Therapy in Western models often focuses on the individual—on thoughts, behaviors, and personal goals. While that has value, it can also erase the collective, the ancestral, and the spiritual dimensions of healing.
What if therapy could feel like ceremony?

For many, especially those with Indigenous, African, or diasporic roots, healing has always been communal, embodied, and tied to the land. Therapy as ceremony invites us to reimagine the healing space as sacred—not clinical. It asks us to bring our ancestors, our stories, and our full selves into the room.

This approach might include body-based practices, ritual, storytelling, or acknowledging the land we’re on. It honors that healing doesn’t happen just in the mind—it happens in the nervous system, in relationship, in history.

Ceremonial therapy also invites us to listen—to our bodies, to our intuition, and to what’s beyond language. Silence becomes sacred. Grief becomes collective. Rest becomes resistance.
In my practice, I strive to hold space in this way—not as an expert, but as a guide walking with you. Together, we remember that therapy isn’t just about coping. It’s about returning—to ourselves, our ancestors, and the wisdom already living in us.
Because healing is not only a process. It is a practice. It is a prayer. It is a return.

0 Comments

Leave a Comment

Meet Javonna Arriaga

 
Javonna was born on Turtle Island. Her ancestors are from Abya Yala and her lineage is from the Moche and Chiriqui tribes. She is the daughter of Heather Miramontes-Garcia who is the daughter of Oscar Arriaga, Afro-Peruvian and Marcia Bishop, European American. She is the daughter of Gerardo Perez, though she honors her father's Panamanian lineage she does not know her father. She has been most directly raised by her mother Heather and grandfather Oscar. Javonna also spent two years in foster care and honors her foster parents Jen and Brad Newton as part of her family as well. Together this community has contributed to Javonna's journey.
Javonna is CIS-gendered, able-bodied, pansexual, and a relationship anarchist. Javonna's first language is English and she is fluent conversationally in Spanish.

Send Message