About Ava
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About Ava ⋆
Ava is a multidisciplinary artist, therapeutic practitioner, & mission driven entrepreneur born on the unceded territory of the Amah Mutsun people in Santa Cruz, California, with ancestral lines from Ireland and a wee bit from Portugal and Germany.
Prior to establishing Embodied Arts, she co-founded Ceu do Novo Mundo, INC, a church non-profit dedicated to preserving indigenous traditions. For six years, she co-guided ceremonial gatherings with the entheogenic Grandmother medicine, Ayahuasca, while also hosting women’s retreats and online programs focused on womb connection, sexual healing, and vocal liberation.
Ava’s passion for the path of the artist and the lover was born out of her healing journey—one of liberating ancestral shame and repression to feel free and embodied in her naturally passionate and poetic way, and to unearth the feeling and pleasure landscape of her body.
Alongside her healing and creative path, Ava was raised in the world of commercial real estate, working alongside her father in the management and development of a large portfolio of retail and warehouse properties in Santa Cruz County. This familiarity in the world of business has largely shaped her path as an entrepreneur.
education // trainings
2024: 14 month Collective Trauma Facilitator Training with Thomas Hübl
2024: The Voice Keeps the Score & Somatic Regulation Techniques with Linda Thai
2023: Innate Somatic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Training with Manuela Miscke-Reeds
2023: School of the Sacred Wild : 1 year apprenticeship in folk herbalism, earth care and regenerative living
2022-2023: Academy of Inner Sciences 2-year Timeless Wisdom Training: Transformation and individual/ancestral/collective trauma healing
2022: In process: Ubiquity University: PhD in Inner Science
2022: Mexico: Biodynamic Trauma Release Breathwork Facilitator Training
2020: 10 day dieta working with snake saliva and the energy of the serpent
2019: College of Botanical Healing Arts: Essential Oils & Healing
2018: Kundalini Yoga Level 1 Teacher Training with Mehtab Behnton, Ojai, CA
2017: Khalsa Way Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training, Miami, FL
2017: Sofia University: Masters in Transpersonal Psychology; specialization in Creative Expression
2016: Tantra Essence: Yoni & Lingam Massage with Sarita Ma Ananda, Finland
2016: One month Dieta in Brazil with Tata, Paje of the Yawanawa Tribe
2015: Tantra Essence: Soulmate Training Level 1&2 with Sarita Ma Ananda, Greece
2014: Osho Tantra + Meditation Retreat, India
2014: Tantra Vinyasa / A Sacred Journey into the Sacred Feminine Yoga Teacher Training, Bali
2014: Hatha Yoga Teacher Training, Peru
2014: Reiki Level 1 Training, Peru
2010: University of San Diego: Bachelors in Business Administration; Academic Scholar Recipient
Other teachers with whom I have learned from:
Nacho Arimany (voicework)
Rahi Chun (sexual somatic bodywork)
Sarita Ma Ananda (Tantra Essence)
School of Lost Borders (Vision Quest & Earth Based practice)
International School of Temple Arts (L1 & L2)
To all the Ayurvedic practitioners, Vedic astrologers, voice teachers, dance teachers, bodyworkers; to all the friends, animals, plants and flowers who have taught me, and whose teachings continue to unfurl in me - thank you.
more of Ava’s story
It is my experience that having a female body is like being born into a finely tuned and miraculous operating system — and it has been no small journey learning how to live in the one I’ve been given.
For the past 15 years, I’ve devoted myself to the path of liberation and embodied exploration of how to feel, receive, nourish, and express within this body of mine. This devotion has been fueled by my own struggles and the ache of not feeling fully rested at home in myself, or in the world. Issues with my menstrual cycle, with grounding my gifts into expression, with understanding my needs and desires, and establishing healthy dynamics with the primary men in my life have been a few of the drivers on my path of healing.
This has guided me on an incredible journey into a personal remembrance in the realms of the womb and the menstrual cycle, sexuality, voice, Earth/elemental connection, plant & herbal medicines, ritual arts, song & sound, vedic astrology, somatic therapy, trauma healing, and group processes. It is the developmental trauma work that really supported the relational healing I needed to open my path.
I also ended a marriage, sold a dream home & property, left an organization I created, and completely reinvented my life — all in service to soul alignment.
There is something sacred and precious in the slow revealing and maturing of our lives. The sense of rest and softening that can accompany the process of aging is a beautiful gift. “There is no where to get to,” I remind myself often. I now know that the jewel of saying YES to such change processes is the discovery of who we are as walking, singing, dancing hearts, beautifully humbled and opened by life, arriving ever so softly in the perfection of the moment.
