Our Team
Diverse individuals united by a love for purposeful work and the belief that our bodies are our sites of liberation.
Click on any name to learn more about the unique experience and perspective brought by each of our team members.
Niralli D'Costa
Executive DirectorNiralli D'Costa, MA, LMFT, is the Executive Director of The Earth Body Institute. She leads with the belief that our wellbeing and the wellbeing of the planet are deeply intertwined, and a passion for experiential education rooted in ancestral wisdom and collective care. She also serves as core faculty in the Integrative Counseling Psychology program at California Institute of Integral Studies and maintains a private psychotherapy practice in San Rafael, CA. With over seventeen years of clinical experience across community-based and private settings, Niralli brings a deeply somatic, spiritually grounded, ecologically and socially conscious approach to healing and organizational leadership.
Holding a Master's in Somatic Psychology from John F. Kennedy University, Niralli weaves together her long-time study and practice of yoga, meditation, and the lineage tradition of Sri Vidya with ecopsychological principles. Her work is anchored in the knowledge that the natural world offers everything we need to heal, awaken, and remember our wholeness.
As a queer South Asian woman, Niralli is devoted to liberatory praxis and to building healing spaces that are accessible to those historically marginalized. She views social justice as inseparable from individual and collective healing, and has translated this commitment into organizational practice by developing BIPOC-specific programming at The Earth Body Institute. She has taught at the intersection of embodied spiritual practice, social change, and nature-based healing at a variety of institutions including The Psychotherapy Institute, UC Berkeley, John F. Kennedy University, and Antioch University.
Niralli lives and practices in Coast Miwok territory, where the land itself continues to inform her work. She can often be found wandering the hills with her four-legged companion, and she dreams of one day integrating ecological restoration into the Institute's therapeutic group work.
Amanda Morrison
Program DirectorAmanda Morrison, MA, LMFT is a somatic ecotherapist, educator, and the incoming Curriculum Director of the EarthBody Institute. She brings nearly two decades of clinical experience weaving together earth wisdom, body awareness, and relational healing to help people recover a deeper sense of connection to themselves, each other, and the living world.
Amanda entered the field of psychotherapy after leaving her high-tech career in 2002, following a life-changing awakening to her relationship with nature. Since then, she has worked at the intersection of ecopsychology, trauma recovery, and social change—developing programs that use the healing power of nature as a vehicle for both personal transformation and collective liberation. She is the creator of the Bayside Marin Ecotherapy Program, a pioneering initiative at a residential dual-diagnosis treatment center, and has facilitated ecotherapy groups for incarcerated men through the Insight Garden Program at San Quentin Prison.
As a white, cisgender, queer woman, Amanda acknowledges the privileges and limitations of her positionality and is committed to ongoing accountability, humility, and learning in her work. She sees social justice, ecological healing, and psychotherapy as inseparable, and has devoted much of her teaching and practice to creating spaces where historically marginalized voices and experiences are centered. For ten years, she taught at the California Institute of Integral Studies, offering interdisciplinary courses with a strong emphasis on ecopsychology, somatics, and justice frameworks.
Her training integrates multiple somatic and ecotherapeutic modalities—including AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi, Authentic Movement, rites of passage practices, and the Work that Reconnects. Amanda’s article “Embodying Sentience” was published in Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind. She currently maintains a private practice in the Bay Area, where she works both indoors, as well as outdoors on the trails of the East Bay Regional Parks.
Grounded in her own daily nature practice, Amanda is an avid gardener and hiker. She continues to draw inspiration from the land she calls home, honoring the histories and resilience of the Ohlone people who are native to this place, while tending reciprocal relationships with the more-than-human world.
Ariana Candell
FounderAriana Candell, MA, LMFT, is a somatic ecotherapist, a licensed psychotherapist with 30 years of experience, and the founder of The Earthbody Institute. For the last 15 years, she has been an active teacher, trainer, leader, and innovator in the field of Ecotherapy, introducing it as an essential part of healing in the field of psychotherapy.
As Executive Director of The Earthbody Institute since its inception in 2020, Ariana has led with a social justice approach: offering hundreds of equity scholarships, supporting the creation of vibrant BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ programs, creating free community offerings in response to the needs of the times, and fostering a diverse EBI team. She recently passed on the role of director and created a new leadership team. Ariana will continue at EBI in the role of mentor and elder.
Ariana is the original creator and trainer of the EBI 100-hour Professional Ecotherapy Training and Certification Program and has collaborated with the EBI team to refine and update it over the years. She has also facilitated numerous nature-connection workshops and Work That Reconnects rituals for community organizations, as well as taught Ecotherapy seminars at John F. Kennedy University.
As a cisgendered, able-bodied, heterosexual white woman (with grandparents immigrating from Italy, Germany, and Poland), Ariana is committed to continued learning, practice, and humility in advocating for justice with awareness of her privilege. As a mother of queer, neurodiverse children, she is devoted to supporting the LGBTQIA+ community and welcomes working with people of all genders, backgrounds, and cultures. Over the years, she has stewarded the Earthbody community toward a place of welcome, inclusion, and inspiration.
