About Me
Hi, I’m Melissa Anran Fan.
I’m a healing arts practitioner, somatic coach and bodyworker, community organizer, mama to 2 kids, and human in process living in service to collective liberation.
Training & Experience
I have a MA in Counseling Psychology with a concentration in Expressive Arts Therapy from CIIS and have additional training in somatic therapy, eco therapy, and hypnotherapy. I have worked as a trauma therapist for BIPOC youth in Oakland, a relationship coach for co-housing cooperatives, facilitated visioning retreats for grassroots orgs, and held a variety of educational and healing spaces in partnership with organizations such as the Asian American Justice and Innovation Lab, the Feminist Center for Creative Work, the Center for Political Education, and Bay Resistance. I am trained in somatic bodywork through the Strozzi Institute and receive direct mentorship from politicized somatics lineage teachers.
Somatic coaching and bodywork are my current offerings toward a more loving, open, and just world. After having trained in and offered many different modalities of healing over the years, I have found somatics to be the most effective path for creating lasting change.
What Guides My Work
I ground my work in principles of social justice, decolonization, and abolition, understanding that we are simultaneously shaped by both the dominant structures of oppression and by cultures of resistance. Reverence for earth and spirit and a good dose of humility serve as pillars in my practice.
Lineage, Lived Experience, & Social Location
I know that lived experience, lineage, and social location shape our sense of attunement, reflection, and safety. I am a queer femme, a neurospicy survivor of trauma, a daughter of a Chinese immigrant single mom, and a mama to twins born in the early days of the pandemic. My children are my greatest teachers and parenting is my place of deepest spiritual practice. I am an artist at heart, I love the public library, I have a weakness for fine tea (thank you ancestors), and I believe children are our comrades.