Jennifer Jones & Alison Gerig 

Philadelphia, United States

Abstract
Very few countries throughout the globe have escaped the impacts of imperialism, colonization, genocides, and slave trades. These historical and current experiences of supremacy, dominance and oppression create in many people legacies of dehumanization and disconnection. These internalized, often out-of-awareness fixed gestalts of race, class, and ethnicity guide how we engage with one another and block contact and intimacy. The first step in having the freedom to choose how to loosen the hold of these fixed gestalts is to bring them into embodied awareness. Attendees are invited to witness and engage with the disruptions of contact that two queer Gestalt therapists have navigated in building intimacy and connection at the intersectional contact boundaries of race and class in the United States. Alison and Jennifer, who have been friends and colleagues for over two decades, will share their challenges and learnings in examining their intimacy and contact through racialized and classed lenses. They will model this experiment by using an embodied awareness approach. Attendees will then have an opportunity to explore their own challenges with creating intimacy at these intersectional boundaries of race, class, and ethnicity and will be invited to experiment bringing into awareness their own somatic experiences.

Presenter Bio

Jennifer C. Jones, PhD, LCSW, is a 54 y.o., multiracial Black, queer, fairly able-bodied, cisgender woman with U.S. citizenship. Jennifer incorporates an economics human rights perspective, a harm reduction framework, and Gestalt Therapy principles in her work and engagement with others. She co-founded Rising Caps Collective with Aisha Mohammed, LMFT, supporting expansive healing to address traumatic legacies of colonization, slavery and capitalism. Jennifer works with Lykos Therapeutics (formerly, Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies Public Benefit Corporation) as a Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (JEDI) consultant and a MDMA-assisted Therapy educator. Since 2003, Jennifer has practiced trauma-informed psychotherapy and clinical supervision with individuals and therapists working with people identifying as: lgbqa; transgender or gender non-binary; people of color; sex workers; neurodiverse, substance users; experiencing class oppression; formerly incarcerated and/or having a positive HIV status. Previously, she served as the Chief DEI Officer of Philadelphia FIGHT Community Health Centers and as a member of the faculty and leadership of the Gestalt Training Institute of Philadelphia (GTIP). As a parent who believes a just world is possible, Jennifer is committed to the unity of the global poor and dispossessed organizing across color lines to fight for everyone’s economic human rights.

Alison Gerig has been a Gestalt therapist since 2009 when she attended the Gestalt Training Institute of Philadelphia (GTIP). She holds a commitment to disrupting the ways in which we uphold White supremacy within the psychotherapy field. She strives to bring a liberatory lens to her clinical work that focuses on undoing fixed gestalts stemming from the relational and dominant cultural fields that then manifest into depression, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, self-critique, illness, and disconnection from being fully present in the here and now. Using the therapeutic relationship as a healing anchor, Alison offers gestalt theory, embodiment/somatic, and parts work opportunities to undo these introjects and begin to create new meanings and choices about being members of our cultures, communities, families, and relationship to ourselves. Alison currently lives and works on the stolen land of the Lenni Lenape people (Philadelphia, PA). She is white, queer, able-bodied, spiritual, comes from generational wealth in the southern United States, and is raising a spriteful teenager. She loves to bake, play the piano, and find joy with her loved ones.

Homepage

type (workshop/ popup/ process)

Workshop/experiential

language

English – We welcome any translators who are willing to translate

Zoom ID A:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85675525658?pwd=bR4CSv9gJDR6L2abHKXOs3zRArqnwX.1

ID de reunión: 856 7552 5658
Código de acceso: Open24

In case you have an error with the first zoom meeting, use Zoom ID B:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88528851454?pwd=pxhvCpdR4dCZcHoX6YFEHZ6kjesdnG.1

ID de reunión: 885 2885 1454
Código de acceso: Open2024