Henny Stern, LCSW, LICSW
About Henny
Trauma Therapist & Somatic Practitioner | Dance & Movement Guide | Creative Collaborator
Ritual & Prayer Leader | Collective Jewish Healing Facilitator | Gentle Disruptor | Troublemaker
Hi,
I'm Henny -
A somatic trauma therapist, experiential facilitator, movement guide, and prayer leader.
For me, healing is about expanding our capacity to be with what is here. I believe that the more capacity we have to be with what is, the more joy and freedom become accessible to us.
My Story
My work lives at the intersection of movement, prayer, ritual, embodiment, and human connection. Across therapy, dance, prayer, and collective Jewish healing, I create spaces where we can go somewhere real- where more of ourselves can come into the room, and something new can emerge.
This work is deeply personal.
I grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish world, deeply immersed in its religious life, traditions, and ways of understanding the world.
In my late twenties, I began venturing beyond that upbringing and discovered “God in my hips.” Dance became a place of exploration and reclamation- of freedom, sensuality, expression, and eventually, learning to let my own body lead. It became my prayer: trusting my body as a source of authority.
I went on to create AccepDance- a practice of being, not performing, rooted in learning to trust the body to lead.
Around the same time, my work as a therapist was moving toward the body, too. My early clinical work was with women experiencing domestic violence, where I began seeing how often the story of trauma started much earlier. That realization led me to pursue further study and training in complex and developmental trauma, attachment, the nervous system, and somatic trauma therapy- and toward a deeper understanding of how trauma travels across generations.
Those questions were never only professional for me.
All four of my grandparents survived the Holocaust; one grandmother was later killed in a terrorist bombing. I grew up with stories of unimaginable loss, at times finding myself weeping for people I had never known. Grief was part of my inheritance - something I would come to understand not only as a story, but as something I carried in my body.
Leaving Orthodoxy has been, unexpectedly, a path back to my roots.
Chasidic music- the sounds of my family and lineage- became both the trigger and portal back home. In these songs, I felt my ancestors: their loss and longing, as well as their love, joy, and hope. The music itself became prayer; allowing grief to move through my body- making room for joy, connection, and aliveness.
That journey eventually brought me to ALEPH’s two-year Davvenen’ Leadership Training Institute (DLTI), where I trained as a Jewish prayer leader. Today, I lead experiential prayer spaces, carrying these songs forward. I am the first woman in my family line to bring them into public sacred space.
I believe healing is not only about what we leave behind, but what we reclaim, transform, and carry forward- and what becomes possible when we do that together.
Trainings + Experience
I’m a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW/LICSW) in New York and Massachusetts, with an MSW from New York University. I began practicing as a clinical therapist in 2013, initially working with survivors of domestic violence, and have been in private practice since 2017. Over the past 13 years, my work has developed into a specialization in complex, developmental, and relational trauma and dissociation.
I have completed Levels 1 and 2 of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy through the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. My clinical practice is also informed by ongoing study of attachment, psychodynamic, and contemporary trauma frameworks, alongside clinical supervision throughout my career.
My work as an experiential facilitator is grounded in years of movement and embodied practice, including 5Rhythms, Gaga, ecstatic dance, and other embodied and improvisational forms. I trained through Gibney’s Institute for Community Action Training (ICAT) in arts-based community engagement.
In 2017, I created AccepDance, an experiential movement practice rooted in the idea that dance is our birthright—a practice of being, not performing. I have since facilitated AccepDance in group and community settings. In 2023, I co-created Waking Up, an immersive movement and live music experience for 150 participants.
I’m a graduate of ALEPH’s two-year Davvenen’ Leadership Training Institute (DLTI), an intensive training in Jewish prayer leadership. I now lead experiential Jewish prayer and create and co-create prayer and ritual spaces drawing on music, embodiment, and Jewish tradition. I also trained as a mikveh guide through Mayyim Hayyim in Boston, MA- part of my ongoing work of reclaiming ancient Jewish ritual for contemporary life.
I believe the work we do within ourselves matters to the worlds we create together.
The capacity to stay with ourselves, to be honest, to take accountability, to repair, and to remain connected through discomfort shapes how we show up in relationship and what becomes possible between us. And some things, ultimately, we can only learn together.
I dream of a world where we feel safe enough to stay with the discomfort of our growing pains, so we can be birthed into a world beyond our wildest dreams.
