About Jennie
I come from...
First and foremost I come from the earth, the waters, the canyons, forests, and all that is wild. I come from love as I know it in my every cell. I come from candles burning brightly and prayer songs remembering our way. I come from Ashkenazi Jewish, Scottish, French, German ancestors.
I come from parents who had different religious backgrounds who built a spirit bridge, honoring differences, invoking curiosity and uniting in holy gratitude… showing us that the cracks find their way to repair.
Showing us that nature is our temple…teaching us that respect, adventure, courage, play and love are our holy ground.
I come from remembering and forgetting and remembering again.
Jennie Gershater Lopez, MA, LMT is a Somatic Healing Arts Practitioner, doula, and soul-midwife who has been supporting and guiding individuals through significant life thresholds since 1998.
Included in her medicine basket are: Soul-Centered Somatic Therapy, Dance/Movement Therapy, Earth-Based Healing Bodywork, Somatic Archaeology™ and Ancestral healing/wholing, all woven with her own embodied earth knowing, and deep trust in the deeper unfolding.
Jennie is a Dance/Movement Guide and Group Facilitator. She leads soul-infused dances on the earth, on dance floors and on riverbanks. She guides groups through threshold journeys and is devoted to vital, well-women’s culture and healthy multicultural community. Jennie’s ancestral lineage in dance was blessedly awoken with Melissa Michaels and Golden Bridge in 2007 and she has served on the therapeutic team for Surfing the Creative®, an international movement-based rites of passage program for young people, Shakti Sisterhood and other SomaSource® programs since then. Melissa Michaels with Golden Bridge, Bill Plotkin with Animas Valley Institute and Ruby Gibson with Somatic Archaeology have all deeply informed and inspired her offerings.
At its center, Jennie’s work is steeped in her primal relationships with embodied movement, the natural world and her own soul medicine. She and her beloved husband, Louie, steward the wild sliver of earth called Santuario, a healing, nourishing, welcoming haven, and tend their families and community with abundant love and care. Jennie returns to wild earth places regularly to remember her roots, her own mythopoetic story, and her innate interconnectedness to the web of life. She is a devoted, fun, soulful, loving auntie, grandmother and a wild, embodied tender, soul mother and lover of life.
Jennie’s Story
From the first moment I remember I was called by my deep wonder and my own wild nature out into the red rock canyons, into the Ponderosa Pine Tree forest, and deep into the creeks and rivers. I knew as a little one, my true home was on the earth.
I have always known an enthusiasm, curiosity and full-body awe that has drawn me to explore up the rocky steep trail catching the sunrise from the summit or to wander deeper into the canyon to discover what treasure lies around the next bend or to follow the dry creek bed until I hear the sound of trickling water and a clear deep pool. This way of journeying is a way I have known since I can remember.
I was blessed to grow up in a home that was filled with love, care and an invitation to follow my wild nature. I napped under the Ponderosa Pine Trees in our backyard and played freely among the pine trees, lizards, and sky season after season.
Credentials & Experience
EDUCATION
MA Somatic Counseling Psychology: Dance/Movement Therapy & Body-Centered Psychotherapy (Naropa) 2008
Massage School (Arizona School of Integrative Studies) 1998
BA in French/minor in Chemistry (Northern Arizona University) 2001
Trainings
SomaSource Practitioner (Golden Bridge)
Somatic Archeology (Ruby Gibson)
Year-Long Immersion (Animas Valley Institute)
Structural Integration Training (Nancy Mathews)