About Hannah
Founder, Educator and Lead Facilitator
Hannah is the Founder of Somaya, Lead Facilitator and Former Director of Programming at HOLOS Global, a Founding Member of Inscape Global Retreats, a Fellow with New Zealand’s Edmund Hillary Fellowship, and a Mentee of the Infamous Debbie Allen.
The Somaya Method is a product of Hannah’s life as a professional dancer, her diplomacy and peace initiatives in the Middle East, her academic studies in somatic psychology and art therapy, and is a byproduct of her personal journey in healing herself naturally of Crohn’s disease. Hannah has been taking the method around the world for the last 12 years, and has combined it with neuroplasticity for the last 8.
Hannah believes, and has seen in countless transformations, that the key to true and lasting healing is the combination of neuroplasticity and somatic release and integration.
Hannah works with high impact leaders around the world to come home to themselves, and recenter in their life’s purpose. She also builds programs around the world for at-risk populations. Since she believes in equal access to this work, all of her impact clients are encouraged to sponsor an aligned person to work in a Somaya Signature or Somaya Circle container.
About Claire
Director of Operations and Co-Facilitator
With over a decade of leadership in wellness, social justice, and transformational healing, Claire Johnson (practitioner name: Claire Avelina) brings dedication, deep integrity, and a heart-centered rigor to her role as Director of Operations and Co-Facilitator at The Somaya Method. Claire combines her extensive experience as a mentor, ceremonialist, and advocate with business and organizational expertise, creating safe spaces where leaders and professional clients can deeply heal, expand, and act in alignment with their highest potential.
Drawing on her background in alternative healing modalities—energy work, ancestral practices, ceremonial medicine—alongside formal training in mental / emotional health, integrative wellness, and harm reduction, Claire is committed to offering approaches that are both spiritually grounded and evidence-informed. She has worked closely with therapists, social workers, change-makers, and mental health professionals, serving as an ally and partner to embed holistic frameworks into their clients’ journeys.
In her capacity at The Somaya Method, Claire ensures each retreat container is held with impeccable attention to safety, ethical boundaries, cultural competency, and emotional support. Her leadership behind the scenes—from infrastructure to organizational culture, logistics to relational dynamics—makes it possible for participants to arrive, surrender, and transform, fully held.
Claire believes true transformation arises when people are seen, heard, and honored in all their complexity: body, spirit, mind. She’s dedicated to stewarding spaces where trauma can be released, nervous systems resettle, and inner architecture rewires—not just for personal healing, but for collective evolution.
About Eli
Co-Facilitator and Lead Bodyworker
Eli Bernstein has over 25 years experience as a second generation master bodyworker/somatic therapist, spiritual guide and life coach. He is the creator of MettaSomatics, a bodywork modality facilitating cohesion between our mental/emotional/physical bodies as a means to communicate directly with our soul. His guiding and coaching work shepards the client’s awareness in and through the body to simultaneously “wake up” (and live from their unlimited essence) and “wake down” (while being honest to the interconnected potential of their humanity) as the path to authentic actualization.
He draws from a lifetime of earth-based stewardship, holding advanced degrees in Applied Ecology, Ecological Horticulture and Sustainable Food Systems and mentorships in psychedelic plant medicine to offer a truly unique blend of earth-based approaches to embodied healing and an ecological literacy of belonging.
Over the last decade Eli’s involvement with The Awakened Brotherhood, The Mankind Project and Tending Male Fire has arisen from a deep dedication to the realignment of the healthy masculine and our essential, supportive role in the current transformation of planetary consciousness.
About Adrienne
Lead Chef
Adrienne is a world class intuitive chef who has cultivated her culinary skills since childhood. Her career started as a self-trained personal chef, which naturally led her to embark on an educational journey exploring Yoga, Herbalism, Ayurveda, Clinical Nutrition, and various culinary training programs. Her career spans from sous chef to head chef, to pastry. She heads cheffing teams at large festivals, caters large events, designs intricate wedding cakes, and brings her bounty of experience to the intimate healing setting of Somaya.
Adrienne’s farm-to-table intuitive heart, combined with her remarkable skills as both a chef and baker, fill Somaya clients with nourishment at every level.
