about cyn magaña

I'm a queer Chicana therapist and somatic practitioner who understands — from the inside — what it costs to be the first, the only, and the one everyone else is counting on.

For over a decade I've walked alongside survivors, high-achieving professionals, and communities navigating the slow, honest work of complex and relational trauma — the kind woven through family patterns, intergenerational wounds, and the quiet grief of having had to be exceptional just to survive.

If you're ready to stop performing and start inhabiting your life, this is where that begins.

about me

I didn't come to this work from a distance.

I'm from Los Angeles shaped by a fellow cycle breakers, chosen family, and the kind of care that exists outside institutions. I started as an academic peer counselor supporting first-generation students navigating higher education for the first time. I understood their exhaustion from the inside. I knew what it cost to be the first.

From there I worked alongside survivors of gender-based violence as a qualitative research assistant learning early that trauma lives not only in the body but in systems, relationships, and silence. That understanding has never left me and continues to inform my path to social work.

I've since worked across nonprofit, healthcare, and community settings in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — as a clinician, clinical supervisor, MSW field instructor, and Regional Associate Director of Social Work. Each role deepened my belief that healing is both personal and political. That what has been carried can be witnessed, grieved, and transformed. That we were never meant to do this alone.

As a Los Angeles native shaped by formative years in New York City, I bring both West Coast gentleness and East Coast determination into this practice. And as a first-generation college graduate, I understand what it means to be the first, the only, the backbone and what it costs when no one prepares you for how lonely that can feel.

At a Glance

Roles Held
Psychotherapist • Clinical Supervisor • Mentor • Facilitator • Regional Associate Director of Social Work • MSW Field Instructor

Licensure
Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York (#094375) and California (#120859)

Specialized Training

  • Internal Family Systems (IFS) Level 1 (2019)

  • Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) Levels 1 & 2 (2024, 2025)

  • Brainspotting Phase 1 (2023)

  • Perinatal Mood Disorders: Components of Care (2022)

  • Somatic Abolitionism (2022)

  • Chicana/o/x Affirmative Therapy (2021)

  • Trauma-Informed Yoga Instructor, 200- RYT specializing in restorative and yin practices (2019)

  • Consultant for wellness studios, facilitating trauma-informed workshops and teacher trainings with a focus on decolonizing ancestral healing practices and creating psychologically safe space-holder training (2020–present)

Education
New York University Silver School of Social Work
California State University, Long Beach
Mt. San Antonio College


“Though we tremble before uncertain futures,

may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength

may we dance in the face of our fears.”

― Gloria Anzaldúa

 
 

an embodied anti-racist practice of cultural building.

I am privileged to learn from Resmaa Menakem through his teaching and embodied philosophy towards Somatic Abolitionism. Somatic Abolitionism is a return to the age-old wisdom of human bodies respecting, honoring, and resonating with other human bodies. Somatic Abolitionism is the process of resourcing energies that are always present within one’s body, the collective body, and the world healing from White Bodied Supremacy.

*Certificate Received June 2022

  • Somatic Abolitionism

    Somatic Abolitionism is an emergent process, and a form of maturation into a more integrated human experience. It is an embodied anti-racist practice of cultural building.

  • Decolonizing

    Reexamining mental healthcare industry, psychiatric illness, research by the work of therapists and individuals of color.

  • Cultural Affirming

    I aim to be guiding light to support the restoration of loss identity through cultural affirming practices as we heal intergenerational trauma.