odessa.

  • The Nervous System Under Threat and Polyvagal Theory crash course - video trainings that will support your understanding of how your body navigates, stress, threat and danger, and how this impacts our capacity to show up in allyship.

  • The course will be limited to a total of 8 participants to keep the group intimate and more supportive.

  • A one-on-one session, either during or after the program, to give you focused support on material that may arise during the program, and a written recap/summary of resources sent to you after the session. This is great for deeper processing and transformation of some of the harder feelings of guilt, shame, hopelessness or grief that can arise, to make way for more ease and resilience. It can be a place to uncover and change core beliefs that may be keeping you stuck in some aspect of overwork, overwhelm, burnout, or struggle. Somatic Coaching and/or ThetaHealing. (Additional $300)

    **The first 3 people to register for Beyond Allyship will receive this add-on FREE.

Investment Options

$597

(or 2 monthly payments of $333)

Group Access

8 weekly live group sessions on zoom, Slack community, experientials and training videos.
(A $920 value)

~~~

$888

(or 2 monthly payments of $488)

Group + 1.1 Session

Everything Included in Group Access, plus
1x 75-minute private coaching session - Somatic Coaching and/or Theta Healing - with Odessa
(A $1220 value)
~~~

5% of proceeds will be donated to Kizh Nation, the indigenous people of the Los Angeles basin.

interested, but feeling tight with the purse strings?
get your organization to sponsor or subsidize the program for you.

If you’re interested in joining the program, the first step is to have an Alignment Call with me. This serves as the application for the program. From there, if we have mutual alignment, I’ll provide you with the payment form to complete in securing your spot.

Step 1: Apply here:

ACCOUNTABILITY & EXPECTATIONS

YOUR COMMITMENT: Be Humble. Be Brave. Be Dedicated 

These invitations (be humble, be brave, be dedicated) come from the Inclusive Mindset - a model developed by my mentor and sometimes collaborator Dereca Blackmon, and are the basis of the agreement we make to one another in the Beyond Allyship program.

Due to the nature of this work, your presence for each weekly session is required, as we’ll be building community support with the gift of everyone’s loving presence. We need each other to do this work, the magic is in the real-time we spend together.

MY COMMITMENT: Built-in Accountability 

In the work towards social justice, accountability and appropriate support are important. Checking ourselves in a compassionate way becomes an ongoing practice. 

This is why I’ve enlisted the help of Reverend Dr. Salome Raheim as my accountability partner. She is being compensated to offer me ongoing support, reflection, sounding board, and advising throughout the 8 week course. You can read more about Dr Raheim below.

Accountability Partner: Reverend Dr. Salome Raheim

Rev. Dr. Salome Raheim (she/her) is an Interfaith Interspiritual Minister, leadership coach, and an organizational consultant and trainer. She identifies as African American and acknowledges multiple additional ancestral lineages. She is passionate about actualizing the depths of human potential for caring, compassion, connection, healing, and justice. She has more than 30 years of experience working with organizations to promote diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) and implement practices to foster wellbeing and is a national leader in Integrative Body-Mind-Spirit Social Work. She is Dean Emeritus at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work and Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany—SUNY School of Social Welfare. During her career, she has led two schools of social work (University of Connecticut and University of Iowa) in organization-wide, multi-year change initiatives to increase DEIB.

Rev. Dr. Raheim’s commitment to creating more just and healthy organizations has taken her across the United States and to four continents to deliver presentations and provide training and consultation to schools, universities, nonprofit organizations, governmental organizations, and businesses. She received ordination from One Spirit Interfaith Seminary (www.1Spirit.org), holds the PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa, MSW from Catholic University of America, MA in Integrative Health and Healing from The Graduate Institute, and BSW from Bowie State University, a historically black college. She is a certified mindfulness and chair yoga instructor and is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. She acknowledges with gratitude and respect living upon unceded Nacotchtank ancestral land.

✦ Increased resilience in moving through discomfort and difficult interactions

✦ Ability to cultivate and sustain authentic and embodied bravery

✦ Relief and gratitude for being able to process emotions in an appropriate safe space

✦ Feel more connected to self and others

✦ A diminishing of self-judgment, guilt and shame associated with white privilege

✦ Proficiency in stress-reducing practices

✦ Feeling more balanced and grounded

✦ Feeling more hopeful and joyful

✦ Ability to emotionally regulate through hard situations

✦ Experience a sense of wholeness and greater self-acceptance

What Clients Report:

FAQ

  • Life happens, and things don’t always work out as we’ve planned, so it’s understandable if something comes up and you need to miss a session.

