This week, Candice sits down with Somatic Trauma Specialist, Magdalena Weinstein. Originally from Chile, Magdalena spent the first 17 years of her life living under the rule of an authoritarian dictatorship. In this episode, she shares about her childhood, her family life, and what motivated her to immigrate to the US in 2004. Magdalena speaks very candidly about the challenges of being in immigrant in America, and about time spent in a series of traumatizing and controlling environments – dictatorship in her formative years that stoked an early hunger for autonomy; years spent as an Iyengar yoga student and teacher striving for whitewashed dominion over her body; and a decade of investment in a coaching program where she experienced mind control and ongoing racial micro-aggressions. She generously shares each of these stories with us, poignantly illustrating what all of these seemingly unrelated experiences have in common. In 2019, Magdalena trained as a trauma specialist; and in the final third of the episode, she helps us to understand how trauma around control gets stored in the body, and what – both individually and collectively – we might be able to do about it. She describes the differences between control and personal agency, particularly when it comes to owning and choosing psychological and somatic states. Then, Magdalena calls on wellness practitioners to trade western idealism for a more realistic and collective approach to the growing challenges we now face as humans.
Magdalena Weinstein, SEP (she, her) is a Somatic Trauma Specialist that offers trauma recovery interventions using Somatic Experiencing®, Touch Skills, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), Parts Work and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy perspectives. Blending the fields of Somatics, Neurology and Social Justice, she is committed to helping individuals and groups transition towards personal, ancestral and collective trauma healing. Her specialties are developmental and complex trauma, C-PTSD, PTSD, chronic conditions, domestic violence and sexual assault trauma and social justice dynamics including racial trauma, immigration trauma and war trauma. Originally from Chile, she was born and raised in Dictatorship for her first 17 years of life and immigrated to USA in 2004.
She lives in a rural home in Mendocino, Northern California (unceded Pomo Territory), with her husband, their two kids, dogs, cats and snakes. She has a private practice in her home studio, is an assistant at SE trainings and is a member of the DEI committee at Somatic Experiencing International. She is also finishing the first year of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Training.
September 20, 2023
Referenced In This Episode:
- Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari
