Meet Emma J., a captivating artist-healer-scholar on a 30-year quest pondering, "How do the experiences of stress and love shape our body-mind-spirit, relationships, and communities?". Initially delving into this inquiry as a scientist and educator, Emma has since transitioned into the realms of art and healing, using gorgeous acrylic paint on expansive canvases to explore the essence of life itself. Each painting is a narrative, a complete journey culminating when its story is recalled, revealing its most exquisite gifts. Emma affectionately names them "archetypal portraits", each serving as an artifact, reminder, and roadmap for transformation.

Hailing from Bulls & Ngāti Parewahawaha of Aotearoa (New Zealand), Emma's journey is informed by her settler & Māori upbringing and her own body - HoH/Deaf she listens with her eyes and body-reception of energy fields. Life has taken her around the globe, currently finding a home as an Ocean Nomad nestled in Corvallis, OR, with her life-long honey Eric Brown. Her academic pursuits interwove neuroscience, physiology, psychology, biophysics, sociology, and ethnic studies, spanning universities in Aotearoa, Australia, and the USA. Supported by esteemed institutions like NSF and private foundations, Emma's research branched into diverse scientific realms: endocrinology (hormones), biophysics (electromagnetic signatures of cells, regions, and organs), neuroscience (study of nervous system), and ethology (study of behaviors in the wild). It is in collaboration with many awesome students, mentors, and colleagues that we have some answers to offer - see here. And, deliciously, so much more remains a mystery. While the frameworks and tools of western science alone are powerful, they are limited by scope and inference. However, when woven with more intentional and relational frameworks, tools, and practices we can move into another world of possibility, full-bodied realizations, and non-linear multidimensional reality.

Now removed from academia, Emma is fully embracing the power of art, somatic sciences, and co-creation for herself and others. She is certified in Intentional Creativity® methods of art creation and healing, a certified practitioner of The Resilience Toolkit® (a liberatory somatic method for settling the nervous system and tending wounds), and Art Therapies. Through her newly birthed biz sense8.co, she offers workshops and accompaniment for individuals and groups in '360o of being' and practices that support locating home/safety within the body, healing, re-membering, and re-vitalizing each person's unique body-way of shining in their own light & song, and in relationship with self and others.

Her compass true north points toward finding particular ways for individuals and groups to re- member their unique and shared humanity, harmony, beauty & Joy - a waiata/song that has always been present but can be buried by life’s challenges, media barrage, and oppressive social structures that entrain us all. Emma believes that a key step to liberation for all, is for each of us to become attuned to our own body, experiences, lineages, and stories - all of

which carry the gold and gifts we are each here to offer. Emma works to co-create brave creative spaces; supporting individuals and com-unity, centered on joyful and responsible relationships to past, present and futures of all people.

There is space for each of our bright stars to shine.