About Us
Body of the Earth is a proudly black & queer owned natural, holistic health care clinic featuring hands-on healing therapies and other modalities of therapeutic bodywork as well as a range of complimentary treatments. We strive to be attainable for all people and embrace patients of every shape and size, age and diverse racial, ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. We treat illness but pride ourselves on being champions of prevention. We teach lifestyle skills for vitality during all stages of life. We offer patient-oriented care for acute and chronic conditions, as well as for general wellness and stress relief. We foster a holistic approach, considering the body, the mind, and the spirit in tandem. We work cohesively with conventional Western Medicine, and also brilliantly with other complementary and alternative options. All are welcome here.
Our Team
Crafting spaces for community!
Ty (he/him or any pronoun) is a resident of Minneapolis where he builds his own vibrant community overflowing with loved ones, creation, & inspiration while advancing his professional wellness skillset to best serve his Ikigai (and, in turn, You!).
Tyler has no shortage of world experience. His introduction to adult life began in the Navy as an Aviator. After 7 years of service he continued on to the corporate sector & earned his MBA.
Through all of that travel & experience, Ty found himself increasingly on a path of mindfulness & intention. He solidified his own intentions & direction by earning his Massage Practitioner Certification* in 2018.
He truly understands the implications that stress can have on a person. His focus in practice is to help the client restore &strengthen the mind/body connection through a broad offering of Therapeutic, Integrative Bodywork approach.
TL:DR Tyler believes that every individual comes to the table with different needs, goals, & experience.His goal is to join you in your own personal journey towards health & wellness and provide aide however he can, within the scope of his practice.
Energy through movement. Nurturing the Community.
Andréa (she/her) Greetings!
I’m Andréa, Drea and/or Dandara. Open to whichever resonates. I’m a body work practitioner, movement and music artist and community nurturer. Here, I hold space to honor your body's request to slow down, notice, map, melt, deeply breathe...
My experience as a dancer and Capoeirista significantly influences my trainings, learning and approach in therapeutic touch. I appreciate sharing the tools and resources that support and nourish my own well-being and may benefit others.
After a check in and hearing your needs, I will focus on the areas where your body is calling your attention while also acknowledging and honoring your mental and emotional space at the moment.
My services include Swedish and Thai massage and Fire cupping. Within these techniques you may experience deep tissue compression, joint rotation, passive or collaborative stretching, acupressure, rocking and/or jostling.
I use an integrative approach with the intention to remind your body of its connectivity. At times, I may incorporate sound, rocking, heat or holds.
I deeply listen to the pace and receptiveness I perceive from the body I'm working with, and also encourage clients to honestly and continuously advocate for what you need throughout. I will do what I can to adapt.
Testimonials I've received are that I have a firm touch and a gentle approach. I also extend an enthusiastic invitation to nap, to twitch, to snore, to drool here.
Blossoming, joyous, warm, whimsical welcome!
Some words from Caspian (they/them): I have trained with Heartwood Institute of Integrative Medicine and Body Intelligence, receiving my craniosacral certificate from Heartwood in 2017. Now I cherish practicing how when we again listen to the quiet voices of body we can again hear the quiet voices in community, so that no person nor no organ needs to be louder than they want to have their message heard.
I practice on the homelands of the Dakhóta people and then the HoChunk and Anishinaabe people whose continual care of land means we have a place to meet for craniosacral. My practice is slowly being informed by my heritage practices as I reconnect with my ancestral ways of healing. My ancestors are people who were in relationship with the places that are now known as Sweden, Germany, Czechia, and Hungary. I offer to people of all identities.
I cherish being part of people creating time to value their relationships with themselves, so please know that I delight in helping with any barriers to sessions. Sessions can be for prevention or treatment. I value prevention and undoing the medical industrial complex notion that people have to break to receive support.
We are all creative people and it is fun to be creative together to tailor your session for you. I am so deeply grateful for the choices you have made to find yourself here, interested in connecting. Stories are important and the stories we have about our bodies(bodies that we live with), tell our bodies, and the stories our bodies try to tell us are very meaningful.
A craniosacral session with me is like having a tea date with your body and the many relationships that you are. Craniosacral is a gentle hands on and fully clothed session that is a time to practice full-body listening and full-body relating while on a massage table. Craniosacral is akin to traditional bone and touch practices, and what-is-now-called chiropractic practices. Craniosacral, however, returns us to slowness. When my hands are on your clothed body, we both listen and wait. Body will make the adjustments needed at the pace that is aligned with wild rhythms. Craniosacral can hydrate myofascia connective tissue, increase fluidity and flexibility, support vitality expression, unwind and uncouple conditioned patterns from authentic embodiment, nourish intuitive living, and support returning to being in relationship with life.
The stories that arise from listening in this way can be meaningful information for re-connecting sources of dis-connection. Dis-ease, dis-order, and dis-comfort can arise when communication and relating are blocked, compressed, twisted, or distorted.
Feeling more deeply and more fully the relationships that bodies live, and feeling part of those relationships again, can grow into living healing relationships with people, ancestors, blessings, community, helpers, nature, water, dreams, aliveness, creativity, collective liberation, mysteries, and life.
When we can feel our aliveness more fully, we can know how to respect the aliveness in all, and we can feel our impact. Creating time to listen with curiosity and compassion to the many relationships and stories that you are is what nourishes personal and collective healing. May you leave each session feeling like your favorite song is dancing alongside of you.
Learning from life's journey!
Dakota (he/him) seeks to bring harmony to the body and spirit to individuals from all walks of life, with a focus on the Black population. Recently studied at Northwestern Health Science University with a background in tech, he relishes addressing the problems presented to him. He recognizes that each person and their body is unique in their histories, issues and needs and takes it as an opportunity to learn and about them and see each encounter with new eyes.
Practicing Swedish, Therapeutic, Trigger Point therapy, Reiki and more to come, Dakota aims to provide that in a safe, open space in order to help you heal and to facilitate your progress into a more comfortable life. He believes we live in a society deprived of healthy, judgment free touch and wants to change that!
Sweetness and solidarity, sweet family!
An introduction from Junauda Petrus (she/her): I’m an artist, writer, creativity coach and intuitive tarot reader. I come from an ancestral cosmology of African-Caribbean-Diaspora-Witchiness that I have spent most of my life re-wilding myself back into alignment with through my own spiritual journey. Tarot, meditation, astrology, and spiritual readings have been supportive and healing for me at times of great change and uncertainty. I’m so grateful to offer these sessions to my community.
I’m so happy to be joining the Body of the Earth team as Witch in Residence and to be giving readings. I’ll be utilizing tarot, intuition, embodiment and creative consultation for clients both in person and virtually. This is a part of my creative and intuitive consulting practice I call EBT Creativity & Consulting.
Explorative Black Tarot (EBT) Creativity & Consulting supports individuals with personal guidance centered on embodiment, ancestral listening, intuition, emotional grounding, and tarot divination.
In these sessions you can come with a question, issue or project that you would like meaningful, healing insights and loving, intuitive divination support with. These sessions are a soft space to ground and explore yourself and your sacred and unique offerings to the world.
Whether for personal, spiritual or professional reasons these sessions will cultivate understanding and empowerment for you and your path towards self-acceptance and personal liberation.
The Body Holds The Answer
Vie Boheme (she/her): is a multimodal performance artist, yoga instructor and dedicated wellness practitioner whose approach to massage therapy is as creative as it is intuitive and attuned. With a background in music, theater, dance and synchronous breath work through yoga, she brings a unique sensitivity to the body’s emotional and energetic landscape. Her sessions are an invitation to return to center.
Guided by a performer's understanding of the body, Vie offers bodywork that listens before it acts. Her touch is informed and nurturing - crafted to support each client in reconnecting with their own internal rhythm.
Healing Is No Triffling Matter
Imagine Joy (any/all pronouns):
As a professional dancer, yogi, and certified body/energy worker (Reiki Level 2), I’m deeply passionate about the subject of holistic well-BEING. I offer a number of different modalities to create an optimal experience. Whether Swedish, myofascial release, deep-tissue, kneading, and/or other techniques (including stretching), I customize each session to address specific concerns.
I approach body/energy work as an art form and spiritual practice. Each experience is unique, as I invite myself to be fully present to wholeheARTedly communicate with the vessel I am supporting. The body houses memories and as someone that experienced many traumas early-on in life, I understand how important it is to provide a safe/brave space to contain (and transmute) the various things that may come up in a session--as Toni Cade Bambara once wrote, "wholeness [healing] is no trifling matter."
My primary intention and focus is to co-create experiences that heal and empower Black community as well as QBIPOC communities; however, my work is available to all bodies/identities as I am happy to share my love for justice. Community organizing and social activism brought me to this work: radically caring for myself and others is one of the many ways I fight back against set systems of domination.
I also have certifications in the Gyrotonic Method as well as Gyrokinesis: both are movement methods that focus on three-dimensional spinal motion and incorporate principles of yoga, dance, and Tai Chi. Alongside Thai Massage, I engage the knowledge (particularly breath work) from said practices to help the body, mind, and spirit experience more ease.
I am present with you.
I meet your body where it’s at in each moment.
Rebecca Benstead (she/her):
Living in the modern world, many of us have lost contact with our bodies. Accustomed to unresolved trauma, complicated emotions and pain, we feel disconnected and scattered, living so much in our minds we forget they’re connected to a body at all.
As a multidisciplinary practitioner, I honor both Eastern and Western modalities—and believe in both preservation and progress.
By using ancient bodywork traditions alongside modern massage techniques, I help people connect to themselves and each other.
As an Asian-American woman, I know self-care cannot solve systemic issues—especially those like ancestral trauma, grief and fear that disproportionally impact people of color and historically marginalized bodies and minds.
However, through powerful lineage practices in movement, stillness and bodywork, I can help you find a deeper sense of home within your own body. If you’ve never been home, let’s explore what that feels like together!