Sage Hayes (she/he/they) is a devoted healing arts practitioner who believes wholeheartedly in individual and collective transformation. Exploring lineage, embodied presence, and emergent relational care are the threads braided together in Sage’s work. Sage is a somatic experiencing practitioner of 17 years, a bodyworker with a massage and biodynamic craniosacral therapy background, and a student of family/systemic constellations. Most recently Sage has been a lead teaching assistant with the Somatic Experiencing Institute, has been a practitioner with the Decolonizing Wealth Healing Collective, and a facilitator with the Healing Cycles of Harm program. Sage is also beginning to co-lead restorative nature retreats for healing practitioners.

Before entering the field of somatics, Sage worked as a consultant and facilitator in schools and organizations towards creating proactive safer spaces of inclusion, equity, and kindness for LBGTQQA+ people. Sage’s personal experiences of being trans and adopted greatly inform their passion for creating conditions, both one-on-one and in educational spaces, which nurture access and belonging for all participants. Sage co-created a wellness center in Portland, Maine called Justice in the Body, a collaboration project which explored the dynamic question of how can we be free in our bodies in an unfree world. From the micro to the macro, from the past to the future, Sage believes healing begins and ends in the now, with care and in collaboration with forces of wholeness much bigger than us.

Sage has published a handful of articles including in Frontiers Journal In Psychiatry & Mental Health: Somatic Experiencing® Informed Therapeutic Group for the Care and Treatment of Biopsychosocial Effects on Gender Diverse Identity, in Massage Magazine:  “These 4 Essential Skills Will Help You Practice Trauma Informed Massage” and in Somatic Experiences in Psychotherapeutic and Body Therapy Trauma Treatment: Building Courage and Capacity. Somatic Practice with Marginalized Populations (avail upon request). Also, a frequent guest at conferences and podcasts, Sage spoke at the Embodied Trauma Conference in 2020, the Sex Gets Real podcast on Embodiment, pleasure, and safety, and at the Pecha Kucha event in Portland Maine with a creative talk called Look for It.

When not traveling you can find Sage exploring the cusps of introversion and extroversion living on Peaks Island in Casco Bay, Portland, Maine, on the northeast coast of Turtle Island (U.S.). Sage spends a lot of time outside with their mountain cur pup named Thelma Jean connecting to tidal and seasonal rhythms. Sage is also a nature photographer, you can check out their work here.