About CAMILLA GRIGGERS
Every body has a story
I was a young professor at Carnegie Mellon University in mid 1990s teaching discursive practices, media and gender studies when I accidentally tripped into a healing crisis. A conventional dentist drilled a mercury amalgam filling I had cracked on a popcorn kernel that another conventional dentist had placed in a molar when I was 12 years old. Little did I know how much my life would change because I didn’t know how to choose a dentist (even though I had a doctoral degree)! The drilling sprayed toxic mercury vapor and particulate into my face and lungs, and suddenly, I was falling down the rabbit hole in a downward spiral into ill health. Luckily, gut intuition and neuroplasticity kicked in. Suddenly, I decided to train in neuromuscular bodywork at the Pittsburgh School of Massage Therapy and later in the Rubenfeld Synergy Method® of touch-talk therapy in Toronto. Boy was that a game changer as my training in somatics began to match my skills in semantics. Hungry for more knowledge about somatic therapies, detox practices and holistic health to heal myself, in 2002 I moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles to start a new life that felt more integrated.
I joined the English faculty at California State University at Channel Islands in Camarillo to teach critical thinking, linguistics and writing, while establishing a private practice in somatic therapy and education in Santa Monica. During this time I found holistic dentists and integrative doctors to help me remove the toxic mercury from my mouthbody and recover my health. For four years, I also taught part-time at the Institute for Psycho Structural Balancing in Los Angeles (now the School for Integrative Psycho Structural Bodywork). At this time in my professional life, on some days I would find myself driving north up the Pacific Coast Highway to talk to the minds of university students, and on other days find myself driving south to touch the bodies of massage therapy students. One day I realized I was literally driving up and down and back and forth across the mind/body divide! After four years of commuting, I finally got it! Integrating somatic therapies for the body with semantic practices in psycholinguistics became my life’s mission.
Publications
You can read my articles on topics of bodymind integration in culture, education, therapy and bodywork in Semiotica, Somatics, Postmodern Culture, and The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology. I am the author of the books Fast Therapy, Mouthbody Care (coming soon!) and Becoming-Woman, creator of the digital artwork Alienations of the Mother Tongue, and co-director of the documentary film Memories of a Forgotten War.
Education
As a doctoral student, I learned critical thinking under the direction of Dr. Gregory Ulmer at the University of Florida, founder of the Electronic Literacy Project, who primed my ability to think in radically interdisciplinary ways about the impact of postmodern culture on our bodies and minds. Later, I learned empathetic listening touch with my mentor, Ilana Rubenfeld, known as an innovative trailblazer in the fields of somatic education and body psychotherapy. Together Ilana and I coauthored articles on bodymind integration methods for Somatics Journal and The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology. You can learn more about the Rubenfeld Synergy Method® at The Ilana Rubenfeld Foundation.
Later, I went on to train with Doug Morrison, author of How We Heal, in Body Electronics and in Vedic meditation instruction and Ayurveda with Dr. Deepak Chopra at the Chopra Center in Carlsbad. Today, I bring my decades of education in both semantics and somatics to the table in my private therapy practice, helping clients integrate mind, body and emotions into one expression of higher purpose, happiness and harmony in their lives.