What is most important is that you face your own desires and fears, no matter where you are in life. That you are breaking through your own conditioning to live a life that is truly yours.
Accountability for your holy work, your drudge work, and your inner work — with journaling prompts, co-working energy, and 1:1 time for monthly members. Many things get done simply by setting the time aside, and having a little social accountability. Anyone can join for journaling and co-working in the main room for free.
Registration →Surface the pattern, break the grip, ride the freedom somewhere new — that's the practice. We practice and play together interactively, finding the rules running our relationships and our lives, flipping them, and discovering what's possible on the other side. New moves, new capacities, directions you've been wanting to go or didn't even know existed. This is a safe space to practice being someone you haven't fully become (yet).
Drop-in Registration →Full presence and intensity. We turn up the heat with each other, pressing into the places where our psycho-emotional inflammation needs a good, deep tissue massage. This is advanced practice for people who want to meet themselves and each other without flinching. This is the essence of true safety — taking full responsibility. An opportunity to practice giving and receiving full impact relationality.
Drop-in Registration →For those ready to make this a regular practice. Monthly membership includes:
Financial accessibility matters to me — if cost is a barrier, apply for a scholarship.
Deep, ongoing work together. I see your patterns, hold the vision of who you're becoming, and walk with you through the territory of transformation. Weekly 60m sessions with text access between meetings. Includes all Relational School access to weekly and monthly group sessions.
Biweekly and 90m options also available.
Book a Free Intro Call →Immersive multi-day retreats. The extended container creates space for deeper drops, bigger risks, and the kind of transformation that only happens when you stay long enough for the armor to soften.
Most approaches to self-improvement take your sense of self for granted. They help you make the room you're in more comfortable. I work differently.
We loosen your relationship to your "self" — the patterns, defenses, and stories you've mistaken for who you are. Through embodied practice, relational experimentation, and building tolerance for the feelings you've been avoiding, you discover something radical: you can change. Not by trying harder, but by holding yourself more loosely.
Identify the relational loops that keep you stuck, then practice something different — in real time, with real people.
Learn to regulate your body so you can stay present when things get real — instead of freezing, fleeing, or fighting.
Drop from the story in your head into the wisdom of your body. Sensation is information. Presence is practice.
Transformation doesn't happen alone. We grow in relationship — by being seen, seeing others, and staying when it's hard.
I was pursuing a PhD in Organizational Behavior, researching predictive processing — how the mind builds its model of reality, and how our sense of self forms relationally and interoceptively in childhood. That sense of self then repeats itself in almost every environment for the rest of our lives — unless we take it upon ourselves to change.
I left to do the work, not just study it. But that research is why I know: you can't think your way out of patterns that were encoded before you had words. Nervous system work and relational practice have to go together. And with practice, people really can grow.
Modalities: Circling & Embodied Inquiry • Shadow Work • Nervous System Regulation • Somatic Meditation • The Gurdjieff Work • Relational Dynamics
"Can you imagine a bird, having sung its song, turning to you and asking, 'did I do it right?'"
I was named for Jeanne de Salzmann — one of Gurdjieff's closest students — and Sophia, the embodiment of divine feminine wisdom. I grew up steeped in spiritual practice, where psychological and spiritual development were the cultural pinnacles.
Meditation saved me from a painful spiritual adolescence. What started as five minutes of breath-counting grew into years of intensive practice — and eventually led me to a year of residential practice at monastery in Vermont, where something broke open. My sense of self dissolved. My perspective shifted radically. My experience filled the whole world.
The years that followed were the hardest of my life — integrating that shift while losing my mother. I emerged in 2024: alive, happy, and much more free. Now I help others navigate the same terrain — the place where inner change meets outer transformation, where understanding your patterns becomes living beyond them.
I hold dual master's degrees from Columbia (Organizational Psychology) and UNC Kenan-Flagler (Leadership), and I've spent over a decade facilitating workshops and week-long retreats in circling, shadow work, and embodied inquiry. I also work with organizational teams, teaching relational practice and nervous system regulation.
"Words can't do justice to the impact that Sofia-Jeanne has had on my life. I've yet to meet anyone with her level of awareness, skill, tenacity, and tenderness. Sofia-Jeanne's work is the Plato's Cave of relationshipping; you can't fathom what you are missing until you experience it for yourself."
