Nima Saalabi (They/Them)

I help folks explore and connect with sources of cultural and racial respect, identity, & resilience. I believe racism is a collective and systemic trauma that can result in the fragmentation, denigration, erasure, & invisibilization of the narratives, stories, & experiences of BIPOC communities. By working to reconnect with your direct embodied, cultural, & ancestral sense of your social body, you can reclaim cultural and racial empowerment.

I help folks address issues that arise from 1, 1.5, & 2 generation immigration. Many BIPOC & SWANA immigrants face additional challenges in navigating cultural, familial, ancestral, intergenerational pressures and conflicts between homeland culture and the new culture. Folk often face anti-immigrant oppression, and navigate issues of imposter syndrome, micro-aggressions, code-switching, perfectionism, & cultural pressures to succeed, stand out, or blend in.

I utilize somatic resourcing models & guided experiential practice to help you safely reconnect with and find resource in embodied experience. I view trauma as a collective cultural experience. My trauma work is grounded in decolonization & social justice. I help folks to recover from cultural, historical, structural, & intergenerational traumas of colonization, immigration, racism, oppression, diaspora, displacement, & exile.

Somatic Psychotherapy is a body-oriented therapeutic modality and holistic approach to wellness and trauma survival that builds upon and integrates the diversity of somatic approaches within the context of therapy. Somatic Psychotherapy guides you in contacting and being gently with your embodied lived-experience of race, ethnicity, and socio-cultural identity. Somatic Psychotherapy promotes embodied transformation and collective liberation that interrogates and interrupts toxic social forms of

I utilize sacred cultural storytelling to support BIPOC & Immigrant folks in giving voice to (or writing, or singing) narratives and stories of cultural & ancestral resilience, dignity, joy, worth, respect, laughter, solidarity, struggle, & empowerment. I use expressive art practices including: somatic embodied movement exercises, story telling, improv games, free association, dance, dreamwork, creative arts, parts work, sounding, and role play.

To paraphrase Ignacio Martin-Boro, for psychology to be truly emancipatory it must first sever itself from its own idealogical chains, from psychology itself. Dominant psychologies implicitly serve the status quo by defining health as adjustment to white, middle class, heteronormative, colonialist social norms, without interrogating the structural and systemic forms of oppression embedded in those norms. I aim to support you in a deep integration of heart, body, spirit, story, & culture.

To paraphrase Ignacio Martin-Boro, for psychology to be truly emancipatory it must first sever itself from its own idealogical chains, from psychology itself. Dominant psychologies implicitly serve the status quo by defining health as adjustment to white, middle class, heteronormative, colonialist social norms. I aim to support you in reconnecting to your own cultural-historical-ancestral sources of health, healing, & resilience towards a deep integration of heart, body, spirit, story, & culture