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Healing through
natural connections

A gathering place for people to come home to themselves, to each other, and to the living world.  

A refuge for wild hearts ready to remember.

Greetings, dear human

Something new is being born

A Human Sanctuary began its roots as an individual therapy practice and slowly grew into a collective of healers with a shared love for humanity and the natural world. In response to a deep, unmet need we witnessed in our clients- and a whispering in our own hearts- we now embark on the next phase of our emergence; answering the call to curate spaces of authentic connection and spaciousness to tend the inner landscape. 

 

We are living through the collapse of stories that once held us, the unraveling of systems we were told would sustain us, and the quiet grief of watching the living world diminish. The end of the world as we have known it is not the end of the world. It is, however, the end of a way of knowing the world. And yet: when a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order. A Human Sanctuary exists to be one of those islands.

We believe that healing in this moment is not merely personal — it is relational, intergenerational, and inseparable from the living world around us. So much of what we carry as individuals is not our private pathology but the inherited wound of an over-culture that severed us from each other, from our bodies, and from the Earth. Community, in this light, is not supplemental to healing — it is the balm itself.

As a living, breathing ecosystem, we are following an organic movement toward expression and a return to our own true nature. We take our sacred seat in the web of life and humbly move in the direction of being in right relationship to the whole. With practices that nurture resilience, support nervous system regulation, and foster interpersonal safety, together we create containers where every feeling associated with these times can be met compassionately and courageously. 

Retreats + immersives

member discount rates

Community workshops

member discount rates

The Virtual Island

community groups · online

The Acorn Circle

weekly · in-person

Self-Led Journeywork

Individual Therapy
& Intensives

Our ecosystem.

We meet you wherever you are: turning inward, toward relationship, into community, returning to the land, and outward again. 

01

within

It begins within

Through self-led How To Be Human coursework — videos, experiential exercises, and solo inquiry — you are invited to slow down and begin listening again to what is most true in you. These are crafted as ways to come to know your Self more deeply and intimately, 

It moves into relationship

Our therapists and healing intensives offer dedicated one-on-one care for those navigating the symptoms of being alive in a time when we are systematically disconnected from what is nourishing.

02

relationship

03

community

It deepens in community

Group offerings bring the healing power of community to bear — because some of what we carry can only be met in the presence of others. This does not need to be carried alone.

It anchors in the land

The Acorn Circle is our weekly nature connection and intergenerational gathering — where children, teens, families, and elders weave something no single generation could create alone. We focus on resiliency building, internally & externally.

04

the land

05

outward

And it ripples outward

Through retreats and virtual offerings that reach across distance — this island of coherence keeps expanding, held by the living Earth, the ancestral web, and the great mystery.

Land & Peoples Acknowledgement 

 

Our sanctuary is located in Idyllwild, California, within the San Bernardino National Forest, on the unceded territory of the Qawishpa Cahuillangnah (Cahuilla Band of Indians). We respectfully acknowledge all nine sovereign Bands of Cahuilla people as the traditional stewards of this land. We begin making reparations by accepting only a kinship view of our place on the planet: all life is interconnected, interdependent, and interrelated.

THE HEARTS AND HANDS TENDING THE SANCTUARY

Our clinicians.

A small circle of licensed therapists and associates, each carrying their own lineage of training and tending — gathered to offer this work with depth, care, and a shared orientation toward wholeness.

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 Julie Anne Steiger

SEP · LCSW #76510

Founder · Somatic Psychotherapist
Clinical Supervisor

SPECIALIZATIONS

Adults and children with complex/developmental trauma, chronic illness and somatic symptoms, medical trauma or near death experiences. Working with those to recover nervous system, build inner resiliency and capacity, with a decolonizing and depathologizing lens.

ORIENTATION

Earth connection, empowerment, bridging scientific understanding with ancestral or primal wisdom, midwifing liminal spaces between life and death, weaver of dissociative parts and soul fragmentation.

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Megan Zuzevich

LMFT #108284

Co-Founder · Clinical Supervisor · Director of Operations

SPECIALIZATIONS

Adults navigating trauma at the root, nervous system dysregulation, and the integration of body, mind, and environment. Working with those seeking to depathologize their experience and rebuild from underlying foundations.

ORIENTATION

Integrative and trauma-informed, drawing on EMDR alongside metabolic, environmental, and biological foundations of mental health. Symptoms understood as signals; healing approached as restoration rather than management.

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Lisa Mariano

ACSW #116793

Psychotherapist · Group Facilitator

SPECIALIZATIONS

Hospice, grief and loss, codependency and relational trauma, neurodivergence support, children and adolescents.

ORIENTATION

Person-centered, harm reduction, strengths-based. Trained in Somatic Experiencing, CBT, DBT, and Motivational Interviewing.

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Itzel Barakat

AMFT #159412

Psychotherapist · Associate Marriage & Family Therapist

SPECIALIZATIONS

LGBTQIA+, highly sensitive children and adults, veterans, anxiety and depression, grief and loss, trauma and PTSD, relational challenges, coping skill development.

ORIENTATION

Person-centered, strengths-based, Somatic Experiencing, Motivational Interviewing, harm reduction, CBT, DBT.

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Samar Sepehri

AMFT #161074

Somatic Psychotherapist · Associate Marriage & Family Therapist

SPECIALIZATIONS

Adults, teens, children, couples, and families navigating prenatal and perinatal challenges, IVF and fertility support, postpartum depression, birth and attachment, generational healing, nervous system regulation.

ORIENTATION

Somatic, Somatic Experiencing, CBT, DBT, person-centered, trauma-informed, strengths-based.

As the work calls forward new tenders, this circle continues to widen. Reach out to learn who else may be holding space.

Therapy Services Rooted in Idyllwild

We work with
your coverage

We accept a range of insurance plans and are committed to making care as accessible as possible. Not sure if you're covered? We'll help you find out.

A place of refuge. A place of coherence.
A sanctuary for the wild hearts in us all.

— A HUMAN SANCTUARY  ·  IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA

©2026 A Human Sanctuary

Services provided by A Human Sanctuary, Licensed Clinical Social Worker Professional Corporation

Client information is handled in accordance with applicable privacy and confidentiality laws, including HIPAA.

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