Taja Will Artist

TAJA WILL

SOCIALLY ENGAGED ARTIST & HEALING PRACTITIONER

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HEALING JUSTICE CONSULTING

I practice Healing Justice, which is a broadly defined field with several lineages of thought, practice, educational background and values. My personal commitment to Healing Justice is the practice of embodiment through a trauma informed and equity lens. This can take many forms and for me, it’s emergent, improvisational and is essentially tailored to the learning curve, desire and access points for each individual, organization, institution or collective I work with. This work is intersectional, it’s my opinion that we cannot undo systemic oppressions without addressing the intersections of racialized oppression, marginalization, queerness, disability, class/wealth/economic access, settler consciousness and more. I believe we must be devoted to both individual and collective healing.


Taja’s diverse professional background includes study in developmental psychotherapy, Body-Mind Centering, and community organizing. They spent five years as a student, teaching assistant, and guest faculty at the Luminous Awareness Institute. They have recently certified as a Somatic Attachment Therapy practitioner through the Embody Lab, they find attachment styles and healing to be fundamental to all relationships, community, work, family, etc. Taja has received personal mentorship from Carol Swann, Raina Delear, LaDonna Sanders Redmond, Rosy Simas, and Miguel Gutierrez in the areas of art and social justice, and somatics within EDI/Cultural competency and social change.

More information on collective understanding of Healing Justice and the LANDBACK movement

Photo courtesy of Marnita's Table

AREAS OF FOCUS

  • Healing justice, social justice, racial justice, restorative justice, transformational justice – All of which have specific goals, values, histories, and are not interchangeable.
  • Decolonizing systemic thoughts of accomplishment, ownership, wealth, consumerism, capitalism and hierarchical practices.
  • Disability justice – A nuanced and emergent awareness of access and integration of addressing community member’s needs and improved access through a lens of disability and ableism as it pertains to oppression and identity. Care work, and interdependent care webs for greater inclusion of folks with disabilities and chronic illness. 
  • Somatic or embodied healing – The tissues and systems of our bodies are constantly in dialogue with nervous system perception and its past experiences of trauma or belonging (attachment). The nervous system is teachable and responsive, healing is possible; the nervous system resists being disciplined or told to change by force. Healing trauma can be lifelong and extend past this lifetime from your ancestors to you, and you to your children. For more see my Holistic Therapy page.
  • Cultural Competence- practice awareness and advancing on personal goals to narrow gaps of difference between people of different cultures. Culture is personal definition, understanding one’s own culture is the first step to understanding difference and the ability to create boundaries, communicate, ask for needs to be met and adapt with understanding and fluidity.
  • Advocacy – My main area of advocacy is for the QTBIPOC artist. This looks like a commitment to building artist workplace codes of conduct, mission and values contracts, and an expansive workplace human resources practice to allow braver and more equitable artist support.

CONSULTING ROLES

  • Facilitator — An educational track. As a facilitator, I use my privilege of leadership and attention to track offer workshops or intensives with an equity lens. 
  • Pedagogy – rooted in movement, dance, somatic and performance practices. Please see my Teaching page for more information. Organizational support – When an organization needs help evaluating and tracking their organizational culture. This can be internal working models based in care and equity, developing anti-racist practices, exernal facing values and actions, establishing scholarships, support for communities with marginalized identities, creating a code of conduct for the organization, or other proposed goals.
  • Organizational support – When an organization needs help evaluating and tracking their organizational culture. This can be internal working models based in care and equity, developing anti-racist practices, external facing values and actions, establishing scholarships, support for communities with marginalized identities, creating a code of conduct for the organization, or other proposed goals.
  • Individual coaching – You propose your areas of focus and goals in cultural or arts and we work together to strategize, and meet your goals with embodied actions and awareness of intersectional and socio–cultural alignment.
  • Mediation – Conflicts will arise as we learn. I believe conflicts are a potential  opening for greater interpersonal intimacy in relationships, with partners, friends, collectives, within business structures, etc. As a mediator it is my goal to hold space for all involved to process their conflict in a grounded environment with a support person present.
SCHEDULE HERE for virtual and in-person sessions
 

TESTIMONIAL

“I observed Taja as a diversity facilitator at an event I attended. Taja did an exceptional job mediating a tense and difficult situation where people of different group identities were in conflict, in part regarding one person’s experience of marginalization. Taja defused an emotional, volatile, public situation where the community was paralyzed, unable to move forward or address the underlying problems, and helped negotiate a solution.

