Healing Through Deep Listening
Welcome to Moon Somatics. I’m Roya, a Somatic Coach, Diviner, Ritual Healing Practitioner, and Relational Somatic Psychotherapist.
My work is shaped by the understanding that the body is not separate from our stories, relationships, cultures, lineages, or capacity for change.
Through Moon Somatics, I offer somatic coaching, stick divination, ritual support, and relational somatic psychotherapy. Somatic coaching, stick divination, and ritual support are offered virtually, including to clients in California and many other locations. Psychotherapy is available only to clients located in Washington State.
At the heart of my work is a simple but deep belief: healing does not need to be forced. Often, change becomes possible when there is enough safety, support, relationship, and space to listen for what the body already knows.
A relational and body-centered path
I bring over 20 years of study and practice in somatics, movement, embodiment, bodywork, ritual, and healing arts.
I received my Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology with a Somatic Specialization from the California Institute of Integral Studies, a program shaped by Don Hanlon Johnson’s work in somatics and embodied experience. Before becoming a clinician, I practiced therapeutic bodywork in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I studied trauma healing through the body with training in Ortho-Bionomy® and massage therapy. Ortho-Bionomy® deeply informs the way I understand healing. Rather than pushing against pain, forcing correction, or trying to override what has protected us, this work listens for ease, support, and the conditions that allow change to arise from within.
My work is also shaped by my focus on cultural identity development and my lived experience as a biracial, multicultural, first- and second-generation queer cis-woman on Turtle Island. I understand identity as something held not only in the mind, but also in the body, in relationship, in family stories, in ancestral memory, and in the social contexts we move through. This informs my commitment to making space for complexity, belonging, grief, contradiction, and the many layers of intersectional lived experience that shape how we come to know ourselves.
In both my clinical and healing arts work, I listen for what is happening between protection and connection, effort and ease, what has been held and what may be ready to move. Sometimes change happens through insight. Sometimes it happens through sensation, relationship, ritual, creativity, or the quiet space between the notes.
Clinical background and psychotherapy
I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor Associate in Washington State, offering relational somatic psychotherapy through telehealth for clients located in Washington. My clinical work is grounded in trauma-informed, culturally responsive, relational, and developmentally responsive care. I draw from somatic psychotherapy, attachment-based therapy, parts work, psychodynamic therapy, Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy, and the belief that the body carries its own forms of knowing.
I am also currently studying AEDP and Brainspotting, approaches that deepen my attention to attachment, emotional processing, the nervous system, and the body’s innate capacity for healing. As an associate counselor, my psychotherapy work is provided under clinical supervision in accordance with Washington State requirements.
I have worked with individuals, families, youth, and communities across California, Washington, Colorado, and the Washington D.C. area. My work has included school-based therapy, community-based mental health support, and county-level public health programming.
Lineages and healing arts
My healing arts practice is rooted in relationship: with body, land, ancestry, spirit, creativity, and the wider web of life.
My lineages include a moon reverence lineage from my grandmothers in what is now named Lake Balaton in Hungary, and a healing lineage of my ancestors from the Alvand ranges of the Zagros mountains in Iran. In addition to those lineages, I am an initiated Stick and Voice Diviner in the Dagara tradition from Burkina Faso, West Africa.
I am an initiated Stick and Voice Diviner in a Dagara-inspired and lineage-informed practice rooted in traditions from Burkina Faso, West Africa, as shared through lineage-based teachers in the United States that were initiated through Dagara elders. This work came to me through study, apprenticeship, initiation, and relationship with teachers connected to this lineage.
I approach this work with humility, gratitude, and care for the elders, teachers, ancestors, spirits, and communities connected to this tradition. I use the language “Dagara-inspired” and “lineage-informed” as a way to be transparent about my relationship to the practice. My intention is not to claim ownership or authority over a living cultural and spiritual tradition, but to practice with care, consent, reciprocity, and respect.
My ongoing studies include the healing work Shifting Consciousness through Dimensions®, created by the late Lee Cartwright, community herbalism, and relational and experiential clinical counseling frameworks.
I have been taught that healing is never separate from relationship: with ourselves, with one another, with land, water, ancestors, animal companions, creativity, spirit, and the living Earth. These relationships offer embodied support in daily life, helping us remember that we do not heal in isolation.
Why I do this work
I came to this work through my own long relationship with healing, embodiment, ancestry, creativity, and the search for more honest ways of being in the world. Over time, I have come to understand healing not as a solitary process, but as something that happens through connection: with ourselves, with each other, with our ancestors, with land, and with the wider web of life.
Somatic and ritual healing can help us reconnect with parts of ourselves that may have been hidden, silenced, or separated in order to survive. It can also help us remember that we are not meant to carry everything alone. My hope is that this work supports you in feeling more resourced, more connected, and more able to move through life with clarity, reciprocity, and embodied support.
Acknowledgements
I honor the lineages that have shaped and supported me, including a moon reverence lineage from my grandmothers in what is now named Lake Balaton in Hungary, and a healing lineage of my ancestors from the Alvand ranges of the Zagros mountains in Iran. To my ancestral homelands of current-day Iran and Hungary, I hold you with love and prayers for peace.
I deeply honor the Dagara people, whose gift of their traditional spiritual technologies to the Western world has allowed many to restore connection with their own ancestral lineages and approach life through reciprocal relationship with the natural world. I deeply honor the late Lee Cartwright, whose work in Shifting Consciousness through Dimensions® profoundly changed my life and the lives of so many others.
To the unceded territories of Turtle Island, and to the lands that have given me life and tended me over the years, I give my deepest well of gratitude. I am grateful to the teachers, communities, ancestors, animal guides, friends, protectors, and living beings who have supported my path, including those who have given me space to stumble, make mistakes, learn, and grow.
I honor the many lineages and communities with whom I have connected, learned, and experienced so much over the years. To my dearest loves, the Wedeme and Kontomble, who have followed me through this and so many lifetimes, I offer my devotion and gratitude.
Our Team
Roya Candia
Diviner, Somatic Coach, and Relational Somatic Psychotherapist
Portal Dog and Ancestral LiaisonPortal Dog and Online Meeting Representative