About Us
What is Decolonizing the Psyche
Decolonizing the Psyche (DTP) is an experiential process that centers the cultivation of critical consciousness--C3--coupled with embodiment practices to foster transformation. These practices are intended to disrupt patterns of coloniality embedded in the psyche and body. DTP is a gesture at producing alternative concepts of Being, knowing and doing, edging beyond those limitations imposed through modernity. The limited scope of these have distorted relationships with ourselves, with each other and with the more-than-human world.
We begin with the assumption that oppression, and all expressions of supremacy, is a type of cultural trauma. These patterns dysregulate the collective's nervous system. DTP, as a project of re-humanization, is born from a radical reckoning with the realities & symptoms of modernity/coloniality. We are at a nexus, a cross-roads, addressing the residue of a 500-year old dehumanizing project. Decolonizing the Psyche is a process intended to transform attitudes, behaviors and actions, in order to re-align with generative, life-driven social agreements.
DTP hosts many offerings, including:
- Supporting Generative Institutional Change Efforts
- Ritual Arts Practice for Personal & Collective Transformation
- Sacred Scholarship Practices
- Holistic Curriculum Development
- Folkloric Arts Performance
If deep decoloniality resonates with you and you'd like to explore how it may support your work, feel free to book a DTP Consultation Session here.
Meet the Founder
Dr. Amber McZeal is a writer, vocalist, sacred scholar, ancestral lineage healing practitioner and artivist. Amber utilizes sound therapy and guided somatic imagery to engage the knowledge of the body within an interactive and liberatory arts practice. In 2018, she launched her organization, Decolonizing the Psyche, where she weaves somatic praxis with Afro-Indigenous spiritual technologies and social justice—deep decoloniality—in efforts to address cultural trauma, foster transformation, and create more humane social relationships.
Amber holds an M.A. in Somatic depth psychology and a Ph.D. in depth psychology with emphasis in Community, Liberation, Indigenous and Ecological psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA.
Get to Know DTP in the World
Here are some of the ways that DTP is expressed within the collective:
- Listen to the podcast "Decolonizing the Psyche with Dr. Amber McZeal" in conversation with Luis Mojica, founder of Holistic Life Navigation.
- Sacred Scholarship & the Decolonial Turn in Maternal Healthcare for Black Women: "Recognition and Impact of Policing Families in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit".
- Sacred Scholarship and Change Efforts: Ancestors and Cultural Healing 12-week course description.