— Kelli Christine Case —
Biography
Facilitator, Teacher, & Writer
Kelli is a somatic healing practitioner, community builder & ritualist, song carrier, and certified permaculture geek (er, designer).
She's a devoted student and practitioner of Non-Violent Communication, Inner Relationship Focusing, and Community Grief Tending. She is committed to contributing to the re-wilding of civilized people, guiding them to reclaim their indigeneity to our flowering earth, their belonging to our shared body of humanity, and their belonging in their own bodies.
She contributes to this vision by offering private healing sessions, online courses, and community rituals. She weaves a 'global village tapestry' with an emerging mycelium-like community made of heart connections formed around dinner tables and hands working in the soil with friends around the world. She is defined by 'Ubuntu': I am because we are.
Training & Lineages
Perhaps the most important qualification is that I’ve cultivated a loving attention for all that’s here within myself, so I can extend a kind and accepting presence for you and your process as well. Here are my teachers and the education that has nurtured this possibility:
Inner Relationship Focusing Professional Certification, 2020-2023
International Focusing Institute
Mentors: Ann Weiser Cornell, & Pat Omidian
Resonant Healing Language, 2023
Teacher: Sarah Peyton, CNVC Trainer
Electric Yes Protocol & Existential Kink, 2022-2023
Teacher: Carolyn Elliot
Living Compassion LIFE Immersion Year, 2021
Teacher: Robert Gonzales, CNVC Trainer
Soulful Life Convivium, 2021
Teachers: Francis Weller & Holly Truhlar
Healing Circles Global, Facilitator Training, 2021
Commonweal, Healing People & Planet
Grief Tending Mentee, Dagara Lineage, 2021
Mentors: Therese Charvet & Laurence Cole, students of Sobonfu Somé
Non-Violent Communication Levels I & II, 2019
Teacher: Kathy Ziola, CNVC Trainer
Maya Mountain Research Farm, 2017
Permaculture Design Certificate
My Story
I am a woman of Irish, English, and Scandinavian descent and reside on the unceded Ute lands in the Great Salt Lake bioregion along the Wasatch Front, here in so-called Salt Lake City, Utah, US. My recent ancestors on both sides (~6 generations back) were Mormon pioneers who trekked across the American plains in the early 1800s.
After getting married in the Mormon temple and proselytizing as a church missionary, I went to college and developed the critical thinking skills necessary to question the indoctrination of my Mormon upbringing. Leaving the church, identity, culture, and community of my familly and ancestry catalyzed massive spiritual exploration and plunged me into the depths of grief.
Ending my 7-year marriage split my soul open and for several years, I dwelt in the liminal realm between worlds, my soul existing on multiple planes of consciousness. I became intimately familiar with the liminal, and found my place there as One Who Can Bear to Stand Between Realms. I discovered Bat Medicine, the creatures who are active at dusk and dawn, who sleep upside down and who see the world through sound frequencies. I learned the ancient Rumi teaching, "The wound is the place where the light enters you."
The whole experience left me groundless, without the guidance of wise elders or community, and with a crisis of personal identity and belonging.
Organic gardening became my first deep medicine. I began to orient around the cycles of the earth, the sun, and the moon. I paid attention to insect life cycles and weather patterns and found deep life lessons in tracking the seed cycle of a cucumber and a sunflower.
For several years, I ran multiple small-scale farms and community vegetable gardens. I began showing up to co-create local community by hosting weekly potlucks and co-founded the Utah Permaculture Collective, a non-profit that's still functioning today.
I set out to find broader community and traveled around the American West and Hawaii island collecting wise elders, spiritual teachings, and weaving community bonds. Through Focusing, I found my footing on solid ground again, bringing my soul squarely back to this earthen realm. While I no longer dwell in the liminal, I am still One Who Can Bear to Stand Between Realms, and this is how I do much of my work with grief tending and my presence as a Focusing guide.
Through Focusing I also developed the aspect of my being that's capable of turning toward and keeping company with all that arises in my experience. We call this Self-in-Presence. Through this quality of presence with my own experience, I've relieved much of my own suffering, I've awakened new possibilities for my life, and I've developed offerings and contributions for others to find their own healing and discover their own creative potential for their lives.