User:Renee LaVallee McKenna/sandbox

Renee LaVallee McKenna, MA, CCH, is an American hypnotherapist and Shamanic healer and author of the book and audio series Allies & Demons: Working With Spirit For Power And Healing. Renee leads workshops, groups and individual mentorship in Spiritual Psychology since 2002. Spiritual Psychology is a blend of Shamanism and Buddhist philosophy with western humanistic psychology, hypnotherapy and body-based mindfulness.

Women’s March 2017

In 2017, Renee was co-lead of the 2017 Women’s March in San Francisco, partnering with Elizabeth Lanyon of the National Center for Lesbian Rights to coordinate the 100,000 person march in San Francisco to support human rights and social justice for all. Women’s March 2017 was the largest, single day protest in US history, with an estimated 5 million participants in the US and over 7 million worldwide. Renee and the Bay Area Women’s March team received a 2017 Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Board Of Supervisors in recognition of their service in creating one of the largest peaceful mass demonstrations ever held in the city.

Artwork and Teaching

Art is a lifelong passion. Renee works with paint, yarn and metal to created colorful and inspiring 2 and 3 dimensional artworks available on her website http://reneemckenna.squarespace.com/

Renee creates interactive public art projects in San Francisco, including the South Sunset Mural and Mosaic and the Public Bench Project. She was Vice President of the San Francisco Women Artists in 2016 and often decorates San Francisco trees and telephone poles with yarnbombs, unsanctioned, impermanent art also known as public knitting.

In response to a cut in art funding, Renee created and directed Art In Every Classroom (AEC) from 2009-2015, an educational art foundation providing art grants and funding to over 40,000 students in approximately 1300 classrooms in the US, Haiti and South Sudan Africa. AEC partnered with Mercy Beyond Borders to fund art programs in girls schools in some of the poorest nations on earth. She was a volunteer art teacher at a local k-8 school. Encouraging the creativity of 5-14 year olds for 13 years.

Education

Graduated from Bridgewater State University in 1988 with a BA in Communications and got her MA in Transpersonal Psychology from John F Kennedy University in 2003. She has lived near Ocean Beach in San Francisco since 1999.

Renee studied Core Shamanism and Depth Hypnosis for 14 years with Dr. Isa Gucciardi and the Foundation of the Sacred Stream.

Influences

A 1997 three week silent retreat with Thich Naht Hanh and the Nuns and Monks of Plum Village, prompted Renee to sell her belongings at the time, simplify her lifestyle and dedicate herself to a life of service. The teachings of this lifechanging retreat are chronicled in Thich Nhat Hanh’s 1997 book The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra.

Biography

Renee Francis Lavallee was born on April 7, 1964 and grew up in Weymouth, MA, a suburb of Boston. The only child of Arthur and Fran Lavallee. Arthur was a special agent for the US Treasury Department, a gun dealer and a champion marksman. Her mother was an avid environmental activist. Renee grew up with competitive handgun shooting in an extremely conversative Republican household.

She explored politics in high school, becoming president of her senior class at Weymouth North High School in 1982, student Governor with Massachusetts Governor Ed King through the statewide student government day program and then a short stint in Washington, DC through the Close Up program, where she decided that politics was not going to be her route to changing the world.

Struggles with bulimia nervosa and addictions to alcohol and drugs from a young age. A spiritual experience in 1987, setting a new course for her life as a spiritual seeker and ultimately as a therapist and teacher.