At the same event, Taja facilitated and taught a rich and thoughtful class on consent and negotiating physical boundaries in dance. Taja set a considerate, warm, and sensitive tone for the class that facilitated the intake of difficult and subtle material.

In sum, I find Taja to be a wise, intelligent, knowledgeable, strong, soft, creative, resourceful, diligent, sensitive, self-aware facilitator, teacher, and colleague.” – Richard Kim, New York City, New York

Each session with Taja has been a powerful journey into discovery, as we feel, map, and explore the sensations and energies of my choices, actions and writing. Taja is deliberate, humble and available on every level. These sessions have allowed me to not only understand, theoretically, what equity could look like, but to “feel” equity, inequity, and all of the subtle energies in between. I am learning to track the sensations of oppressive language outside of the sessions, which is empowering. I am honored to work with Taja and to be on a journey that inspires body intelligence and couples it with academic wisdom.  This partnership of energy, sensation and knowledge is a gift that Taja brings to each moment. – Gabrielli LaChiara, co-founder of Infinity Healing Practice

RATES

Consulting relationships are tailor made, and I offer a sliding scale of rates at all tiers for individuals. I offer economic access rates with a conversation and encourage potential clients to understand their budget, access to global wealth (including but not limited to income) and equity values as we begin a conversation about your goals with this working relationship. 

For Individuals:

$75-$100 : 60 minutes

$90-$115 : 75 minutes

$105-$130 : 90 minutes

*packages available

For Organizations, Non-Profits, Institutions & Universities:

$125 an hour for 1-3 people.

$150 – $250 an hour for non-profits.

$250 – $500 an hour for university/institutions/for-profit organizations.

*Larger group and organizational facilitation fees determined through conversation and planning. Packages are available and encouraged.

PAYMENT POLICY

Payment plans, economic access options available through conversation.

Cash, personal check and electronic payments accepted. Payments ought to be made the day of the session or when scheduled.

No cancellations. Rescheduling policy states that all sessions need to be rescheduled within a week of missed appointment, with a fee of $25 to schedule. This policy is in place to honor and give space to our resistance when working through a process and to hold each other accountable, for the mutual intention for sustainability.

FURTHER UNDERSTANDING OF HEALING JUSTICE & BEING A DECOLONIZER

It is a priority to me to understand how a greater field of organizers, practitioners and healers hold these practices and define them. I specifically prioritize my learning from Queer, Trans, Black and Indigenous leaders in the field. I am co-conspirator with the MN Healing Justice Collective and Dialects of Decolonization facilitated by CEPA.

Healing Justice – Contributions from Cara Page & the Kindred Healing Justice Collective

  • HJ is a community led response to interrupt, transform, and intervene on individual/collective trauma to sustain our emotional/physical/spiritual/psychic/environmental wellbeing.
  • HJ is an emergent process to address trauma, grief, crisis, and violence (both historical & current)
  • HJ is a political strategy and spiritual framework rooted in history/legacies of survival, ancestral traditions and practices.
  • HJ is a cultural strategy and a movement building strategy, engaged through fortified imagination and collective care.

Decolonization – from CEPA’s Decolonizing for Organizers Manual

Decolonization is meaningful and active resistance to phantom forces of colonialism that continue to live in our world today. It requires commitment to unlearning and consciously breaking habits.

#LandBack

The #landback movement is made visible by NDN Collective, it is an indigenous-led movement with many ripples throughout Turtle Island (the land called North America) and beyond. This movement is grounded in the following elements:

  • Investigating what right relationship [with the land] is
  • Returning lands to original peoples
  • Live as simply as possible
  • Reject extractive economy, reject commodification and exploitation of land
  • Physical and material return of that which has been stolen, but also about a return spiritually and mentally
  • Supporting kinship with the earth fulfilling our role as steward of the land