About
APRIL LEE
I’m an embodied leadership coach & facilitator, somatic practitioner, and writer based in the SF Bay Area. For 30 years, I’ve worked at the intersection of body, mind, and systems, helping people listen more deeply, see patterns more clearly, and find the structure beneath what’s emerging.
My path hasn’t followed a straight line. It’s moved through Craniosacral therapy and the healing arts, operations, startups, organizational design, consciousness studies, and a writing life woven through all of it. Over time, these threads have converged into a way of working that is both deeply embodied and practically grounded.
I’m a 5th-generation Californian with a diverse family heritage. My father was a Hawaiian healing practitioner and jazz musician. I grew up between worlds and have spent my life learning to move fluidly between them.
What I bring is not a fixed methodology. It’s a way of seeing and listening for what’s beneath the surface, developed over decades of practice, study, and lived experience. My own path has also been one of learning to trust what I know, give language to what I see, and become visible enough to share it.
You can read more about my background, training, and the longer version of my story below.
Background
SOMATIC PRACTICE
Craniosacral therapy, bodywork, coaching. Somatic awareness, nervous system regulation, embodied movement and meditation. Trauma-informed teaching and facilitation. 4,000+ hours of training across traditions.
ORGANIZATIONAL & DESIGN WORK
Operations, HR, and organizational design across startups, tech, and higher education. Building structures and processes that help organizations function, grow, and take care of their people. UX writing and human-centered design.
WRITING & CURRENT WORK
Essays on culture, consciousness & AI. Publishing on Substack at Heaven and Earth. Co-author of Fierce Awakenings. Co-Founder at Xelia, an alternative finance startup. Certification in agentic AI development.
Training & Certifications
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Director & Consultant, Operations, HR & Organizational Design
Certified BodyMind Method Coach
BetterUp Coaching Foundations
Embodied Leadership, Strozzi Institute
Agentic AI: Contextualized and Applied Certificate, Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI)
UX Writing Academy
UX Interaction Design Foundation Membership
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Certified Massage Therapist (CMT), State of California (License #46300)
Visionary Craniosacral Work, Milne Institute
Craniosacral Therapy Instructor, McKinnon BTC
Group Soul Craniosacral Community Clinic, Co-Founder
Craniosacral Anatomy, Ellen Mossman
Craniosacral for Infants, Carol Grey
Visceral Manipulation, Embryology, & The Brain, Milne Institute
Extended Professional Licensing Program, Brenneke School of Massage
Ortho-Bionomy (3 Levels), Jim Berns
Acupressure, Swedish, & Shiatsu, McKinnon BTC
Hawaiian Lomi Lomi, Michael Lee (Father); Harry Uhane Jim
Thai Massage, Baan Hom Samunphrai School
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Certified Embodied Meditation Teacher, Embodiment Unlimited
Certified Lu Jong Tibetan Yoga Teacher, Farah Garan & Tulku Lobsang
Yoga Teacher RYT200, Samyama Meditation Center
Yoga for Mental Health, Maria Kirsten
Medical Qi Gong (2 Levels), Zen Huang
Acutonics Sound Healing (2 Levels), West Coast Acutonics
Trauma-Informed:
NARM (Neuro Affective Relational Model) Certified Practitioner
Somatic Embodiment & Regulation Strategies, Linda Thai
Touch and Trauma, McKinnon BTC
Hakomi & Somatic Experiencing, Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork
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B.A. Environmental Studies, UC Santa Cruz
30 years of meditation, yoga, & Qi Gong practice
Mother for 21 years
How I Got Here
THE BODY
01
Thirty years ago, in my mid-twenties, I taught myself to meditate from a secondhand paperback. What began as curious exploration turned into a direct encounter with consciousness that changed my understanding of reality. That experience opened a lifelong inquiry into inner knowing — how we access it, learn to trust it, and find the courage to bring it into the world.
At the time I was working in the tech world, struggling with burnout and a stress-induced illness that conventional medicine had failed to treat. That crisis sent me toward the body-mind connection, somatic practices, and Eastern and Western healing traditions. What I found wasn't just healing. It was a way of knowing that reconnected me to my roots.
Over the next two decades I became a Craniosacral therapist, bodyworker, and coach, practicing and teaching for more than twenty years, with over 4,000 hours of training across somatic, movement, and contemplative traditions. In 2014 I founded a community Craniosacral clinic.
Working at this depth with the nervous system, I learned to sense the layers of a living system and follow what was emerging rather than impose a direction.
And the body was only one part of the picture.
It started with curiosity and a secondhand paperback
THE SYSTEMS
02
The gap between vision and form
Running alongside the healing work was another life entirely.
For nearly a decade I worked in operations and HR across startups, tech companies, and higher education, including Director of Operations at Citizen Space, the world's first major coworking space. I developed an eye for organizational systems, identifying what was working, what wasn't, and why — and what needed to change. I built systems, policies, processes, and teams. I helped leaders move from idea to execution.
I was often brought in by founders to essentially take over their day-to-day so they could focus on vision. My job was to see the whole system: the undercurrents, the gaps, the places where structure was missing or misaligned, and develop something that worked.
What I also learned was how often vision fails without structure, and how many brilliant people get stuck between knowing what they want to build and actually building it. That gap became the territory I kept returning to.
A degree in Environmental Studies had already trained me to think in systems, to see how parts relate to wholes, how invisible dynamics shape visible outcomes. Combined with years of somatic practice, something was forming that I couldn't yet name.
THE INQUIRY
03
Where the threads converge
I’ve spent much of my life paying attention to how things come into being. How consciousness moves through a body. How something not yet fully formed begins to come together. How coherence emerges, often before it can be explained. This came through years of direct experience with different forms of inquiry that asked me to listen beneath language.
Over time, I began to recognize the same patterns across very different domains. In the body, in systems, and in the way ideas develop and unfold. Writing became the place where those threads meet.
I journaled privately for most of my life. In 2023 I co-authored an anthology, and soon after I began sharing essays on consciousness, culture, technology, and what it means to live and create from a more embodied place. Writing, for me, isn’t about having answers. It’s a way of staying in contact with what’s unfolding and making it visible.
AI entered through the same door. The questions it raises about intelligence, awareness, and what it means to be human were already familiar terrain.
I experience this moment as a threshold — a time when embodiment, systems thinking, writing, and technology are converging. My work lives in that convergence, helping people stay connected to what is deeply human while building what comes next.
THE LINEAGE
The Unseen Thread
There is one more thread.
I am a descendant of Zengzi, Chinese philosopher and disciple of Confucius, a lineage stretching back 2,500 years. My father walked his own path as both healer and jazz musician. I grew up between cultures, shaped by Chinese-Japanese heritage and a multicultural Bay Area upbringing, learning early that wisdom comes in many forms and that the most interesting truths live at the intersections.
The Unseen Thread is my ongoing writing project reclaiming the unrecorded women in my lineage, and one expression of this inheritance.
Let’s Explore Together
If you’ve read this far, maybe something here resonates. Maybe you’re building something and need help bringing it into form. Maybe you’re looking for clarity, structure, or a grounded next step. I’d love to connect.