Hello! I'm Kalil Cohen, High Priestexx of Zivan

What is Zivan? 

Zivan is the Hebrew word for Aliveness; Zivan is a mantra, a Northstar. Zivan taps into the knowledge my ancestors held for being in healthy, sustainable connection with their ecosystems. Today, living in an ecocidal culture, cultivating Aliveness is a profound and radical act of scrappy survivor genius & love. And so we consistently aim toward Aliveness, where Sustainability and Beauty merge into the Oneness.

Who is Kalil?

I am a shape shifter, a magical genderqueer being of glittery brilliance, and a representative of the Divine Masculine in a non-binary and non-dualistic physical form. I am a High Priestexx, helping connect us to our ancestors and descendants in the sacred Temple of the Everywhen.

I am the grandchild of Holocaust survivors raised within the malnurturance of a tightknit Jewish community, where all I knew was avoidant attachment and dissociation as our coping strategy for the trauma of repeated genocide during thousands of years of Diaspora. Then there was growing up trans and nonbinary in the 90s, coming out 20 years ago as a queer & genderqueer unicorn. Here is woven complex PTSD and neurospicy brilliance.

And so, forged in this fire, I bring gifts of somatic healing as a practice of liberation, as a tool for time travel to heal old traumas lodged in our bodies, and as a place of play and delight - especially for those of us who are multiply marginalized, carriers of ancestral and personal trauma. Magicians with incredible power to heal ourselves, our communities, and our world.

My life’s work is to be one thread weaving connection in this world - to integrate our fractured selves, our fractured human communities, and our fractured environments so that we each shine our unique light as a sacred part of the Oneness.

What Zivan Offers:

• Rituals for Resilience, the podcast, leads you through short rituals to connect with ancestors, wise Parts, and your future Self.
• Playshops to create magick by harnessing the power of delight and curiosity.
• Parts Work rituals and courses to integrate our wise survivor Parts, our badass creative Parts, and our scrappy Parts that seem to repeatedly blow up our lives.
• 1:1 Life Navigation support to cultivate the somatic practices and daily rituals that will build your resilience and support the full expression of your brilliance.
• Mediation & Facilitation work that integrates bodies, trauma patterns, and magick with specific communication tools that help our Parts feel safe.

Who I work with:

Multiply marginalized badass survivors who have unpacked some of their trauma, and are ready to build resilience to show up as tender and raw humans in the world. If you've found yourself here, this is probably you 😘

You have a fairly detailed map of your internal systems and clarity on some shadows, as well as a cultivated connection to Self. Now what? In some ways things are fundamentally better. And in some ways, it’s the same ol’ shit, except worse because your eyes are open and yet the patterns keep repeating. Together, we are creating new patterns as sacred gifts to ourselves and our ecosystems.

Together we ask:

• What rituals of resilience are sustainable, effective, and adaptive to the current ecology?
• How do we learn the terrain of our yeses and no’s together, to be in the ongoing practice of consent, of boundary setting and energetic hygiene?
• How do I fall in love with my own abundance, with my true fecundity?

You may be thinking...

“Kalil says ze works with folks who have complex PTSD (CPTSD) / significant trauma but… my trauma isn’t that bad. Sure ____ _____ ____ happened to me, and I’m navigating the world with multiple marginalized identities, but there are SO MANY people who have had it so much worse. I wouldn’t really call my experiences trauma, I just felt unsafe a lot…”

I get it! I didn’t label any of my life experiences as traumatic until a decade ago, and I didn’t identify as someone with CPTSD until last year. But my body already knew. 

Some of the evidence: 

• I’d be having a conflict with someone I love and my mind would go blank - I lost the capacity to think clearly, to remember what my perspective was, to feel my body at all. 
• I would receive feedback like “It’s hard for me when you ____.” and I would hear “You are the worst partner (friend, employee…) in the world!”
• A partner controlling my time and behavior, and superimposing their version of reality over mine as The Truth felt comforting, familiar, safe.

Sound familiar? If any of this resonates, I can help you. I have never been “diagnosed” with CPTSD, nor do I want to be. You don’t need to be labeled or pathologized, but it is useful to know that persistent personal and ancestral trauma changes your nervous system and often causes us to over-react to benign reality and/or to under-react to dangerous threats.

I have been there, and still go back there when things get overwhelming. And I have significantly increased the level of stress and conflict my nervous system can handle while staying regulated, and decreased the amount of time it takes me to re-regulate when things go past that capacity to tolerate stress. I can help you do the same through a combination of somatics, IFS Parts Work, and magick. Through somatics we will work directly with your body to rewire the subconscious reactive patterns it holds. IFS Parts Work offers a framework and tools to develop loving kindness toward those strong reactions and learn to honor and care for them. And Magick helps you cultivate support and connection with your ancestors and descendants, as well as the animals, plants, spirits and all other beings in your ecosystem.