Alison ("Aliki") Fields

Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT)

Holistic Herbalist

Archaeologist (MA)

Director, Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork

My work has always been guided by a fascination with the human experience across time and space—how people carry story, memory, and meaning in their bodies and in the landscapes they inhabit. I first followed this curiosity as an archaeologist living and working in Greece, where I I was part of the team that uncovered the Griffin Warrior grave, one of the most significant Mycenaean burials in recent history. The experience of unearthing the life of 3,400 year old human and all his earthly possessions completely transformed my understanding of life, truth, and the body. (How is it that after thousands of years I was the one destined to find him?).

In Greek, the word σῶμα (soma) means body—not as a mechanical object, but as a living, sensing organism of meaning, emotion, sensation, and experience. In modern somatics, the soma refers to the body experienced from within. The shift from archaeology to somatic and integrative bodywork has been an interesting continuum. Where excavation once revealed layers of strata, somatic work reveals layers of lived experience. Where bones once told the story of a life already lived, the nervous system now tells the story of a life still unfolding.

Today, I carry both lineages with me. I lead workshops and retreats in Greece that weave together cultural history, embodied exploration, and somatic practice—all rooted in the question that has guided me since the beginning: How do humans carry experience across time and space, and how does the body express what words cannot?

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Top of the bezel of a gold ring from the Grave of the Griffin Warrior, featuring women at a shrine, ca. 1400 BC, Palace of Nestor, Pylos, Greece

Director of the Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork

I currently serve as the Director of the Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork (PCAB) on Kauaʻi, where I steward a trauma-informed, somatically centered, 740-hour Relational Bodywork program. Our curriculum integrates affective neuroscience, somatic psychology, and an array of manual therapy modalities—including Hawaiian Lomi Lomi, Ayurvedic Lymphatic, Mayan abdominal massage, fascial work (deep tissue) and Structural Integration principles, Craniosacral Therapy, and more. I received my foundational massage therapy training at this school, and it has been an integral part of my life ever since. It is my dream-come-true to continue to carry on the vision of bringing more aware, compassionate, and skilled caregivers into the world and to co-create a safe haven for authentic connection and self-transformation.

At PCAB, I teach relational skills, mindfulness, somatic psychology, bodywork techniques, and trauma-informed approaches while guiding students in cultivating presence, nervous-system literacy, and embodied attunement. My private practice and my teaching mutually inform each other; they are two expressions of the same commitment to relational, body-based healing.

Integrative Bodywork & Manual Therapy

My first experience giving therapeutic touch arrived during my final term of Ayurvedic Clinical Foundations with my teacher, DeAnna Batdorff, at the former Dhyana Center in Sebastopol, CA (now dhyana Essentials). We had spent the year learning about elemental medicine, pulse reading, self-care, nutrition, herbs, and the importance of lymphatic health, and now we were putting it all to use with our hearts and hands, taking detailed health histories of each other and developing treatment plans with bodywork. It came up that I had been navigating a reproductive challenge--I had lost my cycle for almost a year despite normal labs. DeAnna, who had trained with Miss Beatrice from a lineage of Mayan Abdominal healers, assessed my uterine alignment and was able to determine that it was tilted and adhered to another structure on the right side of my body, and through (external) manual manipulation, was able to release the restriction and realign it back to center. I had never experienced such a direct interoceptive connection with one of my organs before, and a wave of sensation and emotion rushed through my system that was unforgettably powerful. Two days later, I started my period.

This experience completely redirected my path toward becoming a bodyworker. At the time, I was working as a flower farmer and studying herbalism, touching into pieces of healing the body and soul but not quite getting to the root. I realized the understanding the body and soul are really primary in the healing process, and I had to know more...

A few months later I tragically lost my dad to mental illness, which catapulted me deeper into a purpose of understanding trauma and the brain. My quest led me straight to PCAB on Kauai, where I was held with unconditional love and compassion while I navigated grief and started my journey as a trauma-informed bodyworker and somatic practitioner.

Traditions of women's bodycare and trauma-informed somatic psychotherapy have continued to guide my learning. I went on to apprentice in lymphatic breast care and uterine alignment with DeAnna, trained with the Arvigo Institute of Mayan Abdominal Therapy, and am now immersed in the osteopathic visceral manipulation at the Barral Institute.

Somatic Therapy

Like many, my gateway into the mind-body connection began with yoga. In 2014-2015, I completed a year-long yoga teacher training and personal spiritual growth program at World Peace Yoga Cincinnati while I was working on my PhD in Archaeology. This experience burst my heart wide open as I came to understand the relationship between my thoughts and the health of my spirit.

My formal study of somatic psychology really began at while I was a student at PCAB, where the curriculum had long been grounded in Hakomi’s mindfulness-based approach to healing. It was there that I first understood the profound importance of the therapist’s internal state and the therapeutic relationship as the foundation of any bodywork session—or any healing relationship. This way of being transformed me. It taught me to see every human as inherently precious, and every pattern in the body as a perfect adaptation to one’s life experiences. Now, I am immersed in the four year practitioner training at the Hakomi Institute of Mallorca.

