Hey, thanks for being here.
I have been a student of the body, the elements, and natural-intelligences for over a decade. Though in reality, I’ve been who I am my whole life.
I have committed to falling apart again and again, pealing away the layers of separation in order to rebirth, rebuild and re-store a more deep, authentic and honest version of myself. I have learned that healing our relationship with our body heals our relationship with earth’s body. From this lens, we begin to take more responsibility of our own healing and the effects of our energy. We begin to see that through the alignment (or dis-alignment) of our head, heart and sex, we create our reality. We begin to reveal the blocks, limiting beliefs, stigmas, stories and taboos stored in the body that have us living disconnected, contracted and avoidant when it comes to intimacy.
Through the ecology of the body, sexuality and emotional honesty, whether put into practice with individuals, couples or large groups, this work opens new realms of vulnerability, desires, and a capacity to express what’s been suppressed and free ourselves from our internal battles. In turn, we become liberated adults, better lovers and leaders, courageously creating our dreams with an open heart and bringing in the necessary change in an emerging uncertain world.
The dance brought me to deeper places of intimacy, eros and connection to my body, our collective body and the Earths body. I became a graduate from the Tantric Institute of Integrated Sexuality, the Institute of Embodied Wisdom and hold a Masters in Ecopsychology from Naropa University. I continue to study in many realms bridging somatics, ecology and relationally, co-facilitating for Sapience, wilderness immersions and shamanic containers.
Bio:
I am an ecopsychologist, relational guide, and artist exploring the intersection of erotic ecology, embodiment, and relational intelligence as pathways for healing, sense-making, and cultural transformation.
I curate private immersions for individuals, couples, and leaders seeking a more embodied way of living amid the complexity of our times. My approach bridges emotional intelligence, relational attunement, nervous system awareness, ecology, and human development, supporting people to move from performance and survival toward deeper coherence, connection, and meaning. Through somatic practices, immersive dialogue, movement, ritual, and relational fieldwork, I help people restore trust in their bodies, deepen intimacy, and cultivate lives rooted in integrity, vitality, and belonging.
For over a decade, I have worked with communities internationally through spaces including Esalen, Summit Series, MAPS, Sapience, and North Star. Before this chapter of my work, I spent years as a professional dancer, performer and teacher, an experience that deeply shaped my understanding of the body as both a vessel for transformation and a language of relational intelligence. I have performed at massive festivals and stages including Lincoln Center, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and Black Rock City, where movement became one of the foundations of my philosophy and practice.
My studies include a master’s degree in Ecopsychology from Naropa University, Jungian Somatics and Movement for Trauma with Jane Clapp, Death Doula training with Deathwives, the Tantric Institute of Integrated Sexuality, the Institute of Embodied Wisdom, and MITT. I am also a student of wilderness-based rites of passage, earth-based ritual practices, and the shamanic arts, training within Quechua traditions in Peru, Manitos traditions in New Mexico, and Nahuatl traditions in Mexico through the Moon Dance path.
A fifth-generation Ashkenazi New Yorker, I now live on my family’s land, where my relationship with ecology, ancestry, ritual, and intergenerational belonging continues to deepen. My current work centers around immersive mentorship and transformational experiences that support people in cultivating more embodied, sane, and life-aligned ways of living.
Credentials
➝ Founder of Meta Method
➝ Chief Erotic Officer at Wild Vessel
➝ Jungian Somatics-Movement for Trauma with Jane Clapp
➝ Death Doula, with Death Wives
➝ The Institute of Embodied Wisdom with Scott Coady
➝ The Tantric Institute of Integrated Sexuality
➝ Mastery in Transformational Training (LP 153)
➝ Avalon & Prisma in Psycho-Dharma group work
➝ YT200
➝ Esalen Institute Faculty & Work Study
➝ BA in Dance at Hunter College
➝ Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory & Repertory, NYC
“Elana challenges your authentic self to engage in the present moment. This process provides real time observations and feedback for seeing things as they actually are.”
META Method is a nature-centered philosophy and practice that returns you to your body’s wisdom and souls essence. Ultimately for you to feel liberated and living connected in a body you trust. It integrates meditation, movement and writing techniques in connection with the natural elements; fire, water, earth, air and META; META being the integration and embodiment of them all living within you. META is an ethos and state of being. By developing the practices, tools and skills represented within each element, its natural design is to awaken ones connection to life and its cycles, a greater aliveness and awareness with ones body, and a deeper capacity to meet uncertainty amongst a collective. It bridges the path from the individual-self to the communal-self.
What is
META Method?
I created the Meta Method in 2012, after a Vipassana (10 day silent meditation retreat) where I felt the sensational aliveness of all the elements come alive inside me. I shifted my professional dance career in NYC from form to formless, from being told how to dance, to letting the dance dance me.
Over time I not only conceptually knew we are the elements, I began to live it as an embodied consciousness that informs how we innovate, lead, learn and collaborate as we step into the unknown future.
Services
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I support individuals and couples using a composition of somatic ecology (body), erotic intelligence (nature), and emotional honesty (soul), to draw forth relational depth, connection and new embodied potential that liberates the mind and body.
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I teach META Method at conferences, retreats, immersions and as online courses. It is a nature inspired movement practice for grounding and integration. It unites the mind and body and connects ones internal ecology to the natural world.
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I speak on Erotic Ecology, healing the perceived separation between ourselves and nature through redefining the Erotic outside of a sexual context and into an ecological one. This restores our humanness, and invites us to question the world that continues to be created from leaving our body and soul’s wisdom behind.
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Wild Despair is a cathartic dance performance that channels the emotional turbulence of our climate crisis into a powerful call for collective action and planetary healing.