How I Work
I work with people who are fundamentally well and ready to go deeper. I am not a therapist who works with active trauma, and am very careful to observe this distinction. The work I do is wholebeing integration support. It sits at the intersection of education, embodied practice, and is the kind of intelligent accompaniment that most people have not had access to when navigating significant change.
I always start by finding out where you actually are. Not where you think you should be, and not where the work is heading, but where you are right now. From there, we find the right entry point together.
I pay attention to more than what is being said. I track what is happening in the body, in the nervous system, in the quality of the breath and the energy in the room. I respond to what is actually present rather than what was planned for. Every session begins with a plan and arrives at a destination we decide together.
Anything I bring during a session arrives through me, not from me. I am a conduit, not the source. The container I hold is steady, not because I am above what you are moving through, but because I have done enough of my own work to be fully present to what arises without being destabilized by it. You can go deep here. The ground holds.
And the work is not all heavy and serious. Some of the most significant shifts happen in a quality of curiosity, play, and genuine delight — when the nervous system stops bracing and parts of us that have been waiting a long time finally get to come out and breathe. Ultimately, during a session, we cocreate conditions. What you do with them from there is entirely your honor and privilege. You are your own healer, your own guru, and ultimately, even your own teacher. If anything, I am more like an ambassador, maintaining a relationship with the realms of heart, mind, body, and spirit, and helping you bridge the gap so you can build your own relationships. Once you know your way to connect with these parts of yourself and live from this place, my work is done.
I didn't set out to build a framework. I set out to not fall back asleep.
A few years ago I returned from a retreat that had shifted something in me and made a deliberate choice: I was not going to let daily life close over it. What I put together in the months that followed — the practices, the sequencing, the attention to what the whole being needs at each stage of a real change — became the Journey to Remember framework, the structural underpinning of the curriculum at Te de Sura Studio.
Looking back at what I had built and tracing its theoretical roots, I found that the structure I had arrived at intuitively was consistent with what anthropologists, neuroscientists, depth psychologists, and somatic researchers had been mapping from entirely different directions. The framework was not borrowed from the research. I realized that it was confirmed by it, in a process I have come to call retroactive cartography.
I built and developed this body of work for others because when I needed it, it didn’t exist.
Who I am
My name is Kristi Rogers, and I’m a somatic educator, therapeutic sound and voice practitioner, researcher, instructional designer, multimedia artist, and founder of Te de Sura Studio, based in Portugal and working with people around the world. I am also someone who has spent a long time studying how human beings move through change — what helps, what doesn't, and what tends to get skipped over entirely.
My background spans over 25 years of teaching, instructional design, and facilitation across therapeutic, academic, corporate, and community settings, and my formal training includes human factors design, adult learning theory and education, somatic practice, therapeutic voice and sound, and an undergraduate specialization in cultural anthropology with a focus on the culture of the body. I am also founding researcher at VIBES, an interdisciplinary therapeutic sound research initiative in development at the Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Portugal.
The longer version of this story is available via my Journey to Remember publication on Substack, if you’re curious.
If you work with people in transition or if you are one, I’d love to connect.
What is “Te de Sura” (Tay-day-soo-rah)?
Te de sura is a term I created from the Spanish words “tesoro” (treasure) and “basura” (trash).
Te de (la) Sura = Treasure from Trash.
Years ago, Te de Sura Studio started out as an upcycled wearable art studio…where I rescued objects, supplies, or “stuff” that were thrown away or discarded and made them into something loveable again.
Then I realized that this concept could very easily be applied to point when we realize that the parts of ourselves that we have hidden or rejected are perhaps our greatest treasure and we slowly integrate them back into the light.
Our greatest gifts come from the shadow. So now, “stuff” isn’t the art. YOU are.
But just as the creation of a masterpiece takes quiet devotion, courage, and mastery through practice, the same is true for you.
In Te de Sura’s experiential “studio space”, you’re invited to devote yourself to exploring to the very center of yourself, as an everyday ceremony and daily practice, where we go back in for all of those precious pieces you hid, your hidden gold. That is the orienting premise for everything we do here.
You have always been enough.
Credentials & Expertise
In addition to wellness fields, my professional background spans UX research and design, instructional design and learning evaluation, advanced product development and Agile methodology, systems-level change leadership, and multimedia and wearable art — all of which inform how the Journey to Remember framework was built and how it continues to evolve.
Formal Academic:
BA in International Studies, Loyola University Chicago
BS in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on the Culture of the Body, Loyola University Chicago
Master's in Education, emphasis in Adult Learning Theory, Curriculum Design, and TESL, University of Phoenix
Master's in Design, emphasis in Human Factors and Co-design, Colorado State University
Somatic, Sound and Voice:
Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy — Embody Lab (60 hours - layperson credential)
Holistic Voice Therapy, Group Voice Therapy, Group Sound and Voice Arts — studies at the British Academy of Sound Therapy
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)-Certified — Mindful Leader
Embodied Dance Facilitator & Embodied DJ Certification — Dance the Medicine
Somatic Educator for Women — Somatic Institute for Women (in-progress)
Research & Other Professional:
Founding Researcher and Consultant — VIBES Interdisciplinary Center for Therapeutic Sound, IPG Portugal
Change Leader Certification — Colorado Creative Industries
ACE-Certified Personal Trainer — American Council on Exercise
25 years of teaching, instructional design, and facilitation across therapeutic, creative, corporate, and academic settings
Formal training as a musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter