About

education

Qualifications

I have an Education BA, a Business MBA and over 1400h of Coaching & Somatic Training, certified in Brazil and in the U.S.

Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP):
Somatic Experiencing®, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, is a naturalistic form of healing that helps clients learn how to settle and release physiological activation from the body. SE employs awareness of body sensation to help people “renegotiate” and heal rather than re-live or re-enact trauma. Its guidance of the bodily “felt sense” allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged.
SE may employ touch (physical or energetic) in support of the renegotiation process. It “titrates” experiences—meaning it breaks them down into small, incremental steps—rather than evoking catharsis, which can overwhelm the regulatory mechanisms of the organism. SE can result in a number of benefits, such as relief of traumatic stress symptoms, increased resiliency, and resourcefulness.
RLT Relational Coach:
Relational Life Therapy is a psycho-educational and therapeutic approach developed by Terry Real that addresses both individual psychological patterns and couple dynamics. RLT focuses on helping individuals and couples move from adversarial positions to collaborative partnership by identifying and transforming the adaptive strategies each partner developed in childhood that no longer serve their adult relationship. This approach integrates trauma healing, attachment theory, and practical communication skills to help couples create more intimate, authentic, and empowered relationships.
VITA Sex, Love & Relationship Coach:
The VITA method, developed by Layla Martin, integrates modern neurobiology, holistic healing, and coaching with ancient wisdom and teachings from Tantra, Taoism, and Sacred Sexuality. VITA stands for “The Vital and Integrated Tantric Approach” and is particularly relevant for supporting individuals and couples in reclaiming their erotic aliveness, expanding their capacity for pleasure, and developing sacred sexuality practices.
I’m currently a Senior Teacher on faculty in this training program.
NeuroAffective Touch® Graduate (in-training):
NeuroAffective Touch®, developed by Dr. Aline LaPierre, is a professional psychobiological approach that integrates the key elements of somatic psychotherapy, attachment and developmental theory, and affective and interpersonal neurobiology. Polyvagal-informed, NAT uses intentional, mindful touch to bring unconscious memories held in the body into conscious awareness. Through offering direct communication and support to the body at the nonverbal level—where we all receive our first relational imprints—NeuroAffective Touch addresses lifelong emotional and relational traumas, helping clients reconnect to the wholeness of their relational capacity.

Ontological Coach:
Ontological coaching is a transformational approach that focuses on an individual’s “way of being” rather than just their surface behavior or actions. Rooted in ontology (the philosophical study of being), it helps people recognize how their internal interpretations, language, emotions, and physical states shape their reality and limit their potential.

Other trainings and meaningful lived-experiences that inform my work:

Certified Breath Coach: using breathwork for nervous system regulation
Nonviolent Communication: 2 years studying and practicing in dedicated groups
Spirit Mediumship: 2-year long training in Brazil studying Allan Kardec’s Spiritism lineage
Candomble Spiritual Community: 7 years of active religious learnings and devotional practices as a non-initiate with the Yoruba Orisha Tradition in Brazil
Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship: I grew up following his teachings, and attending service at the SRF on and off until my early twenties
Altered states of consciousness through breathwork: I’ve been a student, practitioner and facilitator of deeply spiritual breathwork experiences since 2017
Community organizing and social activism for racial democracy: 7 years of intense & fierce work with a Brazilian group of activists devoted to sharing racialized education and community organizing promoting racial democracy.

I’m fascinated by the possibilities of individual and relational healing, empowerment, and liberation that lie in the human body in its wholeness - the Soma.

Hi, I’m Marina Nabão, Somatic Trauma Healer and Couple’s Coach dedicated to supporting people through a trauma-informed journey of somatic healing and empowerment.

I offer my clients a loving, compassionate, gentle, and judgment-free container of embodiment coaching and somatic trauma healing so they can access deeper layers of their relational wisdom, creativity, vitality, focus, erotic aliveness and leadership.

Working with hundreds of clients worldwide, both in my healing & coaching practice and also as a Senior Teacher on faculty at Layla Martin’s VITA™ Coaching Certification, I have witnessed the power of somatic embodiment as a healing and empowering path.

You might be wondering how I got here...

Let me share my story

I’m a Brazilian, biracial, black, cis woman living in the SF Bay Area, CA.

Daughter of a psychologist and a philosopher, curiosity and the search for a broader understanding of life is my natural state. So I’m not surprised that my own search to understand my inner world and grow in all areas of life – professional, relational, affective, sexual, and spiritual – have taken me on a very rich journey!

I did decades of therapy – both talk and somatic-based approaches. I wouldn’t stand here as I am if it weren’t for the support of those professionals I had the privilege of working with.

I also participated in women’s circles, did community service, was a fierce activist for racial democracy, and joined different spiritual communities.

Workshops, retreats, books, online courses… I was always doing something to help me make sense of this life and deal with my limitations and struggles.

Meanwhile, professionally, I was an ESL teacher before I went into the corporate world for 14 years, developing business partnerships worldwide. My career as an executive was solid and prosperous, but it certainly didn’t fulfill my soul.

I knew there was something different in my future, but I just didn’t know what it was.

Eventually, I came across the holistic sexuality universe (what we call neo-Tantra & Sexual Tao in the West) and experienced an entirely new world of awareness and understanding.

It was a huge shift, as I finally touched deeper layers of my body-mind-spirit’s wisdom and power. It was, and still is, fascinating!

In 2017, I made the decision to leave the corporate career and devote this new and exciting chapter of my life to work with somatic healing and embodied empowerment.

Since then, I have been certified as an Ontological Coach and as a VITA™ Sex, Love, and Relationships Coach. I’m also a SEP – Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, having fully completed the 3-year Somatic Experiencing® Training for Trauma Healing as a way to deepen my healing skills and holding capacity with the clients I’m lucky to be working with.

It feels very appropriate to be deepening my couple’s coaching skills inside of Terry Real’s Relational Life Institute, as I’ve always believed that healing must serve connection – to self, to others and to this planet we call home.

All these trainings, combined with my own lived experiences and ancestral medicine, are the foundation of my current practice, as they beautifully prepared me to support the somatic healing of trauma & the integration of mind, body, emotions, language, eroticism and spirituality.

2017 was also the year that during a trekking trip in the Chilean Patagonia, I met David, the love of my life. We dated long-distance, traveling back and forth from Ribeirão Preto, SP and the Bay Area, CA.

We got married in 2019 and today I live with him, our baby Isabella and our dog Jessie in the US.

Lineage

In Honor and Gratitude

To the great Goddess and the spiritual wisdom that transcends, holds and guides us, regardless of what we call it.

To my female ancestry: my mother Lúcia Nabão, my sister Teresa Moraes and my grandmothers Maria Cacilda Amaral and Gessy Nabão. I am grateful for you teaching me so much about being in the world with dignity, integrity, devotion, fierceness and leadership.

To my husband, David Becker, who shows me daily that gentle, generous, honest, dedicated and vulnerable love transforms our soul and has the power to change the world.

To my preschool teacher Brisa, for reminding me to always cultivate my joy of living.

To Teresa Von Gal, my Bodytalk therapist for six years, who supported, welcomed, encouraged and helped so much the blossoming of the woman that I am today.

To my teachers, mentors, coaches and facilitators who promote the expansion of consciousness in ways as diverse as complementary: Layla Martin, Nikka Karli, Káritas Ribas, Matheus Ribas, Gustavo Gitti, Fábio Rodrigues, Minke de Vos, Master Mantak Chia, Byron Katie, Hiro Boga, Nisha Moodley, Francine Kelly, Dave Berger, Peter A. Levine, Ariel Giaretto, Terry Real, Abi Blakeslee and so many others that influenced me so much.

To my extended family, the friends who, far or near, give me a huge sense of belonging and affection: Sônia, Hermínio and family, Teresa, Roberta, Rita, Simila, Paula, Monica, Cristina, Tatiane, Lilo, Fabinho, Shareid , Luciana, Celiane, Graziela, Bianca, Vanessa, Teófilo, Ana Rosa, Fernanda, Melissa, Yara and Caicó.

To the artists who made this site beautiful. Rogério Shareid developed my beautiful brand; Carolina Motta, Letícia Cherman and Jonathan Wilkins photographed me in Brazil and Amy Thompson photographed me in the US.

Finally, I thank Marluci, Glauce, Igor, Nilse and Flávia, the first five clients I had the privilege of working with during my first coaching training and who taught me much more than they can even imagine!