Who I am
If you have found this page, it is because someone I know sent you. In which case, you may already know me. Or you might not, in which case, I'll share a little bit about who I am and what I am offering through this (secret) portal.
To the greater world I am SJ, a performance artist, writer, and organizer. To my friends and loved ones, To my friends and loved ones, I'm Theron. I will share a little bit about my personal biography, my cultural and professional background, insofar as I believe it is relevant to the why and the how of the witchy shit that I do, and how you might choose to engage with what I offer. This information does not represent a list of qualifications, it is simply a brief history of history of my body, what it knows, and how it has come to those knowledges.
I have been an artist for 20 years, predominantly working in long-durational performance. My formative years in performance practice were grounded in many years of physical training: specifically, I studied and trained in Butoh at the Kazuo Ohno Studio in Yokohama, and with Akaji Maro and his company Dairakudakan. I also worked closely with Guillermo Gomez-Peña. I have worked with Marina Abramović several times, for better or worse. I have also trained extensively in Feldenkrais, Suzuki Method, Klein Technique. Parallel to my physical training, I maintained consistent commitments meditative practice and hatha yoga practice, of the pre-Goop era, serious kind: I did my first Vipassana retreat when I was 19, and maintained a 6 day a week traditional Astanga practice for 15 years.
Aside from my artistic work, I have also been a full service sex worker and professional Dominant. I have also been a clinician in numerous complementary health settings (specifically, I was a colon hydrotherapist at an exclusive spa- I have administered fancy enemas to some very famous people). I am a reitred raver: I spent about 11 years of my life in Berghain (no exaggeration). I am also a transgender man in my 5th year of medical transition, a survivor of domestic and sexual violence, and a disabled person. I live with Ehler's Danlos Syndrome and Lipoedema, two congenital connective tissue disorders which cause severe chronic pain, among a raft of other issues. 70 per cent of the underside of my skin is covered in scar tissue, the result of 5 major soft tissue excisions: extremely violent surgeries, with long and grueling recoveries. Like all the best people, I am on the Autism Spectrum and yes, of course I have ADHD and C-PTSD
My cultural background is Indigenous Australian (Wiradjuri/Ngyimpaa-Wailwan) on my mother's side, and northern English/Scottish on my father's. My ancestral relations on both sides are very present in both my artistic work and spiritual work, but as I was raised singularly by my mother, my Wiradjuri cultural self is where I am the most at home, and it is my own cultural knowledge and practice that is foregrounded in my somatic ritual work. My Indigenous identity comes with all the concomitant intergenerational a personal trauma and the ongoing violence of racism and white supremacy. It also comes with profound knowledge, powerful technologies for building resiliency, and literal magic. All of these factors are brought to bear in the work all of the work that I do.
All of which is to say: I know a fair bit about bodies and embodiment. I also know a lot about pain, and survival. A lot of it has come through training, most of it has come through experience
I have been working, in one form or another, in energetic balancing and healing modalities for my whole life. Until recently, my practice in therapeutic subtle bodywork has been a personal: I have done this work for myself, and for a select few close people. As my learning matures, I am now feeling moved to offer this work to a wider network of people who might benefit.
This work, which I perform for myself daily, is the foundation of my own wellbeing as person with significant and chronic challenges to my own physical and emotional well-being. I came to energy work first and foremost as a chronically ill and neurodiverse person, with a significant personal and cultural trauma history. I did not come to the practice of energy work and ritual work because I needed a spooky hobby. I came to these practices, and now to the sharing of this practices, because they have kept me alive.
What I offer are 1hr sessions of subtle body clearing and balancing. The sessions incorporate the use of traditional medicines gifted to me and authorized for my use by my own Wiradjuri Elders, as well as other herbs and resins belonging to traditions I have trained in. These medicines work alongside ritual protocols and a traditional laying-on-of hands to clear, balance and attune the body's subtle energy field. I find this work to be hugely beneficial for a range of physical and emotional ailments, nervous system regulation, and emotional balancing and release. For me, it is this work that has consistently helped me where nothing else has, Consistently accessing these practices as both a channel and as a recipient, has led to seismic shifts in my body and my life.
My approach is idiosyncratic and ecumenical, grounded in my own cultural lineage, and drawing on other systems I have ben trained in, all of which belong to my home region of the Asia-Pacific.
If I wanted to call myself a Reiki Practitioner, I could: I am a trained and accedited Reiki 5 (Master Level) practitioner in the Usui System. However, my approach incorporates numerous influences, and is seated first and foremost in my own cultural practices. I have also studied traditional Ainu Reiki with Marika Clymer, and Daoist energy work with Langston Khan and Christina Pratt. I have benefitted for many years from the practice of Polynesian bodywork, and in April will be traveling to Hawaii to train with an Indigenous healer and teacher of the Big Island lineage. My own Indigenous healing approaches are not systematized, or in any way accessible to those outside the culture: what I know, I know from direct instruction of Elders and land. This learning is the work of more than one lifetime.
If I wanted to do sessions at a fancy spa and charge fancy spa prices, I would. Any white hippy with a Reiki Cerification can do that. But I am not a white hippy: I am an Indigenous trans person aligned in a specific set of cultural and spiritual ethics.
This work is firmly rooted in my cultural identity and practices: as such, is not something I am prepared to personally market or advertise. I offer sessions by referral only: I trust that people who will benefit from the work that I do, the energies, medicines and techniques that I work with, will find their way to me through relational channels. If you have found this page through our mutual networks, then my sessions are open to you. If you find my sessions useful and supportive, then you are welcome to refer your friends.
Whilst I have a depth of experience in this field, I still very much consider myself an apprentice in this work. As such, my base rate for this service is that of an apprentice. The fee that I charge for my work is a fee for my time. This fee is intentionally low, so as to be accessible to people who need it irrespective of their means. If you benefit from the work, then I will gladly accept tribute of an amount appropriate to your individual means, and the benefit you derive from the work, and the respect you feel is due to my work and where it comes from.