about

Welcome! I’m Jaya

My path to embodiment has been a long and winding one. After many years of travel searching for my way home to my own body and spirit, I left a career in the federal government working on poverty reduction to study and practice yoga and energy therapy full time. Then everything changed when I unexpectedly became a mother to a son who would need ongoing medical care for years. Supporting him through his own trauma led me to train and certify in Somatic Experiencing®, and what began as a mother's love grew into decades of practice. My son is thriving today, and I now guide people from around the world out of survival mode and back into the fullness of who they are.

That lived path is now backed by more than 18 years of practice and 10,000 client sessions as a Master Somatic Therapist and Nervous System Specialist. I hold a Master's in Peace Studies, am a Certified Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and have trained in energy therapy for over a decade. My work weaves Somatic Experiencing™, energy work, and clear, grounded guidance to help clients re-integrate the parts of themselves stuck in fight, flight, fawn or freeze, releasing self-sabotaging patterns and reclaiming embodied freedom. I facilitate retreats and trainings internationally from my second home base in Ubud, Bali, where the island's stillness and sacred rhythms hold space for especially deep integration work.

"Your pain is the portal. It's time to step through, into embodied, alive freedom."

Certified Somatic Experiencing™ Practitioner

Energy Therapy Trained, 10+ years

10,000+ client sessions

18+ years experience

International retreat & training facilitator

Masters in Peace Studies

What Jaya Specializes In

  • Mind-Body Patterns

    Mental and emotional patterns rooted in developmental, acute or complex trauma, and how they show up in physical health.

  • Intergenerational Trauma

    Inherited ancestral and developmental patterns that continue to shape your wellbeing today.

  • Altered & Spiritual States

    Psychedelic, post-surgical, out-of-body and spiritual states as a doorway to deeper self-awareness and embodied living.

about somatics

Why the body, not just the mind

Somatic therapy is a scientifically supported, body-based path to trauma healing. It works with what your body is still holding: sensations in tight or numb muscles, images from memories that don’t integrate, emotions that were left unexpressed, and defensive or protective responses that never got to be completed. Overwhelming events or ongoing stressful experiences can leave parts of us trapped in fight, flight, fawn or freeze, whose effects show up in daily life as chronic fatigue or pain, inability to sleep or digest well, endocrine and immune system issues, emotional shutdown or flooding, hypervigilance, and the avoidance of any experience that might stir what has been left unintegrated.

Somatic work gently strengthens your nervous system's capacity to learn to self-regulate, helping the body finish what it was never able to and release what it is no longer helpful to carry. Somatic Experiencing™, developed by Dr. Peter Levine in the early 1970s, is especially effective for restoring a felt sense of safety in the body, reconnecting us with resources and a sense of empowerment in life. It supports survivors and witnesses of accidents, medical procedures, birth trauma, abuse of various kinds, and developmental trauma, or anyone who has been overwhelmed by an event and lacked an empathic witness to walk alongside its integration.

Jaya Hollohan standing beside Dr. Peter Levine

Jaya with Dr. Peter Levine in Melbourne, Australia, May ‘26

How It Can Help Me, or Someone I Know

  • Nervous System Regulation

    Restoring balance and overall wellbeing through parasympathetic down-regulation.

  • Anxiety, Rage & Depression

    Easing the intensity and unpredictability of emotion through body-based work.

  • PTSD & Trauma Recovery

    Finding safety and greater ease in the body by releasing stored trauma.

  • Post-Surgical Recovery

    Healing from surgical trauma and lingering anesthetic states.

  • Better Sleep

    Deeper, more restful sleep through increased vagal tone.

  • Reduced Stress

    Lowering chronic stress and cortisol for better long-term health.

  • Clear Brain Fog

    Greater focus and cognitive function by exiting survival mode.

  • Emotional Resilience

    Building nervous system capacity to manage highs and lows.

  • Spiritual Awakening Support

    Sustainable, embodied growth and deeper connection with your inner Self.

How Jaya Works

  • 01

    Track the body

    Every session starts with revealing the client's patterns that are feeding pain or blocks and how we can best work somatically to integrate ill-adapted patterns.

  • 02

    Complete the response

    We do gentle somatic exercises, and energy therapy as needed, to surface thwarted fight, flight, fawn and freeze responses to support their discharge and invite integration.

  • 03

    Integrate & embody

    New space and capacities arise that support greater safety and resources within. Homework is given that invites sustainable integration.

How Somatic Experiencing™ works:

Somatic Experiencing™ developed by Peter Levine PhD in the late 1970s, helps to assess where a person is "stuck" in the fight, flight or freeze responses, so that related energy can be discharged and integrated back into the nervous system.

This modality is incredibly instrumental in resolving fixated physiological states resulting from acute, developmental and complex trauma.

Watch this video to understand the effects of trauma on the nervous system and stress physiology, and how Somatic Experiencing works with it to support somatic trauma integration.