Now accepting new clients
Janna Browning is a Trauma-Informed Expressive Arts and Embodiment Facilitator.
Specialties & Focus
I specialize in supporting people through life changes and identity shifts using trauma-informed expressive arts and embodiment practices. My work often focuses on role loss and renewal, non-bereavement grief, nervous system regulation, and meaning-making when old ways of being no longer fit.
Rather than diagnosing or fixing, I work collaboratively and experientially—using creative and somatic approaches to help clarity, agency, and direction emerge over time.
Training & Professional
Background
My work is grounded in over two decades of training and experience in trauma-informed drama therapy, expressive arts practice, and community-based storytelling.
I hold a BFA in Acting from Emerson College in Boston and a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Drama Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. My background bridges clinical training, creative practice, and embodied approaches to healing and meaning-making.
In addition to my formal education, I have pursued extensive post-graduate training in trauma-informed expressive arts, embodiment, and parts-based approaches, including trainings led by Richard Schwartz, Linda Thai, Peter Levine, and Cathy Malchiodi.
In California, I trained and worked with Armand Volkas through Healing the Wounds of History, an internationally recognized expressive arts program that brings together groups impacted by collective and historical trauma. This work included facilitating dialogue and healing with Armenians and Turks around the legacy of the Armenian Genocide, as well as work addressing the historical traumas of Palestinians and Israelis, communities in Northern Ireland, and the racial wounds of the United States.
I have also worked with Community Performance International, developing large-scale community story performances that use theatre and storytelling to build connection across lines of difference. Through this work, I helped create community-based performances throughout the South and developed programming for schools. In 2011, I co-founded the StoryTown Program in Jonesborough, Tennessee, which continues to bring storytelling and community healing into public spaces.
Alongside this work, I bring my drama therapy and expressive arts background into grief-tending and ritual-based practices, facilitating embodied, trauma-informed processes that support individuals and communities in honoring loss, releasing what can no longer be carried, and making space for renewal. This work draws from expressive arts therapy, ritual practice, and ancestral Celtic grief traditions.
I am the co-founder of Integrative StoryWorks, an organization dedicated to healing individual and collective wounds through personal story, and StoryWander Travel, which offers story-based small-group travel experiences centered on cultural exchange and meaning-making.