Staci Haines (she/her)

Oakland, CA

Staci has been experimenting at the intersections of personal and social transformation for the last 30 years through the work of somatics, trauma healing, embodied leadership, and transformative justice. Staci is the author of “The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice” (North Atlantic Books 2019) and “Healing Sex: A Mind Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma” (Cleis 1999, 2007), which has been translated into German, Japanese and Spanish. Staci is a leader in the field of Somatics focusing on how it can bring transformative capacity to social and climate justice movements, and help to heal the impacts of trauma and oppression.  She runs programs and teacher training, and partners with social change organizations.  She is the co-founder, and prior executive director, of generative somatics, a multiracial social justice capacity building organization. She is a senior teacher at Strozzi Institute and a core contributor to that methodology. In 1999 Staci founded generationFIVE, a non-profit whose mission is to end the sexual abuse of children within five generations, using transformative justice approaches.

“There’s a somatics to contend with what is in trying to create liberation. And then there’s the somatics serving who we’re trying to become….to me, somatics helps us to heal the impact of oppressive conditions…the prefigurative part is how do we practice our way into what we already longed for.”