Michelle has facilitated transformative work for almost thirty years.

All of her work, both one-on-one and within groups, centers on removing whatever might be keeping us from getting free, creating pathways for collective change, and balancing the personal and collective work we all must do for our liberation.

Facilitating change within herself and others is one of Michelle’s most beloved practices.

Michelle manifests change in many ways that always include group norms, relational ways of being, allowing enough time for digesting and metabolizing what we are unlearning and new learnings while holding a focus on a desired outcome if one has been identified, through the extension of grace and fierce compassion when necessary, and modeling what it means to be a humble guide and learn alongside others. Michelle often thinks of the various ways she facilitates like tree branches of a strong, solid trunk with deep roots traveling far and wide.

Facilitation & Consulting Services

Everything described here is highly tailored to each client. Michelle collaborates with clients to design transformative offerings based on their needs, goals, and desires, as well as her skills and expertise. 

If you would like to speak with Michelle about any of the branches of her work, please complete her Booking Request process and she will contact you.

  • One branch of Michelle’s work focuses on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Liberation within affinity spaces and across lines of difference.

    Michelle consults with many different types of groups and in various settings. She has facilitated for and consulted with major corporations, mid-sized non-profits, small businesses, and communities across many sectors. Her track record as an anti-racism and anti-oppression trainer is solid, not just based on her work with others to dismantle systems such as white supremacy, the patriarchy, classism, ableism, and the like, but also because as someone who is in an intersectional body with many points of privilege and oppression, Michelle understands what it means to work to mantle liberation.

    This happens through consciousness-raising, paradigm-shifting, systems to address harm and create repair, the exploration of what accountability means, and contemplation of what one’s right role is at this time as we think about both individual and collective liberation, which are inextricably linked.

  • Another branch of Michelle’s work is rooted in the same vein as her anti-oppression work and practice but within spiritual, mindfulness, and spaces for contemplative practice, such as yoga studios and communities, sanghas, The Quaker Friend’s Meeting, and Unitarian Churches, to name a few. This branch of work is based on a book and body of work Michelle created called Skill in Action, but it has evolved, as has Michelle, over my many years of facilitating change within spiritual and mindfulness spaces.

    While all of the branches of Michelle’s work and practice include an element of dismantling and deconstructing what is in the way of us being liberated beings and creating conditions for liberation for humans and the more-than-human world through embodiment within spiritual and mindfulness contexts, there is space to dive deeply into what is happening to our bodies, physically, energetically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually because of colonialism and oppression.

    Michelle brings in the body (ours and the collective body, human and nature) through movement, meditation, silence, attunement practices, art and creativity, and more.

  • The other branch of Michelle’s tree of work is training, mentoring, and coaching people who wish to grow and hone their facilitation skills or initiate Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Liberatory work within the spaces they are a part of and hold.

    As someone who has been facilitating change for almost three decades now, Michelle has a breadth of experience and wisdom about how to hold people and space as it transforms. This branch of work manifests in many ways–through facilitating training focusing on holding affinity space or working across lines of difference, facilitating change within organizations and shifting organizational culture, and facilitating change within spiritual and mindfulness contexts.

  • The final branch of work Michelle shares are keynotes and presentations.

    Michelle has written six books that range from yoga and social justice, grief, and healing through ritual and ceremony to what we can learn from honeybees and collective well-being. She has given hundreds of presentations on these and other topics, and she can design a presentation or offer a keynote based on her skills and experience to suit your interests and needs.