Hi, I’m Eli Bernstein. I’ve been practicing massage and bodywork off and on since 1995, when I was initiated by my father to this path of transformative bodywork, studying at his massage school in Santa Cruz, California. Bodywork was very much a part of my upbringing and I have the distinct sense of being one of a long lineage of healers. I feel so much gratitude for the guides and allies, seen and unseen, that have accompanied me on this journey.
My bodywork feels directly connected to the current health crisis of humankind and biodiversity on planet earth. All through my 20’s and 30’s I studied and worked in sustainable agriculture, restoration ecology and conservation biology, while doing bodywork on the side. My eyes and heart were opened. I believe it was Aldo Leopold who said “one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds”. Somehow, I instinctively always knew that it was the same impulse towards healing that moved me towards bodywork and conservation. Our little bodies are really just part of this much larger body. My life’s mission is to help reveal the deep and real connection between our own personal healing, the healing among people and the healing of the planet.
I love the Huston Smith description of “a realized being” as simply a person with “an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything.” Becoming more embodied leads to this sense of astonishment because we realize we are a community unto ourselves. And I don’t just mean all the thoughts, emotions, sensations and insights that seem to blow through us just like the weather. Did you know that fewer than half of the cells in your body have human DNA?
Witnessing this plurality of self can lead us to feeling more connected to all other beings…to life…because we feel how much we are made up of the physical and energetic flow around us. But by becoming more familiar with our own bodies we also feel more human, more ourselves. Either way, as we are more embodied, we are less lonely. We feel more connected.
Give yourself the opportunity to connect. To metamorphose. To experience transformative bodywork.
I look forward to taking part in your healing journey!