    Having said that, this isn’t really one of those “I’ll just catch the recording” kind of programs. You'll miss out on real-time interaction and support with your cohort-mates, and on spot-coaching and counseling from me. The cohort size will be small, so your absence will be missed, and take that into consideration as you’re prioritizing this and other elements in your life.

    So I encourage you to commit to the time investment in yourself and show up to the live sessions - you’ll be happy you did!

  • Aside from the strong encouragement to make all the live sessions, the rest of your involvement is up to you. I’ll offer occasional prompts in the Slack community, and engagement there is entirely optional.

    The video trainings and resource library are there to support you as needed and are there for you when you have the free time to explore. You’ll definitely get the most out of the program if you can engage with these aspects, but it’s entirely up to you.

  • Maybe! It’s not important that you have all the “lingo” down or you’re the most woke person on the block. On the contrary. We’re actually aiming to unlearn some of the more competitive and “holier than thou” kind of attitudes that can be found in social justice spaces - as these are just amplifications of white supremacists ideals in disguise.

    It is important that you have some capacity for humility and enough ego strength to be able to tolerate being called in, so that you can practice building your resilience for accountability.

    If you’re still not sure, definitely go ahead and schedule an alignment call and we’ll get a better sense together.

  • While these peer-to-peer groups are totally rad and I definitely recommend them, they have limitations.

    Since you may all be learning together, you can often-times unknowingly perpetuate some characteristics of white supremacist mentality - such as being overly perfectionist, rigid, and harsh with one another, or letting each other off the hook too soon, not being able to find radical accountability. This is a normal part of healing up this white supremacist mentality - we don’t know what we don’t know and we have to learn a whole new way of being together.

    Even in peer-to-peer groups that have some seasoned participants, without someone holding and leading the container, you can experience emotional roadblocks and sticking points that stall you out, can lead to burnout, frustration, and sometimes the fizzling out of the groups. You need someone to help navigate the challenging emotional terrain.

    In order to gain real traction in the work, it’s essential to lean into the appropriate support.

    Beyond Allyship is one such container because:

    ✦ I’m trauma-informed and hold a certificate in embodied social justice.

    ✦ I have years of experience as a social justice consultant and healer.

    ✦ I have years of experience as a group facilitator, coach, and therapist.

    ✦ I’m being supported and held accountable by my accountability partner, DEI educator and POC healer, Dr. Salome Raheim.

    All of this means I know how to hold the emotional layers and promote healing past the stuck bits. Also, I’m not offering this group in a vacuum, but in a larger container, with my own accountability support, where my blind spots can be checked as well.

  • Every Thursday (8 in a row) starting January 5th through Feb 23, 2023

  • You’ll get access to this communication channel starting on or around our first meeting in January.

    This is your space to ask questions, share your process with the group and engage is offering and receiving support with material from the program but also from real life.

    Maybe something challenging (in relation to DEI) happens IRL with your partner, or at work or in your community. This is a great place to use as a sounding board to share your experience, ask questions, receive (or give) feedback, and think through best practices for how to respond, using the tools and learnings from the program and with support of your cohort mates.

    From time to time I’ll also provide reflection questions and prompts to support group communication and exchange.

    This space will have guidelines in place to support safer, braver connection and in support of mutual respect toward one another.

  • In each live session, Odessa will offer spot coaching, answer questions and facilitate a group healing process with the live attendees. The potency of a group healing process is that even if you are not the main focus at any given moment, some aspect of what is being worked on will apply to you - this is the magic of group work.

    You’ll also get access to the private Slack channel, where you can ask questions, receive guidance, and share in mutual support along the way.

    If you are interested in having more focused individual support, you are welcome to book a private 1.1 session add-on session, or a series of sessions, either during or after the program ends (subject to Odessa’s availability).

  • Yes! As part of the program, you are welcome to buy 1.1 coaching sessions ala carte, at $300 for a 75 min session. Packages at a reduced rate (afer the first session) are also available. All subject to Odessa’s availability.

  • If you change your mind after registering and purchasing, you have 5 days from the time of purchase to request and receive a full refund until December 21st, whichever happens sooner - So all those who have purchased on or before program registration deadline of December 16th are eligible for this 5 day grace period.

    For late registrations (space permitting) - those that register on or after December 17th will not be eligible for refunds, but if you need to cancel your participation, let me know in writing before Jan 1, 2023 and your fee may be used towards other programs and services within one calendar year.

    Any no-shows or cancellations after Jan 1, 2023 will not be eligible for a refund.

  • No problem! Send me a message through my contact form and I’ll get back to you!

How to Enroll:

Registration is Closed.

Be the first to learn about enrollment for the Fall 2023 cohort: