About
Alexis Slutzky, MA, MFT, is a facilitator and educator working in healing and social change. With over twenty-five years of experience, she accompanies individuals and groups through transition and change. Her practice integrates depth psychology, somatics, trauma work, mindfulness, ecology, dream work, grief tending, and justice frameworks. She teaches at Antioch University as adjunct faculty, focusing on decolonizing mental health, and is affiliated with InsightLA. Slutzky has worked with youth and adults in diverse settings including schools, universities, detention centers, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and wilderness programs.
Teaching focus
Alexis Slutzky's teaching focus, drawn from the source profile, sits in the Insight and Secular traditions. Several threads come up: compassion training that doesn't collapse into pity or burnout; trauma-aware mindfulness that pays attention to the nervous system as part of the practice; and grief and loss as practice doorways rather than detours. On talks, the style is closer to thinking-along than presenting. Alexis Slutzky works with whatever shows up in the room rather than reading from notes, which is part of why these talks land as conversational instead of scripted. Short pauses, longer sits, and questions that come back to direct experience are usual. Listed specialties on the source profile include trauma, grief, relationships, teens, seniors. The bigger move Alexis Slutzky keeps making is back toward attention itself: what's happening, how it's being held, and what gets in the way. That keeps the teaching close to practice rather than drifting into commentary about practice. For talks, schedules, and longer essays, the affiliated organization's page is where the live material lives. Alexis Slutzky's sessions tend to keep returning to the body, to breath, and to the felt quality of attention as the steady ground that the rest rests on.
Background
Alexis Slutzky teaches in the Insight and Secular traditions. The teaching home is InsightLA. From the teacher's own profile: Alexis, MA, MFT (she/her) is a threshold guide, facilitator & educator working at the confluence of healing and social change. For over twenty five years, she has been accompanying youth and adults, individually and in groups, in times of transition and change, to reimagine relationships and deepen intimacy with the self, each other, the natural world and the mystery. Her work, rooted in peace making, place making and living culture, weaves together decades of experience in depth oriented practices and frameworks - including depth psychology, somatics, trauma work, mindfulness, ecology, dream work, grief tending, ancestral inheritance, nature intimacy, equity and social justice, permaculture and rites of passage. Alexis is committed to an eco-social collective liberation and has partnered with a variety of people, communities and organizations to create spaces of deep listening, authentic communication and meaningful community practices. Including with non-profit organizations, retreat centers, women combat veterans, assisted living facilities, community mental health clinics, public and private schools and universities, juvenile detention centers, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, international peace projects, a variety of wilderness settings and private practice. Her work is informed by her own healing journey, the importance of containment and accompaniment, anti-racism, anti-oppression and justice frameworks and a long apprenticeship to the wild within and without. Alexis brings presence, compassion and humor to the human experience. Alexis received her master’s degree in Depth Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute (where she teaches from time to time), and has been licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist. She serves as Adjunct Faculty at Antioch University where she teaches courses at the intersection of social justice, psychology, and ecology, specifically Decolonizing Mental Health. Alexis is a council trainer with Beyond Us and Them, and trained with School of Lost Borders and The Ojai Foundation (now Topa Institute), where she previously served as a guide. Alexis is also an ordained interfaith minister and as a ceremonialist and celebrant she officiates weddings, funerals, baby blessings, coming of age and other important rituals to honor life’s passages. She is a former yoga teacher, truck driver, psychotherapist and natural builder, with the heart to return to her days of beekeeping. A descendant of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Ashkenazi and Germanic relatives, Alexis lives in the Santa Ynez River watershed in the chapparal woodlands of Southern California in the traditional territory of the Chumash people. In the Insight stream Alexis Slutzky works inside, the emphasis is on direct attention to body, feeling tone, and mind, alongside the brahmaviharas and an ongoing investigation of how clinging and aversion arise. Talks tend to be conversational rather than scripted, and there's room for sila and ethics to be talked about as part of practice rather than as a separate topic.
Lineage
Alexis Slutzky teaches as a monastic teacher in the Insight and Secular traditions. The institutional home, per the source listing, is InsightLA, and that's where most of the public teaching schedule and any retreat offerings will be posted. The Insight lineage in the West runs through teachers like Mahasi Sayadaw, U Ba Khin, Anagarika Munindra, and Dipa Ma into the founders of IMS, Spirit Rock, and the regional centers, and most contemporary Insight teachers position themselves somewhere in that broad family.
What to expect
On a class or retreat with Alexis Slutzky, the basic shape is short instruction, longer sittings, and some Q&A. The container is shaped by InsightLA, so format details, fees, and access policies follow that organization's norms. Expect plenty of silence, less talking-at-you than you might think, and an emphasis on letting the practice do its work rather than chasing experiences. For exact dates, registration, and any sliding-scale or scholarship information, There's usually a short Q&A window and, on retreats, optional teacher interviews where students can bring specific questions about their practice. There's usually a short Q&A window and, on retreats, optional teacher interviews where students can bring specific questions about their practice.
