about
Across the different modalities I practice and teach—writing, anthropology, somatics, dance—one principle remains constant: that curious inquiry into the details of ordinary experience generates remarkable insight and understanding.
Steph McIsaac, PhD is a New-York based writer, anthropologist, dancer, and somatic educator. Steph’s research, writing, and dance explore contemporary cultures of healing and embodied knowledge. Steph received their PhD in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019, and taught anthropology and embodiment studies as a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis, Bowdoin College, Cooper Union, and New York University.
Steph is currently the Assistant Director of The Writing Center at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where he teaches, consults, and does research on the writing process at the doctoral level.
Steph’s research and writing explores how history lives in the body, and in the ways people and traditions access, express, and transform embodied history through healing practices. Steph’s teaching draws on body-centered and mindfulness-based pedagogies to explore questions of structural oppression, embodiment, community, care, and healing.
Steph is also a teacher/practitioner of Continuum Movement and yoga/asana (RYT-500), and is passionate about creating accessible spaces that celebrate the moving body as a powerful vehicle for connection, expression, and wisdom. Steph’s movement art focuses on improvisational and experimental forms of dance, shaped by a deep reverence for creative process and movement research, and supported by an endless curiosity for embodied anatomy.
Finally, Steph is also a meditation practitioner. He completed the Mindfulness Meditation teacher certification program (MMTCP) through Sounds True and is currently enrolled in the Community Dharma Leaders (CDL7) Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Steph serves as a Practice Leader at New York Insight Meditation Center.