AI Consultant
"Sofia-Jeanne is one of the most perceptive and impactful teachers I've been lucky to learn from. She sees you, really sees the things you're hiding, and points it out in a way that is simultaneously witty (which makes you not feel shame) and sharp. I feel like I'm finally becoming more of who I want to be."
Co-founder of Relating Between the Lines, Stanford Touchy Feely facilitator
"I've shifted a lifelong pattern of self-hatred and suicidal thoughts into renewed life force and self-acceptance that I can feel in my body. My biggest takeaway is being with the feeling of worthlessness and still acting as if I valued myself—this is huge. This retreat has elevated everything I do in the world in ways I never imagined."
Theta Practitioner, Play Facilitator & Inner Child Healer, Actress
"An ecstatic experience of breaking your default patterns." — GR
"Terrifyingly courageous in the spaces she holds." — AR
"It's like yoga for your personality." — JB
"Our culture has a dearth of shamans and elders. Sofia-Jeanne has answered the call." — TF
Right now I offer one-on-one sessions and weekly group work. I also lead retreats and collaborate with other practitioners on immersive experiences — those tend to emerge organically, so sign up for updates if you want to know when something's coming.
It depends on you. Some people come to build specific emotional skills — self-awareness, identifying blind spots, working with relational patterns. Others come for something more like emotional process work: creating space for the emotional system to flow, to be felt and expressed safely.
A lot of my work with women involves power — how to bring it forth with nuance, how to follow desire, how to lead and follow in relationship. And some sessions are more about tracking the relational flow between us in real time — finding out where the aliveness wants to go.
Usually it's not planned. We start with what's actually here, right now, and what you're needing.
Power work is about your relationship with your own desire and your willingness to act on it. What fears come up when you try to use your power? For many women, there's a fear of doing harm — or of experiencing harm in response to stepping into power. That's real, and there's a lot of emotional territory to explore there.
We practice in a space that's safe enough to experiment. It starts small — sometimes as small as which fruit do I actually want at the grocery store? You begin to feel the difference between what you want and what you default to. From there, it grows.
I've been circling for about a decade and led a lot of it — it's deeply part of how I work. But this isn't limited to present-moment awareness the way circling is. It's also goal-oriented — we practice directly in places that matter in your life to create real change. It's more like: right now, where is the juiciest place we could relate? What would create the most flow? We follow that, wherever it leads.
There's also a strong somatic component — tracking sensation, giving patterns names (I like them a little edgy or funny, because it helps hold things lighter), and working with the nervous system directly.
There are three weekly group sessions, each with a different flavor:
Journaling, Accountability & 1:1 Time is a reflection session — a space to get honest about what's happening, name what you're working on, and be witnessed and held accountable by the group as you integrate changes into your actual life.
Movement + Expression is a somatic session — we get into the body through movement and use it as a doorway into what wants to be felt, expressed, and freed up. Less thinking, more moving.
Pattern Break is the deep relational practice session. We find out what each person wants to work on, then organize around the juiciest ways to practice together. It's facilitated, alive, and responsive — you get to try something different in real time with other humans, which is where the magic really happens.
So much of what we do in relationships is automatic — patterning from childhood, from our nervous systems trying to keep us safe. A pattern break is when we notice that default mode and do something different. Not recklessly — with awareness, with support, and usually with a lot of tenderness for the fear underneath.
When you let go of a pattern, there's often a lot of extra energy that gets freed up. Then the question becomes: how do you want to use that energy?
Absolutely. A lot of people come to me when they're embarking on something new — a transition, a deeper inquiry, a desire that's starting to make itself known. You don't need to have a background in circling or somatic work. You just need to be curious.
We take tiny steps. The most important thing is what's already happening in you — we just fan the flames and let them expand. They'll find the places in you that need them.
It's a free 30-minute conversation — not a session, but a chance to feel each other's flavor. You get to put things on the table, get a sense of how I work, and figure out if this is worth your time. I love to personalize, so however we can use those 30 minutes in a way that actually serves you, I'm down for the ride.
One of the things I hold most deeply is that in literally one moment, our entire experience can change. I've seen it happen millions of times over the past decade. That said, lasting change also requires integration and iteration — you keep going back, you keep practicing, and it gets better.
You can move at the speed of your own safety. This doesn't have to be a crack-open-and-become-dysfunctional situation. You can go slow, hold the fear with love, and let things unfold at a pace that actually works for your life.
Whether you're drawn to individual work, a group experience, or just want to learn more — the first step is always a conversation.
Book a Free Intro Call