about cyn magaña

I identify as a queer, Latinx clinical social worker and trauma-informed wellness practitioner with over a decade of experience walking alongside survivors, high-achieving professionals, and underrepresented communities. My praxis is rooted in culturally affirming, decolonial, and somatic care that honors the ways anxiety, grief, and perfectionism weave through trauma, family patterns, creative pressures, and systemic injustices. I specialize in supporting first-generation professionals, intuitive and spiritual creatives, cycle breakers, and high-achievers who are ready to heal intergenerational wounds, tend to grief, and reclaim their inner landscape in ways that feel authentic, aligned, and liberated.

 

about me

I’ve always been drawn to the intersections of healing, social justice, and radically compassionate care spaces where depth is valued, community is honored, and no one has to navigate alone.

Through mentorship, chosen family, and community, I learned the importance of reciprocating the kindness that sustained me in my young adulthood. My journey began as an academic peer counselor at a community college, supporting first-generation students, and continued as a qualitative research assistant working alongside survivors of gender-based violence.

I went on to serve in non-profits and health care settings, providing counseling for families, adolescents, and professionals of color across New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

As a Los Angeles native shaped by formative years in New York City, I bring both a West Coast expansiveness and an East Coast depth to my practice. My praxis—an integrated, reflective approach to healing—emerges from lived experience navigating systems of power, privilege, and cultural expectation. It’s rooted in honoring intersectionality, decolonizing ancestral wisdom, and holding space for intergenerational trauma to be witnessed, grieved, and transformed.

I work especially well with first-generation professionals and intuitive creatives—people reclaiming their creativity while grieving survival strategies that once kept them safe. I support cycle breakers unlearning dysfunctional family patterns, high-achievers wrestling with imposter syndrome, and clients longing for more authentic, intimate, and liberated inner landscapes.

My approach is collaborative, culturally attuned, and somatic—helping clients build the inner clarity, safety, and self-compassion needed to create meaningful change in their lives and communities.

At a Glance

Roles Held
Therapist • 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

 
 

Internal family Systems

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a holistic evidence based psychotherapy model. With IFS, people can establish balance within their internal system by better knowing their “parts”, understanding their own motivations and conflicts, and learning how to heal and move forward to become more successful in their relationships, career, and beyond. The IFS model is client led and facilitated through guided inquiry that is very similar to indigenous wisdoms of our inner realm.

*Certified Level 1 IFS September 2019

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)

AEDP a healing approach built on the idea of undoing aloneness—you don’t have to face overwhelming emotions or past traumas by yourself. In therapy, we slow down and safely explore what’s happening in your body and emotions, gently welcoming the parts of you that carry pain or protection. This process helps your nervous system settle, allowing grief, anxiety, and perfectionism to shift into relief, clarity, and deeper connection. Many clients describe AEDP as an experience of feeling lighter, more grounded, and more fully themselves.

* Certified Level 1 2024, Level 2 2025

Brainspotting

“Where you look, affects how you feel" , Dr. David Grand. Brainspotting is a somatic based approach to therapy that helps individuals unblend from unwanted and distressing memories stored in the subcortical brain. Brainspotting locates points in the client’s visual field that help to access unprocessed, unwanted, distressing memories with the intention to mindfully focus and process these memories together. Through the dual attunement between the therapist and participant, and an invitational use of bilateral sounds there is a release physical and emotional symptoms.

*Certified Level 1 Brainspotting (2023)

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

Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher & Sound Bath Practitioner

As a queer, brown yoga teacher, it is important to me to honor the lineage of South Asian teachers and call attention to the ongoing appropriation of yoga and wellness spaces. My teaching centers accessibility, cultural respect, and safety cultivating empowerment through options that honor each person’s body. I especially enjoy guiding Restorative and Yin Yoga, where stillness, breath, and gentle postures create space for deep release and nervous system regulation.

Alongside yoga, I offer sound bath experiences a practice using crystal singing bowls, gongs, chimes, and voice to create healing vibrations. During a sound bath, participants are invited to rest while sound frequencies move through the body, helping to calm the mind, release tension, and create moments of clarity, grounding, and inner spaciousness. Many describe it as a meditative journey where the body feels supported, the mind softens, and the spirit reconnects.

*16 Hr Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher Training Received February 2019

*200 Hr Yoga Teacher Training Received April 2019

*Yin Training Received December 2019

*Sound Bath Certification November 2023

  • 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.