My Story

One of my earliest memories when I was young was getting gum stuck in my hair after I fell asleep chewing it. My Mom had to cut it out (it was green Chewell's gum, if anyone remembers that stuff). The other one was seeing of spirits standing over my brothers when I woke up in the middle of the night. That same night I also saw something that I still can't remember, but made me unable to calm down for quite awhile. I never really have been able to recall it, but I have gotten hints over the years that it was a reminder of my own mortality. I might have been two at the time.

We were living on a commune in Virginia Beach at that time, based around the teachings and practices of Edgar Cayce. My dad was doing readings and healing work, my mom was trying to take care of us three boys in the times that he was away doing healings and trainings. Kinda set the stage for the rest of my life.

These experiences sparked an unending interest in the esoteric, the unseen, the deep. It took me awhile to integrate how to live with these awarenesses, still have friends and take care of myself, let alone thrive.

I took up drawing, guitar and skateboarding in my teens to express myself while I tried to figure out where I was going. I was never interested in a career, except maybe music and art, but I didn't care about making money for it. Fast forward to my mid twenties and serious depression as I looked at my life and asked myself what I was contributing to this world. I was working in construction and trying to figure out how to become an artist and a musician. I also was very close to my oldest brother, Duncan who's grasp on this world rapidly descended into schizophrenia and eventual suicide. His journey also highlighted our very dysfunctional family unit in an extremely harsh light. I had a very real healing crisis at that time that kept me out of works for weeks on end and was excruciating. I had oozing eczema on my legs, back and arms that made me want to itch my skin until it bled. Soon after I had a back injury that made it hard to sit and get out of bed. I wasn't allowing myself to feel all the emotions and stress I had been under throughout my life. It had to come out and slow me down enough to start to feel it.

This pushed me into a way of being that was more connected with my physical body, emotional landscape, spirit and path. I started actively studying: Capoeira, Yoga, Qi Gong, Meditation, Dance, Buddhism, Taoism, Tantra< West African Drumming and Ifa. You name it I was reading about it or practicing it. It awoke, or really I remembered, a love I had long since denied.

I was initially introduced to yoga with my grandmother when I was about 6 years old. I would do some simple asanas and lion's breath with her early in the mornings when no one else was up. I rediscovered it with a Baron Baptiste video tape many years later and went onto practice various Hatha Yoga styles such as Bikram, Jivamukti, Sivananda, Forrest, Anusara, Bikram, Iyengar, Dharma and Rocket styles. I never really found what I was looking for, but I continued to practice in whatever classes I could find for years.

I trained Regional Capoeira with Mestre Efraim Silva in New Haven, Connecticut for a few years alongside Contra Mestre Pinga Fogo (now a Mestre here in Austin) and Profesor Fabiano Lucas. I practiced a little Capoeira Angola informally with some friends from Finland which I really enjoyed. I got to train with many wonderful teachers such as Mestre Lobao, Mestre Jo and many others. Capoeira was and is something I found to be incredibly fun, but I never really had any money back then and stopped training because I didn't have the $80 a month fee to keep training! This was also when I realized my brother was really not well and a lot of my emotional energy and time was spent on that. I eventually discovered something I felt was deeper and more resonant for me at the time in Qi Gong and the large umbrella of Taoist and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

I started my Qi Gong studies with Mantak Chia's book Awaken Healing Light of the Tao and practiced out of that book for years before I found a teacher that was nearby. I studied his Universal Healing Tao System intently with Jampa Mackenzie Stewart here in Austin for about 3 years until he moved away. I also studied the 24 Yang Tai Ji short form with Jampa and one of his students Jim Burke, while I was in massage school here in Austin. This was when I finally got to study Chi Nei Tsang with Jampa and Shanti Dechen. I eventually met Master Yun Xiang Tseng in Houston after being urged to do so by a friend for several years. He helped me to understand a greater depth of healing weaving the deep knowledge and practices of Taoism into a more cohesive whole. I continue to study with him.

I continued my yoga studies all along practicing Patthabi Jois's system of Ashtanga Yoga with several teachers in Austin and California. I am indebted to Ayelet Even Knur for showing me that Ashtanga can be fun and rewarding. I'm grateful to have practiced for a few years with Christina Sell when she lived in Austin and find her teaching and way of being to be the most grounded and useful approach to Asana I have come across. I went onto study some of Ashtanga's variants such as the Rocket and I also have recently studied with Dharma Mittra and his more classical approach to yoga asana, pranayama, yoga nidra and meditation.

I was always been drawn to Indigenous healing practices, shamanism and esoteric practices since I was a child and especially since my brother's internal battles. My experience has been that these practices are about direct connection to the natural and spirit worlds. All cultures can be traced back to these practices. The more I learn the more I remember what my ancestors have always known. These practices, up until very recently, have not been addressed in modern Western culture.

I started actively working with my ancestors about 15 years ago on my own with some basic stuff I picked up from books on Ifa and intuitively. This is what led me to Malidoma Some and his approach to ritual, ancestors and the spirit world. He eloquently explained things which I would not have the depth to say myself, but felt for a very long time. He gave a morsel of his culture for Westerners to digest and I believe many of us are still trying to chew on it. He recently passed away to the Ancestral world in early 2022.