Ariana believes that developing a consistent nature-connection practice with elements of somatic awareness and openness to the sacred can foster a more holistic and balanced way of life. She is devoted to her own daily embodied spiritual practice with nature and encourages her private clients and students to develop their own as well. In all of her programs, she facilitates the creation of a strong Earth-honored community, fulfilling an ancient human need of experiencing a profound connection to the sacredness of all beings.
Ariana is happy to be practicing Ecotherapy outdoors in the East Bay Hills with many of her individual clients and also brings the power of nature indoors to her private practice in Oakland. Her main therapeutic influences include Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy, Somatic Ecotherapy, Dance Movement Therapy, and Earth-based training from The School of Lost Borders.
Visit Ariana’s private psychotherapy page here.
Kara london
InstructorKara London, MS, LMFT (she/her), is an ecotherapist, workshop facilitator, educator, creative, and Communications Director with Earthbody Institute, residing in Southern California on the unceded lands of the Tongva and Kizh people. She feels most alive among the rolling, grassy foothills and coniferous mountains, and while bird-watching.
She holds a Master’s in Clinical Counseling Psychology, has completed certification in Ecopsychology with Pacifica Graduate Institute, and holds a Level 3 Ecotherapy certification with The Earthbody Institute. She is also the current Southern California Regional Coordinator for the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.
Prior, she worked in a non-profit mindfulness center, a group private practice, and, for over a decade, developed a focus as a school-based mental health therapist. She founded Three Feathers Therapy in 2023, where she specializes in offering ecotherapy and mindfulness-based therapy. Her approach is grounded in attachment, mindful compassion, creativity, somatic awareness, and relationship with nature.
As a cisgender, HSP, able-bodied, middle-class woman with German, English, and mixed European heritage, Kara is a settler on Turtle Island and is committed to uncolonial and liberatory praxis. Across all her roles, she welcomes work with people of all backgrounds and intersections, including BIPOC, Latinx, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, ability diverse, and other communities. She also enjoys working with creatives, change-makers, perfectionists, empaths, and Earth lovers.
In her role as Communications Director, she hopes to offer her strengths as a builder and storyteller, to nourish deepening connections with wider communities and networks, and to further integrate social-environmental justice into her work with Earthbody.
Adrián Villaseñor Galarza
InstructorAdrián Villaseñor Galarza, PhD, is passionate about human transformation in service of the living Earth, in order to uncover the regenerative expression of our deep potentials. Nature has served as sustenance and inspiration for Adrián since his early childhood. In his PhD research he advanced an Integral Ecopsychology, fruit of the confluence of Eastern liberation teachings and the study of the human-nature connection, resulting in an elemental framework for self-discovery, healing, and sustainable action.
He’s the founder and director of the Bioalchemy Institute, mostly active in México and Latin America, a pioneering project dedicated to healing the relation between humans and the rest of nature through transformative education for body, mind, and spirit. In addition, Adrián is the seed originator of the Work That Reconnects Latin America, assisting Spanish speaking people from the Americas and beyond to reclaim their true, wild place in the Earthly web of life.
Adrián has offered workshops and talks internationally, both to the general public and academic audiences, for over 16 years and works one-on-one with clients through a contemplative, eco-systemic, and transpersonal lens. He’s also a ritualist whose focus revolves around an animist approach to healing and empowerment. He’s the author of a handful of books that explore a reverential, enchanted, and evolutionary perspective of humans and Earth, and translator into Spanish of Joanna Macy’s seminal book, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide of the Work That Reconnects.
Adrián’s work is considered a Latin American referent when it comes to Deep Ecology, Ecopsychology, and Earth-based spirituality.
http://living-flames.com
Mary Sanders
InstructorMary Sanders (she/they), LCSW, is a politicized somatic psychotherapist, educator, and community builder, infusing passion into both her clinical endeavors and community initiatives. With over a decade of experience in community mental health, she’s provided psychotherapy and clinical case management to communities of color and historically marginalized populations addressing trauma and various forms of oppression.
Mary’s deep love for mother earth began at a young age when her family of eight camped for weeks every summer at Cleveland National Park. She felt a deep peace listening to the birds, connecting with the winds, and swimming in the sweet waters. In recent years, Mary’s spiritual connection with plant spirits expanded upon sitting and studying from the Shipido people located near the Ucayali River in Peru. Mary continues to deepen her knowledge and connection with the native plants and trees on the ancestral and unceded land of the Ohlone people also called Oakland, Ca. She is currently enrolled at Soul Flower Farm BIPOC Herbalism apprenticeship program. Mary can often be found exploring the local trails, praying to the waters at Sausal Creek, and offering roses to the land spirits.
