Creative pathways to personal & planetary healing.
About Maren
As a kid, I found my bliss through dancing, drawing, collecting stones or shells, singing, playing the drums, pausing to smell the flowers and floating in the ocean.
The intertwining of the arts and the experiential landscapes of my environment became a pathway, a lifestyle, a Life / Art process of understanding myself and the person I am continually becoming.
I’ve come to call the nature of my work ecosomatic expressive arts, creatively engaging with inquiries about inner ecosystems and outer landscapes, the creative process, our interconnectedness and planetary healing.
My life / art process dynamically evolved through years of studying dance, vocal music, percussion, art, and theatre at Emerson College and at the master’s level at the University of Hawaii–Manoa. During this time, I discovered the work of postmodern dance pioneer, Anna Halprin and her husband, environmental landscape designer, Lawrence Halprin. I fell in love with the Life/Art Process® and its intermodal approach to working with life experiences as a source for creative expression.
The Halprin Life/Art Process® inspired my professional career, spanning over 25 years in arts education and leadership, with an emphasis on the creative process, community culture and co-creation of new programming and design in PreK-12 schools, museums, and non-profit organizations.
Offering, teaching and guiding others through the Life/Art Process® has been a decades-long dream in motion. Since 1995 I’ve wanted to deepen my relationship with the work and step into embodied leadership. In aligned timing, I graduated from Tamalpa Institute’s teacher training program and now offer this holistic and intermodal approach to creativity and healing through my private practice in somatic expressive arts education and therapy.
I’m dedicated to embodying a heart-centered and creative approach that sparks connection and cultivates positive growth and change. I’ve always valued the unique experiences and creative contributions of each individual within the growth of a whole community culture. We each make such a difference and contribution! I can thank a lifetime of lessons in Theatre, and the Arts in general, for this.
I am proud to be a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist with ISMETA - the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. This feels like an authentic evolution in my professional career.
I am a Mystic, too. From starting my crystal collection in middle school to working part-time jobs at bookstores and spiritual shops…Does anyone remember the old Honolulu Ward Warehouse’s East of the Sun, West of the Moon? I’m a perpetual student of life and I like to get friendly with the unseen and unknown.
A few years ago, I transitioned out of educational leadership and teaching to embrace the wheel of change and prioritize well-BEing. I got friendly with discomfort and tapped into forgotten resources. I began to alchemize my childhood loves of geology and wonderment of the stars with practical astrology and experiential earth magic. I became a certified Crystal Practitioner and Moonologer™, embracing a more conscious lifestyle attuned with the cosmos. I continued to care more about how I felt moment to moment and noticed micro-shifts becoming massive transformation.
I chose self-love and care. I was opened to fresh meanings of ALOHA through one of my dear teachers. ALOHA is self-reflective love. ALOHA is the highest possible vibration. ALOHA is face to face. Face to face with NATURE, EACH OTHER and OURSELVES…without looking away.
And so, I founded this small business, Mystic Aloha, to come face to face with myself, with you and our shared planet. It is an honor to offer my heart, passions, and unique gifts to you. After working with literally thousands of children and adults through arts education over the years, I feel as if I’m just beginning. What a time to be alive and aligned!
It is my pleasure to offer you compassionate, creative, intermodal approaches to working with life’s tides with more ease through ecosomatics, expressive arts, & cosmic arts. I welcome clients and collaborators at any age or stage of their journey who wish to explore creative and healing pathways to expand personal expression, cultivate homeostasis, and deepen relationships with others and the natural world.
You are invited to work with me from anywhere in the world through private online sessions & workshops.
Connect with me in person for individual & small group sessions, workshops, retreats & artist residencies.
Through presence and your immediate felt experience, possibilities, purpose and pathways of least resistance will reveal themselves as synchronicities and blessings.
Follow your heart's invitation to personal and planetary healing.