My work with Amazonian Plant medicines started 8 years ago. Teachers such as Dara Freire and Pai Adolfo of the Templo de Umbanda Sao Sebastiao in Sao Paulo, Brazil amongst others, have been momentous in their ability to get to the heart of who I am. They helped illuminate buried sexual abuse when I was a very young child as well as the understanding that it didn't begin with me, but is an ancestral pattern. They have been the most transformative years of my life, even though they have been extremely difficult at times. These practices deal with ancestral healing, the forces of nature and spirit communication on a very direct level. They have radically shifted my life in more ways than I can recount. I traveled to Sao Paulo, Brazil in February of 2020 for an intense week of Ceremonies right before Covid 19 forced us all to renegotiate how we live and move in the world. It was long overdue and I have found these last few years to be one of the strongest catalysts for profound growth in my life.

At this point though I have gone back to the basics in many of my practices. I see these practices being commodified and commercialized at an alarming rate right now and I hope that balance can be restored to the people and lineages that have held this knowledge and medicines for many generations. Any medicine when used appropriately can be wonderfully healing, but in the wrong hands or at the wrong time can be poison. The ceremonies I have participated have illuminated many things that I can work on for years to come. I am eternally grateful for the teachers who have held and continue to hold me in sacred space. I am relearning, remembering and honoring being fully present here.

I have found many of these spiritual traditions to be taught in the West with a heavily patriarchal bent, relying on conquering and subduing our desires, body, mind and spirit. I have also found some of them to sound like old school Fundamentalist Religious Zealots! I have been actively seeking a more balanced, embodied lens that does not demonize sex, emotions, desires or the body. I have found so much use in surrendering and feeling to what already is. Not to mention the many teachers, mostly male, but not always, who have been outed as abusers and manipulators of their students: Patthabi Jois, Bikram Choudhury, Kausthub Desikachar, John Friend, Amrit Desai and Yogi Bhajan to name a few. It seems many Yogis, Monks, Catholic priests, politicians and others don't seem to do well when they repress their humanity and sexuality. It also doesn't do much good to be ruled by it either. Add in some power and money and things usually go into the darker aspects of being a human. I think there needs to be more open conversation around these teachers and their practices i.e. what is useful and what is not in what and how they are taught. I have benefitted from some of their teachings while also being aware of what doesn't work for me or what I feel to be harmful. There are teachers and students out there talking about these things and there are people that seem to want to avoid the whole thing.

At this point I have stepped away from the all knowing Guru who is beyond human, even though I have my teachers who I am eternally grateful for. I have found in my experience that those kind of power dynamics set people up to give their power away and to not trust their own internal compass. Teachers, mentors and peers who will keep you accountable and honest are immensely beneficial, but we all have to find our own path and that might not look like our teachers and it shouldn't. We are not them.

As much as I really appreciate all of these styles and methods I continue to practice something which doesn't fit into any of these. We all have to find our balance within life. That is going to look different for everyone. I am more concerned about really being present with life, with my body, with my energy and finding what really works for me and what doesn't.

These days I don't abide to any system strictly, though I practice them with respect to the traditions they come from. I incorporate whatever works in there, because I feel like all these practices are beneficial to me. After years of practicing you have to find what works for you and I consistently find that most public classes can only go so deep, even though being in community with these practices is highly beneficial. The real work happens in your own practice and time. When you go deep into your own practice you will discover your own mysteries that cannot be taught by a teacher.

Along the way I have come to realize that I was lost in the morass of "right" practice, where I had put too many rules upon myself and had created too rigid a scope of being. I answered the call to slow down and be with myself and nature. I let go to a great extent many ideas of how to be and just became. I have recently moved to a place where I feel a deep connection to the land and what it has to communicate to us. From this place has blossomed a new way of being, of listening of practicing. I look for the call to reside and listen now.

I started actively and consciously with my spiritual practices 20 years ago. For the last 16 years I have shared my Body and Energy work with others full time, the last 8 years in my own practice. My work now has been integrating Tantric , Embodiment, Emotional and Somatic Coaching practices to be able to dive into the deeper side of our shadow and unconscious patterns and how that plays out in our lives. It has been a time of reconnecting with pleasure, ease and community. This has been the connecting thread to all of this work for me bringing me back into sovereignty and balance.

My focus is now about guiding people back into reconnection with themselves, with the earth and answer the call of their spirit to be in this world from a radically different place than many of us have been residing. That is what lights me up.

©2021-23 Joshua J Berry Healing Arts. Austin, TX (203) 606 1954. All rights reserved.

