About Camilla
I was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University before I tripped into a healing crisis that sent me on a journey to holistic health education. An uninformed dentist drilled a mercury amalgam filling in my tooth, spraying toxic mercury vapor and particulate into my face and lungs. In an adaptive response to an ensuing downward spiral, I intuitively trained first in holistic bodywork and then in the Rubenfeld Synergy Method® of somatic-emotional therapy and education.
Eventually, I moved to Los Angeles hungry for more knowledge about holistic approaches to health with my chronic pain, memory loss, twitching eye and scar tissue from surgery for an ovarian tumor. I joined the English faculty at California State University, Channel Islands to teach critical thinking, linguistics and writing, and eventually retired from teaching to commit myself to a holistic wellness practice. At one point in my journey, I would drive off in one direction to talk to the minds of students at the university, and then drive off in the other direction to touch the bodies of massage therapy students at the Institute for Psycho Structural Balancing. After four years of driving back and forth across the mind/body divide, I got it. What a waste of precious time! We all need somatic and semantic education with integrated touch and talk for healthy neurological, emotional and social development. For me, it’s a form of holistic language literacy.
Every body has a story
Healing our postmodern condition
The mistaken thinking that came down to us from our Enlightenment legacy that our minds are separate from our bodies and emotions—known as Descartes’ error by contemporary theorists of the brainbody connection—is a root cause of our postmodern condition today. Our future wellbeing depends on how fast we can leave this old paradigm behind and embrace a new one that is truly holistic.
Today we know our heart has its own neurology and neuroception and sends more messages via the Vagus nerve to our brain than vice-versa. Same for our gut. Our sensory body is continuously cross talking with our brain, creating the feeling of our conscious embodiment from one moment to the next. To this synergy, we add our environment into the mix—a critical adjustment in the age of environmental toxicity that we humans created because we mistakenly thought we were separate from our environment too.
Early in my career as a doctoral student, I learned critical thinking under the direction of Dr. Gregory Ulmer at the University of Florida, founder of the Electronic Literacy Project, who primed my ability to think in radically interdisciplinary ways about the impact of postmodern culture on our bodies and minds. This critical perspective is reflected in my articles “Lesbian Bodies in the Age of Post-Mechanical Reproduction” and “The Writing on the Screen: A Meditation on the Virginia Tech Shooting Spree” on age-appropriate use of first-person shooter computer games.
Later, I learned empathetic listening touch with my mentor, Ilana Rubenfeld, known as an innovative trailblazer in the fields of somatic education and body psychotherapy. Together we coauthored articles on bodymind integration methods for Somatics Journal and The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology. You can learn more about the Rubenfeld Synergy Method® at The Ilana Rubenfeld Foundation. I also studied Vedic meditation instruction with Dr. Deepak Chopra, who also introduced me to Ayurvedic nutrition and herbology. Today I apply my broad knowledge base to helping clients find balance and resilience, and to educating the public about preventive self-care practices easily within reach that reduce the risk of chronic mindbody illness and distress.
You can read my articles on topics of emotional mindbody integration in culture, education, therapy and bodywork in Semiotica, Somatics, Postmodern Culture, and The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology. I am the author of the books Fast Therapy and Becoming-Woman, creator of the digital art video Alienations of the Mother Tongue, and co-director of the film Memories of a Forgotten War.