Kai Cheng Thom, MSW, MSc, Qualified Mediator, Certified Professional Jungian Life Coach, and Certified Somatic Sex Educator, is a coach, process facilitator, and mediator whose work focuses on the intersections of trauma healing, Transformative Justice, and social change. A noted theorist and practitioner in the field of conflict resolution, Kai Cheng has made significant contributions towards the integration and application of conflict transformation, crisis intervention, and body-based trauma healing methods in an activist context through her writing and teaching. Kai Cheng maintains a private practice as a one-on-one somatic coach, consultant, and group facilitator, drawing from extensive professional trainings in a wide variety of healing and wellness disciplines, including politicized somatics through the Strozzi and Generative Somatics lineages, depth psychology, Processwork, somatic sex education, clinical hypnotherapy, yoga nidra, and Thai massage. She has trained hundreds of embodiment and wellness professionals as Adjunct Faculty with the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education and is a Senior Teacher at The Embody Lab.

Meet Our Guests for the Program

Kai Cheng Thom, MSW, MSc, Qualified Mediator, Certified Professional Jungian Life Coach, and Certified Somatic Sex Educator

Akilah Richards, exploring Grief & It's Expression in Relationship

Akilah S. Richards is a grief literacy educator, Certified Integrative Thanatologist, and Savor coach who supports people through the often-overlooked losses of life—not just death, but shifts in identity, role, and relationship. Her work helps people slow down, honor what’s ending, and listen for what still wants to live.

For over a decade, Akilah was a leading voice in the global unschooling movement, helping families reclaim autonomy, question hierarchy, and build consent-based relationships. That legacy of liberation now lives through her grief and joy work, where she invites us to trade performance for presence and urgency for rhythm.

She is the creator of What I Let Die, a public service podcast on grief literacy, and co-creator of Bringing Flowers, a collaborative offering with Thea Monyeé that explores the sacred interplay between grief and joy. Through coaching, courses, and creative community spaces, Akilah helps us practice being with what hurts without rushing to fix it.

Whether facilitating grief circles or crafting language for the unnameable, Akilah’s work reminds us that grief is a teacher—not a threat—and that we are allowed to grieve out loud, in rhythm, and in community.

Jane Clapp, Jungian Analyst

Jane Clapp trained as a Jungian Analyst with the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts and dedicated many years to exploring the sacred relationship between body, psyche and soul. Her work brings together the wisdom of depth psychology and the intelligence of the body. She is a somatic expert, speaker, writer and educator and has extensive knowledge of the spiritual and 

Jane has completed advanced training in other related fields, which includes Sensorimotor psychotherapy, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Yoga, Reiki, various authentic movement practices, and coaching. Her website www.janeclapp.com offers more information. Jane is the creator of Jungian Somatics™, a body of work that integrates movement, sensation, and the unconscious to cultivate a deep, lived experience of aliveness and meaning. Jane has consulted and lectured at many Jungian Societies throughout North America and beyond, sharing the soul-centred foundations of Jungian Somatics™ and the healing power of symbolic, embodied experience. Jane believes that the longing for wholeness is universal, and the soul’s language is embodied, symbolic, and alive. It can guide us home.

Maureen Gallagher, SEP & Psychoanalyst

Dr. Maureen Gallagher is a Licensed Psychologist (NY, NJ), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Faculty Member, Inner Relationship Focusing Trainer, Emotionally Focused Therapist and Supervisor and a Relational Psychoanalyst. Her work and teaching are dedicated to the embodiment of psychotherapy and related healing disciplines, in which she integrates somatic awareness and the use of somatic intervention along with adult attachment work and a relational focus. She brings a broad range of experience and training to this endeavor, including Certifications in Somatic Experiencing, Inner Relationship Focusing, Relational Psychoanalysis, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Integral Somatic Psychology, SE Touch skills training and Biodynamic Cranial Sacral Therapy. Her clinical work integrates focusing, somatic experiencing, relational psychoanalysis and experiential and process oriented models of attachment theory. She has maintained a private practice for over 20 years. She is the founder of Embodying Psychotherapy.