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About

Joshua J Berry

Joshua was always interested in movement, music, art and the spiritual world ever since he can remember. When he was younger he concentrated on visual art and music, mainly in the form of illustration, painting, guitar and kept his body active with skateboarding. In his mid twenties he experienced some trying times that pushed him to look at his life and what he was contributing to this world. His oldest brother was also diagnosed with Schizophrenia during this time and eventually committed suicide after years of frequent hospitalizations and medications.
This was also a time where he realized he needed to understand how to be healthy in a more balanced way. He started actively studying: Capoeira, Yoga, Qi Gong, Meditation, dance and eastern philosophy. It awoke in him a love he had long since denied.  He knew there was more of a connection between his emotional body, spirit, mental patterns and his physical being than he had previously known. He decided to make a change and start on a healing path by attending Massage Therapy School.

For the last 17 years he has studied Qi Gong, Yoga, Taoist Internal Arts and looked deeper into Eastern and Indigenous practices in addition to his bodywork studies. He is interested in healing in all its myriad forms. As he got deeper into the Taoist arts he took his studies further into the art of Tai Ji, Yi Jing (also spelled I Ching) and the shamanic roots of China. His Yogic studies, Taoist studies, Bodywork, Energy work and Shamanic studies all inform each other. He is interested in the common themes and the crossover of various traditions. He has also continues to study the communal Indigenous practices such as the elemental, ancestral, ritual and divination traditions inspired by the Dagara people from Burkina Faso, as well as the various plant medicine traditions of the Amazon of Brazil.

Trainings and Certifications

Bodywork
2019 Currently studying SFMA (Selective Movement Functional Movement Assessment)  Prerequisite for level 1 online

2019 CranioSacral Level 1 w/ Kim Painter (Upledger) 25 Hours

2018 Advanced Zero Balancing: Secrets of the Skull with Judith Sullivan 25 Hours

2016 Dermoneuromodulation and Integrated Methods w/ Jeff Rockwell D.C. 12 Hours

2016 Myoskeletal Therapist Certification (Erik Dalton/Freedom From Pain) 80 Hours

2010 Positional Release and the Bowstring with Ed Buresh 18 Hours

2008 Core Zero Balancing 1 &2 w/ David Lauterstein 50 Hours

2008 Advanced Zero Balancing: Alchemy of Touch with Fritz Smith 25 Hours

2007 Chi Nei Tsang level 1& Review w/Jampa Stewart and Shanti Dechen 90 Hours

2006-2007 Lauterstein Conway Massage School 550 Hours



Taoist/Traditional Chinese Medicine/Tai Ji/Qi Gong

2018 Advanced Yi Jing training with Master Yun Xiang Tseng

2012 External Qi Healing (EQH) & Advanced EQH with Master Yun Xiang Tseng 200 Hours

2012 Wu Dang Tai Ji Certification with Master Yun Xiang Tseng

2012 Yi Jing training with Master Yun Xiang Tseng

2011-Present Various Qi Gong and Tai Ji trainings with Master Yun Xiang Tseng

2007- 2010 Various Qi Gong Forms, Traditional Chinese Medicine Theory, Yang StyleTai Ji 24 form, Instructor Certification for The Inner Smile and 6 Healing Sounds w/Jampa Stewart

2009/2010 Tui Na with Yang Xing Fan @ AOMA 12 Hours

Yoga and Movement Training

2019 Lighthouse Yoga Immersion/Asana, Mantra, Meditation, Kriya and Yogic Philosophy w/ Jared Mcann and Henry Winslow (www.lighhouseyogaschool.com) 30 Hours

2019 Dharma and Rocket Yoga Master Classes with Yancy Scot Schwartz       12 Hours

2019 Journey Through From w/ Christina Sell 12 Hours

2018/19 Sacred Geometry Vinyasa and Functional Movement w/ Benjamin Sears 12 Hours

2016-2018 various shorter trainings with  Ambra Vallo (www.ambrasana.com), Gil Perez (Rocket Yoga), Jared Mcann (www.lighhouseyogaschool.com), Rose Erin Vaughan (www.scienceofselfytt.com)

2014- Pranayama and Meditation with Chase Bossart (www.yogawell.com) 32 hours

2013-2015 Yoga Yoga Hatha Yoga Teacher Training 200 Hours

2014 Beginning and Intermediate Sequencing Yoga Asana with Christina Sell 30 Hours

2013 Anatomy Trains for Movement Therapists with Carrie Gaynor 18 Hours

African Spirit Medicine (Dagara Tradition of Burkina Faso)

2013-2015 Introduction to African Spirit Technologies with Malidoma Patrice Some:
A 2.5 year program focusing on elemental, ancestral, ritual, divination and talismanic medicine under the guidance of Dagara Elder Malidoma Patrice Some.

What Our Clients Are Saying

"I've been seeing Joshua for a couple of years now. He provides a safe container, and a surprisingly broad frame of reference. He says just what I need to hear and responds to the changes in my physical experience with uncanny skill. His calm presence and devotion to his practice are complemented by the way (beyond my comprehension) he is able to "read" energy with his hands. My levels of pain and anxiety are reduced considerably and often entirely in these sessions." Pamela L

©2021-23 Joshua J Berry Healing Arts. 2000 west Koenig Lane, Austin, TX 78756 (203) 606 1954. All rights reserved.

My Story

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