Hillary Keeney

 

Hillary Keeney, Ph.D. is an internationally renowned teacher, innovator, and scholar of ecstatic spirituality and creative transformation. She is also currently Associate Editor of the journal, Dance, Movement, and Spiritualities.

Jay Walljasper, former editor of Utne Reader, calls Hillary a “bold explorer” of the “healing arts.” Her extensive study of dance at the University of Michigan and the University of Colorado, along with academic degrees in women’s studies, social work, and interdisciplinary studies, provide unique breadth and depth for understanding the art of evoking change. Hillary spent eight years studying Zen Buddhism that included residency at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, and was awarded the Frederick P. Lenz Residential Fellowship for the Study of American Buddhism at Naropa University in Fall 2009. She later made contributions to the comparative study of diverse ecstatic spiritual practices that include Kalahari Bushman n/om dancing, Japanese seiki jutsu healing, and St. Vincent visionary traveling.

Hillary holds the appointment of Distinguished Visiting Professor at Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Visiting Professor at the University of Mexico (UNAM) Zaragoza, and is Director of Research at Etfasis Insitute of Systemic Family Therapy in Querétaro, Mexico. She is celebrated for her master classes in ecstatic sound movement and the core practices of Sacred Ecstatics. In addition to numerous books and academic papers, Hillary is the author and illustrator of a series of “little books” that include The Pinnacle Prayer Book, Catching a Numi: A Little Guide to the Pinnacle Spiritual Experience, Sister Gertrude Morgan: The Mystic of New Orleans, and The Practices of Sacred Ecstatics.

Paul Trachtman, former science editor of Smithsonian Magazine describes Hillary as “an authentic traditional healer with impeccable scholarship.” Her groundbreaking advancement of embodied cybernetics was critically acclaimed as “an amazing work that exceeds the promises in Gregory Bateson’s writing.” In the anthropology of healing, archaeologist Jeanette Deacon acknowledges that she “broke through the dusty curtain that often separates anthropologists from the people whose beliefs and practices they want to understand.” Finally, best-selling author and leading authority on integrative medicine, Carl Hammerschlag, M.D., concludes that Hillary is an “extraordinary guide for the healing journey to radical ecstasy . . . help[ing] you dance with the divine.”

"This teaching is in the tradition of great memoirs of spiritual discovery like those of Lama Govinda, Carl Jung, and Gurdjieff . . . one of those radically simple openings to the real--the reminder we always need to return again and again to our origins."

DON HANLON JOHNSON, Ph.D.

Founder of the Somatic Psychology Program at California Institute of Integral Studies and author of Body, Spirit, and Democracy

Endorsements

“We love dancing with Hillary and celebrate how she awakens the heart to heal in our traditional way.”
TCOQ’A |Ui
Elder Bushman N/om-kxao

“Last night I read Hillary Keeney’s book, Catching a Numi, to our elder son. Suddenly it struck me that I am conveying the truth about the strength and palpability of love. Both my wife and I started to cry as we woke up to the beauty of it all. That was one of the most intimate moments of our family life.”
MARCI
Restaurant Entrepreneur, Budapest

“Hillary is a wonderful teacher who inspires poetry, song, and dance. She is a therapist of the heart.”
VICENTE MARTINEZ, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, University of Puebla, Mexico

“Hillary is a dancer, poet, and teacher who makes magic in her teaching and practice! We love how she moves our hearts in Brazil!”

VIVIANI BOVO and WALTHER HERMANN
Directors, Institute of Human Potential, Campinas, Brazil

“Hillary Keeney offers a wake up call to therapists to reinvent their practice, and recognize that models dumb them down and prevent them from finding their own gifts and talents. Her work with Brad might be the frame of therapy’s next evolutionary space.”

PAUL GIBNEY, Ph.D.

Renowned Australian therapist and author

“If you are looking for new inspiration to enliven your clinical practice, this is it. The Keeneys are masters of invention.”

PEGGY PAPP
A founder of family therapy and the women’s movement in family therapy, Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy, New York City

“I don’t know how to adequately convey that the Keeneys are true to the work of Milton H. Erickson.”

BETTY ALICE ERICKSON
M.S.
Renowned teacher of therapy

“[Her] Circular Therapeutics exceeds the promises in Gregory Bateson’s writing.  It offers compelling accounts of what cybernetics can do when actually embodied in practices of living, not merely talked about.”
KLAUS KRIPPENDORFF, Ph.D.
Gregory Bateson Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture, The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

“This writing offers us profound insights into the very systemic ideas that are at the heart of being human.”

FREDERICK STEIER, Ph.D.
Professor of Communication, University of South Florida, and former president, American Society for Cybernetics