Dr. Catherine Anraku Hondorp brings her experience, education and insight to the collaborative project of healing, body, mind, spirit. Utilizing the earliest forms of communication we mammals have in the language of touch, sensation, movement and emotion, her work allows for a safe holding container, for witnessing, repair and reclaiming of our innate qualities of ease, joy and trust in our inner wisdom.
Her personal and professional journey, through personal struggles and doubts, highs and lows, grace and grief, have led her to deeply examine the nature of spirit, body, mind and relationships. Her work is rooted in the unwavering knowing that each person has within them exactly what they need to heal.
Catherine’s love of the body began when she was a child through creative movement. The joy and complete freedom of dancing on stage was when she felt most alive. She was dedicated to this performance art form throughout a professional career as a modern dancer and choreographer in New York City, earning a MFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and performing with many ‘downtown’ modern dance companies. During that time she studied Authentic Movement, Contact Improvisation, Alexander Technique, Pilates, Idea-Kinesis, Rolfing, Traeger and meditation, with master teachers Kathy Grant, Katie Ringer, Irene Dowd and Andre Bernard, Martha Partridge, Collette Barry and Susan Klein, Hanya Holm, Jean Leon Destine and Calvin Holt to name a few.
After her wild bohemian years as a queer Zen artist, choreographer and waitress in New York City she chose to leave ‘The Big Apple’ to enter into chiropractic studies at Logan College of Chiropractic outside of St. Louis, Missouri. This shift of location, vocation and culture was, to put it mildly, quite a challenge, yet it served to focus her energies on her chiropractic studies. Her extracurricular studies included Sacro-Occipital Technique, Applied Kinesiology and post-doctoral studies in Chiropractic Neurology with Dr.Ted Carrick. Significantly, at Logan College she was hired, to work in the anatomy laboratory as a dissector where she gained an intimate knowledge of the complex structures of the human body. She honors the contribution these three individuals gave through the gift of their bodies, which continue to this day to inform sight of her hands.
During her internship Dr. Hondorp was introduced to Network Spinal Analysis (NSA), whose effectiveness and theory was undeniable. NSA engages dynamically with the individual and collective nervous system producing impressive results with absolutely no force. Network Spinal Analysis initiates two spinal waves which through precise contacts along the spine enable a complete reorganization of tension patterns to a higher level of spinal-neural integrity. She excelled at this method and became a master practitioner staffing Transformational Healing Gates from 2012 to 2017.
Following two decades of Network Chiropractic private practice, a personal tragedy drove her to seek a comprehensive understanding of trauma. Through poly-vagal theory and Somatic Experiencing (SE), she gained a practical knowledge of the biology of trauma. By enlisting the body’s self-protective motor responses and completing truncated impulses towards protection, one can restore their natural orientation to pleasure, deepen a felt sense of safety and connection with others. Dr. Hondorp is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). and has assisted with professional trainings in the USA, Canada and Ireland.
It was in beautiful seaside Ericeira, Portugal where she found the ‘missing link’ in her personal and professional work in Internal Family Systems (IFS). IFS is a model of healing that embraces the many aspects of our inner world. Healing happens through appreciating the good intention of all our parts, and restoring secure attachment of our Parts with our essential Self.
Catherine is a Certified Level 3 IFS Practitioner, an experienced IFSI Program Assistant and a devoted IFS client. Through her own experience as a client and through the witnessing of change in her own practice, she can attest to the efficacy and Self empowerment possible. Catherine continues to assist with training programs in the United States, Portugal, The United Kingdom and also online through the magic of the internet.
Catherine also holds the title of Anraku Sensei. She is a Soto Zen priest and Authorized Teacher in the White Plum Lineage of Taizen Maezumi Roshi and a Dharma heir of Roshi Enkyo O’Hara. Anraku was the founder of The Zen Center on Main Street in Northampton, Massachusetts which was a dedicated Zen temple overlooking the center of town for over 10 years. She served many years as Buddhist chaplain for Smith College, Hampshire College, and the Northampton VA. In 2011 she co-founded Two Streams Zen, with Ryūmon H. Baldoquín Sensei.
Two Streams Zen is a dedicated practice space for People of Color, where all people are welcome, and the Teachings of the Buddha are made accessible to those who come through our doors seeking Sanity, Community, Healing, and an End to Suffering. Two Streams Zen acknowledges with gratitude and sorrow that the land on which our home temple is seated is the ancestral lands of the Mohican, Nipmuc and Pocumtuc people.