PCAB also introduced me to trauma-informed care and nervous system literacy, opening my eyes to how profoundly our physiology holds our stories. From there, I deepened into the study of developmental trauma through the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), and I’m now advancing through the practitioner training in Somatic Experiencing to better support PTSD and other nervous system challenges through body-based approaches.

Herbalism & Elemental Medicine

During my early yoga studies, I was introduced to permaculture, a philosophy and practice of land use and agricultural design that builds resilient, self-sufficient communities that work with nature rather than against it. At the time, I was working on writing my archaeology dissertation, all I could think of was putting good things back in the earth rather than taking things out. This force of ethics pivoted the course of my life as I left my academic career behind and moved to California to permaculture and regenerative farming. I went on to establish my own specialty cut-flower farm and worked as a farmer–florist throughout Northern California. Being with the flowers was a spiritual awakening—they started speaking to me, asking me to make medicine. I began making flower essences and quickly realized that my deepest interest was not just in cultivating plants, but in understanding how plants heal.

That realization led me to study for two years at the California School of Herbal Studies, one of the oldest herbal programs in the country, founded in the 1970s by Rosemary Gladstar. There, I learned constitutional energetics, Western herbal tradition, plant spirit work, phytochemistry, materia medica, medicine making, and the embodied relationship between plants and people. My final project was the creation of my first archaeobotanical retreats in Greece, a weaving of my earlier archaeological life with the ancient history of how people have used plants for nourishment, ritual, and medicine for thousands of years.

Alongside herbalism, my study of elemental theory and Ayurveda offered a framework for understanding constitutions, patterns of imbalance, and the truth that we are expressions of nature itself. These elemental perspectives guide how I work with herbs in practice. I love creating custom formulations and weaving herbal medicine into my bodywork and somatic sessions as allies in remembering our true nature, our vitality.

In all of my work, my intention is the same:

to listen deeply

to follow the body’s pace

to respect boundaries and timing

to support agency and self-awareness

to educate and empower

to nurture and love

My practice is relational, collaborative, and grounded in presence. I believe healing unfolds not through fixing, but through creating the conditions where the body feels safe enough to express, reorganize, and reconnect to its own wisdom.

I divide my time between Kauaʻi, New York City, and Greece, offering sessions, teaching, and leading embodied retreats inspired by the landscapes and lineages that shaped my path.

Abbreviated CV

2024-: Director, Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork, Kauai, HI
2023-: Instructor at Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork, Kauai, HI
2023-2024: Massage Therapist, 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay, Kauai, HI
2019: Medicine Maker & Product Sales, dhyana Essentials, Sebastopol, CA
2017: Owner & Sole Proprietor of Eldersong Flower Farm, Cincinnati, OH
2014: Instructor, Greek Civilizations, University of Cincinnati Department of Classics

Education & Certifications

(in progress): Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Training (SEP) with Somatic Experiencing International & Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy (Advanced Hakomi Practitioner) with the Hakomi Institute of Mallorca
(continued bodywork education) Barral Institute of Osteopathic Manual Therapy
- Visceral Manipulation 1 (2024)
- Visceral Manipulation 2 (2025)
- Listening Techniques 1 (2025)
- Visceral Manipulation 3 (planned 2026)
- Visceral Manipulation 4 (planned 2026)
- Neural Manipulation 1 (planned 2026)
- New Manual Articular Approach: Upper Extremities (planned 2026)
2024: Authentic Relating Leadership Training (France), ART International
2023: Advanced Hawaiian Lomi Lomi Training at Ho'omana Spa Maui
2023: The Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy® Professional Care Training
2021: Community/Clinical Herbalism Program (300 hr), California School of Herbal Studies, Forestville, CA
2020: Relational Bodywork & Integrative Massage Modalities (800hr), Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork, Kauai, HI
2019: Roots of Herbalism/Foundations of Health (550 hr), California School of Herbal Studies, Forestville, CA
2019: Clinical Foundations of Ayurveda, dhyana Center, Sebastopol, CA
2016: Permaculture Design Certification, Permaculture Skills Center, Sebastopol, CA
2008-2016: PhD Candidate in Classical Archaeology, University of Cincinnati Department of Classics
2011: M.A., Classical Archaeology, University of Cincinnati Department of Classics (Thesis: "The Late Phrygian Citadel of Gordion, Turkey: A Preliminary Study")
2008: B.A., Classical Civilizations, New York University (Honor's Thesis: "Lucian's Megilla/us: Rethinking Gender, Agency, and Same-Sex Relationships")

Archaeological Projects

Pylos (Pylos, Greece)

2015: Trench Supervisor, Tomb of the Griffin Warrior: Excavations of Pylos (University of Cincinnati)
2013: Trench Supervisor, Rescue Excavations of the Palace of Nestor (University of Cincinnati)

Corinth (Korinthos, Greece)

2013: Recorder, Excavations in the Nezi Field (American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

Buthrotum (Butrint, Albania)

2012: Trench Supervisor, Excavations of the Roman Forum (University of Notre Dame)

Gordion (Yassihöyök, Turkey)

2010, 2012: Independent Research on Late Phrygian (Achaemenid) architecture excavated by Rodney S. Young, 1950-1973
2009: Research Assistant (University of Cincinnati)

Pompeii (Pompeii, Italy)

2008, 2009: Field Assistant, Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (University of Cincinnati)

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