Hi, I’m Marney — psychospiritual guide, sacred clown, and fellow traveler in the strange work of becoming more fully ourselves.
My Path
Training & Lineage
My work is shaped by the AWE Ecstatic Mysticism program, a three-year initiatory training in psychedelic integration, ritual, somatic inquiry, and relational ethics. My teachers have included Lila Vega and Mar Alzate, Alejandra Soto, Ramiro Peralta, Kylea Taylor, Ben Malcolm, Charlotte James, Jennifer Jones, Dr. John Price, and others who have deepened my understanding of the responsibilities of this work.
I’ve also had the honor of learning with the Wixárika people and their ceremonial tradition of hikuri (peyote) in Wirikuta, Mexico, and with the Yawanawá people in the Rio Gregório Amazon of Brazil through traditions including ayahuasca, rapé, and kambô. These journeys have taught me that medicine grows from a world of relationship—to people and place, traditions and technologies of prayer, and the sacred—and that healing draws us back toward what gives and sustains life.
Esalen and Gestalt have left a deep imprint on me, particularly the practice of meeting what is actually here and trusting what emerges through contact.
I was born in San Francisco, on the ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone, with family roots primarily in Ireland and Italy. Years of living, studying, and traveling abroad have made pilgrimage a way of life for me: a practice of becoming a guest, loosening certainty, and encountering worlds beyond my own.
My path has been marked by illness, including breast cancer at a young age, and an ongoing inquiry into the genetic, ancestral, and soul-level dimensions of illness. It taught me something I could not have learned from training: how to stay close to mystery when there is no clean answer.
Further influences on my work include Carl Jung, James Hillman, Claudio Naranjo, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Christina and Stan Grof, Joanna Macy, María Sabina, bell hooks, and William Faulkner.
Somatic & Embodied Practice
I work in reverence to the body. I bring over a decade of teaching yoga and a lifelong study of movement through dance, contortion, theater, and circus arts. I am currently studying Esalen Massage, a modality rooted in presence, contact, attunement, and responsive, trauma-aware touch.
Who I Work With
Is this for you?
My work may be especially supportive for people navigating:
- Sexual trauma & embodiment — reclaiming safety, agency, intimacy, pleasure, and a loving relationship with the body
- Gender, queerness & sexuality — exploring their erotic, mystical, and spiritual dimensions
- Psychedelic & spiritual emergence — making meaning of profound experiences, ego dissolution, existential crisis, or disillusionment
- Abuse & coercive environments — rebuilding trust in yourself after abusive relationships, cult-like communities, or religious and spiritual harm
- Illness, grief & mortality — meeting chronic pain, loss, identity rupture, and the loss of an imagined future
- Cross-cultural life & living between worlds — navigating multiple cultures, languages, identities, and senses of home and belonging
- Neurodivergence, caregiving & activism — for those who experience deeply, give deeply, and need space to be held themselves
Underlying this work is a sense of our belonging to a wider web of life and consciousness.
Education & Formation
- AWE Ecstatic Mysticism Program — three-year initiatory training (2024–2027)
- Zendo Project — Psychedelic Peer Support Training
- Esalen Institute — Work Scholar
- Freie Universität Berlin — M.A. in North American History
- Middlebury College — B.A. in American Studies
- Sapienza University of Rome — Cinema Studies (Study Abroad)
- Fulbright Award — Fulbright ETA in Matera, Italy
- Tribe Yoga — 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training
- Yoga Nidra Certification
- Esalen® Massage Certificate — 100-hour training with Nina Ottenheym
Traditions I Draw From
If something in my story resonates with yours, I’d love to hear from you.