Meet Jenny McGrath (she/her) | Licensed Mental Health Counselor & Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jenny McGrath (she/her) and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jenny, do you have a favorite quote or affirmation?
Rosa Luxemburg said, “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” This quote reminds me time and again of why I do what I do. I want people to be more free in their individual and collective bodies. I see our bodies and movements as allegorical for how we show up in the world. If we are inhibited moving our bodies it impacts the movement of our thought process, our social justice movements, and our ability to be fluid and responsive to relationships.

This reminds me of another favorite quote of mine by Minna Salami that says, “Tyrants have always understood that the more robotic people are, the more easily manipulated they are…”

I see my work as a mental health therapist and as a movement educator as helping my clients, students, and participants become less robotic, more sensual beings. One of the ways that we become robotic and fixated is through trauma. I offer folks language and somatic experiences that create the potential for understanding their trauma and tools to move through it. I believe our bodies are the wisest thing about us, and they tell the truth of our individual and collective traumas, this is why I believe we need to engage individual and collective bodies in order to find true wellness. Healthism (a term coined by Robert Crawford) is the myth that individuals alone are responsible for their own wellness, but in the world we live in we must also look at social and economic factors that inhibit the ability of wellness for individuals and communities.

What should our readers know about your business?
Indwell Movement exists to help individuals and communities explore more awareness and more freedom in their bodies. I offer online courses that teach folks about the somatic impacts of trauma and provide exercises to help individuals explore moving through traumatic experiences.

I offer weekly online movement classes that folks attend from all over the world. I say that I am a movement teacher who doesn’t teach people how to move. I help participants find their way back to a relationship to their body that provides a context for them to move however they want to or need to move.

I am a purity culture researcher, and I have woven together my clinical experience as a Mental Health Counselor, my own life experience, and my research into an online course called Embodied Sexuality. This helps individuals who experienced, and may still experience, religious sexual shame (coined by Tina Schermer-Sellers) understand the impacts of religious dogma on the body and develop their own personal sexual ethic. When I was starting my business my husband told me, “Let your business tell you what it wants to be.” My business has been informed greatly by working with primarily white, cisgender women who grew up in purity culture who are healing from the impacts of sexual abuse and religious sexual shame. After years of hearing unique but similar stories I decided to create more resources that could reach more people dealing with the impacts of harmful rhetorics and experiences. I have learned that healing, and our sexuality, does not exist in a vacuum. I believe it is important for people to understand both the personal traumas they’ve experienced, but also to hold awareness of the collective traumas that we may be harmed by or complicit in. This means unpacking the privileges that come from being in white, cisgender, straight, able bodies. I see my labor as decolonizing the way that psychology and trauma has often been engaged in white spaces.

This work also comes from the depths of my own story. I grew up in Colorado Springs at the height of Purity Culture in the 1990’s. I was deeply influenced by this world, and as such I moved to Northern Uganda as a 19 year old, where I lived for several years. I suffered from my own sexual trauma that was unrecognized because of the religious world I grew up in. I had no language for consent, harm, or power dynamics. I was not aware of my own privilege and power at the time and how that enabled me to step into positions of authority in Uganda as a young, white woman with no training. I was one of many, many young white women who grew up in purity culture that became development workers or missionaries internationally. I now research the subjective experience of those who were socialized as young, white women in purity culture and how that socialization led to their decision to become missionaries or development workers abroad.

All of this to say my work is deeply committed to holding individual trauma as not separate from collective trauma and social injustice.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Having grown up in Colorado and having lived in Seattle for the last 10 years, what I miss most about Colorado is the sunshine! I would encourage anyone and everyone to bask in the amazing vitamin d the state provides 🙂

When I am back in Colorado Springs I love to go shopping at Mountain Standard Goods! They have such an amazing selection of clothes and are so mindful of the products they purchase and sell.

Garden of the Gods holds such a healing energy. I love to walk around and lay on the rocks to allow my body to soak up the land.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are so many people, resources, books that I want to give credit to. So many of my ideas are informed by wise, thoughtful, embodied people that came before me. One of the most influential people in my life is my teacher/consultant Kesha Fikes (https://somaticextimacy.com/) She has taught me so much both theoretically and somatically about “somatic extimacy”- how our bodies and our experience of them are not separate from the ways we are socialized. Through working with her and learning from her I’ve grown my capacity as an individual and as a practitioner to have the theoretical and somatic skills necessary to engage individual and collective stories of harm and liberation. I am deeply grateful for her and her presence in my life!

Website: www.indwellmovement.com

Instagram: indwell_movement

Image Credits
Personal shot- https://www.seanmcgrathfilms.com/ Branding shots- https://www.adventureswithkate.org/