Meet Lisa Marks from Sentient Body

Lisa Marks Lucia McKelvey

Lisa Marks

Lisa Marks MA LMHC is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and a Process Work Associate in practice since 1986. She divides her time between the Puget Sound on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula and Lake Huron in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She has been exploring the sentient physical body and its relationship to the Earth and our underlying wholeness in her studies that include Authentic Movement, Process Oriented Psychology, Ecopsychology, and different spiritual and movement practices. She currently studies at the Process Work Institute of Portland. www.processwork.org

Lisa has provided mental health counseling, program consultation and development services on the Olympic Peninsula since 1987. At this time her focus is on developing and teaching workshops to reconnect us with the “sentient body”. She is sharing this work in Washington, Oregon and Michigan. Check the schedule for current workshops.

My deep passion is exploring the Sentient Body or the sensing proprioceptive experience of our physical bodies.
I have found that inhabiting our bodies deeply and with profound awareness, through sensation and breath, allows for connection and relationship with the underlying essence level from which this world arises.

Because our culture has traditionally been afraid of the body and its connection with the Earth, we are not trained in the skills to understand and navigate this connection.

I hope to share skills for connecting with these deep levels of being through our physical experience; in our bodies, and in the world that surrounds us.

I began to study Dr. Arnold Mindell’s work and Process Oriented Psychology in 1987, and found that it articulates all of the components that have revealed themselves to me in the movement studio and in my work as a mental health therapist. He and his wife, Dr. Amy Mindell, explore these deep realms and bring back cutting edge ideas that are put into practice in their work. You can find out more by going to www.aamindell.net They have been inspirations and support for developing this sentient body work and taking it to the world. Without them and Lucia McKelvey, this would continue to be a solo practice. To explore the realms of sentient awareness before the Mindell’s work included the essence or dreaming level, I turned to Authentic Movement, studying and practicing with a community of women who helped me to understand Earth Dreaming.

I met Mayla Patricia Riley in the early 1980’s. Together we explored the unconscious or unknown, and followed the lines of intent beyond the realms of imagining. Without her, this work may never have arisen out of the underlying matrix of probability. I am grateful to have been connected with such an amazing being.