About Jordana Ma

I am dedicated to supporting individuals and communities to reveal their authentic inner nature, and thereby experience their inherent interconnectedness with all beings. As a matter of fact, I see each person’s healing journey as part of the collective journey towards a life-affirming, regenerative human society on this planet.

My approach is primarily based in a branch of transpersonal psychotherapy called eco-psychology, which sees and treats the individual as an open system nested within larger social, ecological, and existential contexts. Eco-psychology is really a frame of understanding the psyche. However, in practice, eco-psychology incorporates herbs, rituals, rites of passage, and indigenous ways of knowing as healing modalities. I further utilize tools from Hakomi somatic (body-oriented) psychotherapy, Sensorimotor psychotherapy, Psychosynthesis and IFS, Jungian dreamwork, interpersonal neurobiology, and many years of studies in Peruvian Shamanism, Prajna Yoga, and spiritual inquiry in my sessions.

My formal education includes undergraduate work at Northwestern University in Chicago and graduate work in Eastern, Western, and Indigenous Psychologies at California Institute of Integral Studies with a focus on eco-psychology and the psychotherapeutic potentials of plant medicines. Additional training has included Hakomi mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy and related trauma trainings.

Nonetheless, my early life spent in sprawling forests, farmland, and horse stables instilled in me a deep love for listening to Nature’s intelligence. This connection has guided my path over the years through intuitions, visions, dreams, and quiet voices overheard in the woods. For nearly 15 years, I have had the privilege to study traditional healing modalities and spiritual healing with indigenous elders of the Amazon. I wrote about these experiences as part of my graduate studies and presently continue to take groups to visit these elders and their communities.

Before focusing on counseling work, I helped to create conscious and resilient community cultures at a center I co-founded called The Happiness Institute and in two homes for intentional co-living, Agape, and its rural relative, Agapolis. For the joy of it, I love running around Mount Tamalpais, practicing yoga very slowly, reading ecstatic poetry out loud, and sitting quietly in the woods.

It is my greatest joy and privilege to work with clients in their growth and healing. I am humbled and awakened to be a part of the incredible journeys of those I work with.

You can read details about how I practice here.

Education + Training

I have been so blessed with wise, patient, and available teachers. My training includes:

In-depth study of Traditional Amazonian Medicine with my primary Ashaninka teacher, 2014 - present
In-depth study with Shipibo and mestizo healers, 2012 - 2014
Master's Degree in East-West Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies, graduated 2016
Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy and Trauma Training graduate and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy level 1, graduated 2020
Shamanic tools and practice with Erica Sandstedt, 2010 - 2013
Prajna Yoga teacher training Tias and Surya Little and Ashtanga yoga with Tim Miller 2008 - present
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 2004-2008

Further, my work has been greatly influenced by studies in the Ridhwan Diamond Approach and Zen Buddhism.

My gratitude for these guides and teachers is infinite and I bow to them for sharing what they’ve learned with me.

Principles

Assumptions behind my life and work:

We are dreaming into being a world that is socially just, ecologically regenerative, and spiritually connected.

I believe that the inner state we cultivate is the ground for the world that we create.

Gaian Consciousness. We feel that we are all part of a living and self-organizing system that we call Gaia, and that the intelligence of this system moves through the consciousness of each individual.

Interbeing. We see that we are all connected processes in motion. There are no solitary cells. We are all part of one dance of interbeing and every action impacts the whole system.

Ayni or Balanced Exchange. Harmony in the system relies on balanced exchange, or ayni. Rather than engage in consumerism, we seek to turn an attuned ear to listening to feedback in all directions and to open channels of giving and receiving.

Integrity. The health of the system relies on being true to its own form. We seek to build integrity into the structures of our inner and outer worlds. It starts with truth in our actions, speech, and how we show up.

Humility to Life. Life itself is the great teacher. In every moment, we invite humility of personal attachments and stories to let this teacher show us what is our true nature.

Friendship. At the core of our web of relations is friendship, the balance of intimacy and interdepedency in which we learn through others about who we are.

Ceremony. We create containers for connecting with spiritual guidance and we feel that Life is a ceremony.

x

Other Simple Axioms I work by:

Play

Play leads to openness which leads to new discoveries, new learning, new choices, and transformation

Devotion

When we work together, we are on a team making an extraordinary journey of asking real questions, facing hard truths, and embracing the richness of being alive.

Full Responsibility

No Rx’s, No Rules. Our journey is not following a prescribed set of steps but taps on your own inner wisdom and intelligence to set a course unique to you.

Trust

The psyche, like nature, is a self-organizing system. We are naturally driven to learn, evolve, discover, and grow to higher levels when we remove fear and limiting beliefs and connect with our own vital energy.

Dynamic Balance

The zone of creative genius is always moving, between will and allowance, spontaneity and control, structure and flow. Its balance is always in movement. We must learn to feel the center zone within us.

Results Reflect Commitments

Results reveal commitments, conscious and unconscious. Want to see what you’re committed to? Look at your life. Want to expand your life? Let’s expand your commitments, and let some go altogether to enter the space of full presence.

Infinite Creativity

All situations are navigable in life, sometimes we must think outside the box.

Empathic Joy

When you succeed, I succeed. When someone across the world awakens, I awaken.

Community

We grow in the context of community, we fuel eat other and learn from each other. We don’t do this in isolation.

Integration

Earth-based indigenous traditions see body-mind-spirit-community-environment as one interconnected system. Health and vibrancy require harmony among our whole being on ever level.

Circulation

By removing blockages and rigidities within a safe container, the system will stabilize at higher levels of organization.

Flow

Connection to source and discovery of soul exist in creative flow.

“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.”