Mary believes earth’s healing and healing ourselves is interconnected. She integrates the teachings and lessons from mother earth into the therapy room while holding various clinical modalities. Mary is trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy at CIIS CPTR, MAPS, and the Ketamine Training Center. Mary is also equipped with certifications in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems (Level 1). She served as a founding board member at People of Color Psychedelic Collective championing inclusivity and accessibility in healing spaces. Mary was core faculty at UC Berkeley Center for Psychedelic Facilitation Training Program leading the JEDI and Somatic Awareness curriculum and JEDI mentorship program. Mary advocates for collective healing through an intersectional approach, and sparks dialogues on community-centric infrastructures rooted in accessibility and cultural sensitivity.
Kellum Lewis
InstructorKellum Lewis, MA, MFA, LMFT, (he/him), is a seasoned psychotherapist based in what is now called Pasadena, California, (on Kizh/Tongva/Gabrieleño territory) with a wealth of experience in the fields of clinical psychotherapy, ecopsychology, ecotherapy, teaching, and LGBTQ+ health and advocacy. Using integrative ideas from Jungian, psychodynamic and ecologically-based psychotherapies, Kellum specializes in addressing LGBTQ+ issues, relationship concerns, depression, anxiety, HIV/AIDS, and spiritual/religious crises. He is passionate about the central role LGBTQ+ people play in supporting humankind toward a more balanced, equitable, and sustainable future.
In addition to clinical practice, Kellum is actively involved in teaching and education. He currently supervises Associate psychotherapists and trainees for two community mental health clinics as well as in his own private group practice. He is the founder and Clinical Director of Clarity and Growth Center for Psychotherapy and has served as an adjunct instructor at Antioch University, Los Angeles, where he taught a variety of courses, including Ecopsychology, Spiritual Perspectives on Addiction, and Gay Male Identity Development. He also offers a free, once-a-month land-based ecotherapy training for aspiring ecotherapists in the Los Angeles area.
Kellum’s dedication to raising awareness and enhancing mental health standards is demonstrated through his participation on the Los Angeles County HIV/AIDS Mental Health Task Force and the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV Services. He is also a published author whose work brings insight into the importance of emotional well-being, psychotherapy, and the search for soulful connections with the more-than-human world.
With an educational background that includes a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University and a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from DePaul University, Kellum brings a unique blend of artistic creativity and clinical expertise to his therapeutic work. He is most passionate about assisting LGBTQ+ people find healing from the wounds of homophobia and heterosexism as well as promoting sustainable and life-enhancing futures by supporting people interested in ecopsychology and ecological-mindedness. On a personal note, Kellum loves to garden, cook, and is cat-dad to Milo and ZuZu, and dog-dad to Ellie and Rufus. Discover more at his website: https://www.clarityandgrowthcenter.com/
Ashley Guastalli
[title]Ashley Phoenix is an educator, facilitator, and embodiment practitioner whose work explores the intersections of body, intuition, movement, nature, and human connection. She holds a degree in Sociology from California State University, Long Beach. Her work centers on creating spaces where people can reconnect with their bodies, intuition, creativity, nature and sense of belonging. Ashley is passionate about helping people cultivate deeper, more conscious relationships with themselves, one another, and the world around them.
Jessica Sala-Bonin
[title]For nearly a decade, Jessica Sala-Bonin has been a driving force behind EBI’s technology, operations, and online presence. As the manager of day-to-day systems, she ensures that EBI runs smoothly and efficiently behind the scenes. Jessica works to maintain the operational foundation that allows the EBI team to serve its clients with consistency and excellence.
Jessica brings more than 20 years of experience supporting small to mid-sized businesses in achieving their marketing goals, 14 years through her own business, Sala Social Marketing.
Known for her meticulous attention to detail and her ability to blend creativity with strategy, Jessica excels in problem solving, content creation, and systems management. She is continually learning and evolving alongside the fast-changing digital landscape, keeping EBI and her other clients ahead of industry trends and best practices.
Her approachable and collaborative nature makes her an invaluable connector within the team and with clients. Whether designing a streamlined workflow, refining SEO content, or troubleshooting complex challenges, Jessica’s work ethic and innovative mindset are at the heart of EBI’s success.
Jessica resides in eastern Connecticut, the ancestral and unceded lands of the Mohegans, with her partner, daughter, rescue pitbull and two rescued cats. Jessica enjoys going on adventures near and far, gardening, homesteading and being in nature. You can learn more about Jessica’s work here – salasocialmarketing.com
Juliana Barajas Ivey
Web DesignJuliana Barajas Ivey is a software engineer, web designer, and yoga instructor with over a decade of experience dedicated to developing tech experiences that center and serve human connection and wellness. When not at her desk supporting EBI’s tech stack, you can find her in the garden, in the ocean, or frolicking in a forest somewhere.
Connect with Juliana at care@mokewpastudio.com.
past faculty
Musenge Luchembe
Kai Siedenburg
Ryan Van Lenning
Olivia Chapman Goss
Lili Nakita Kroutilina
Rev. Connie L. Habash
Yvonne McGaughey
