“Rita’s presence, intuition, knowledge, and experience allowed me to drop into myself and heal.”
The Consultant Facilitator
Rita Bozi is a multidisciplinary somatic, relational, trauma-informed facilitator, psychedelic practitioner, Somatic Transformation educator, author, and podcast co-host. With more than thirty years in the healing arts, she is the founder and director of Brilliant Healing Inc., where she leads experiential healing retreats and trains, mentors, and supervises practitioners.
Rita is the creator and lead instructor of Somatic Relational Trauma-Informed Practices for Medicine-Assisted Facilitation, a one-year, three-module training program based in Calgary, Alberta. In addition to her work in Canada, she mentors students and practitioners internationally, including in Australia, the United States, and Sweden. She serves as guest faculty at the Synthesis Institute and has presented at ATMA, InnerTrek, and Vancouver Island University.
Rita studied Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry approach during its early development as an advanced student on retreat in Mexico and has collaborated with colleagues in that community for many years. She was mentored by the late visionary Carol-Anne Bickerstaff and completed four years of practicum training with Sharon Stanley, PhD, in the Somatic Transformation Model. Rita is a Consultant Facilitator of the One Brain System, holds a Diploma in Shiatsu Therapy, and is a former instructor at Mount Royal College in Calgary and Langara College in Vancouver.
Her work integrates somatic awareness, attachment theory, mindfulness, and biopsychosocial approaches to healing. She brings extensive experience working with both non-traditional and Indigenous medicines and is committed to a non-pathologizing, body-centred approach that honours the innate wisdom of individuals and communities.
A retired dancer and actor, Rita remains a lifelong creator and performer. Her debut novel, When I Was Better (2022), received the Firebird Book Award and was a finalist for the Goethe International Literary Award for Late-Historical Fiction. She is currently writing PUNK Therapy, drawing on her work in psychedelic medicine and somatic relational practice. Her podcast, PUNK THERAPY: Psychedelic Underground Neural Kindness, launched in 2022 and has surpassed 30,000 downloads.
Born to Hungarian refugees who fled during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Rita honours the resilience of her ancestors and their legacy of perseverance. She is devoted to the lifelong practice of cultivating wisdom, kindness, and community, while supporting the ongoing work of decolonization and collective healing. Rita is an ally of the 2SLGBTQIA++ community and honours the Indigenous knowledge keepers and original stewards of Turtle Island.
The Artist
Rita is devoted to the work of becoming fully human. She cares deeply about people, relationship, and the world we create together.
At fifteen, while training to become a professional dancer, Rita made a pact with herself: a slow suicide. She pursued it through anorexia, drugs, cigarettes, abusive relationships, and by making herself responsible for other people's pain. Drawing on her own experience of relational and developmental trauma, attachment wounds, and the struggle for autonomy, she now dedicates her work as a somatic relational therapist to helping others cultivate an embodied witness. Her practice is grounded in creating gentle, accepting spaces where healing, integration, and transformation can emerge. She also remembers to laugh when things get tough.
Rita's life has always been shaped by movement, creativity, and reinvention. Her artistic career spans professional dance, theatre, film, television, writing, and teaching. She has performed internationally in Germany, Hungary, and Iceland, and across Canada in both classical and contemporary dance.
After graduating from the National Ballet School in 1983, Rita danced professionally for twelve years in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. She apprenticed with both the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet before moving into contemporary dance, performing with acclaimed companies including Jumpstart, Lola Dance, Judith Marcuse Projects, Karen Jamieson Dance, Dancecorps, and Mascall Dance. She retired from professional dance at age thirty.
In 1997, Rita reinvented herself through the study of Shiatsu Therapy, graduating from Sourcepoint Shiatsu Centre in Vancouver with a Shiatsu Practitioner's Diploma. She established a part-time practice while continuing her work in theatre, film, and television. During this period, she appeared in numerous television productions, including The X-Files, The Addams Family, Cold Squad, and The Chris Isaak Show. She also wrote, produced, toured, and performed in collective theatre creations and taught in the Shiatsu Practitioner Program at Langara College.
In 2001, Rita moved to Calgary to perform with One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre and later taught movement and physical theatre in the Department of Theatre, Speech, and Music Performance at Mount Royal College.
One of her most meaningful creative collaborations was The Damage Is Done – A True Story, which she wrote, created, produced, and performed alongside her mentor, Dr. Gabor Maté. The production played to sold-out audiences at the Banff Centre, the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and in Whitehorse between 2014 and 2015. In 2018, she gave her final stage performance in her solo work, My Fair Lady – The Punk Version.
Writing remains one of Rita's great passions. Her first novel, When I Was Better, won the International Firebird Book Award in the Holocaust category and was a Goethe Award finalist for Late Historical Fiction in 2022.
She continues to receive royalties from 52 Pick Up, a play she co-wrote, co-produced, co-directed, and performed with TJ Dawe. The production has toured internationally throughout Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, France, and the United States. It received the Chapters Best Text Award at the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2000 and was later translated into both Icelandic and French.
Rita's fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and travel writing have appeared in THIS Magazine, The New Quarterly, Pages of Stories, Unlikely 2.0, WritingRaw.com, and FFWD Weekly. In 2012, she won Third Prize for Creative Non-Fiction in THIS Magazine's Great Canadian Literary Hunt for her essay State Controlled Paprika. Her travel stories have also been featured on CBC Radio.
For Rita, creative practice and therapeutic practice have always informed one another. Both require presence, curiosity, courage, and a willingness to stay in relationship with what is most alive. She brings these qualities to her work every day and remains committed to helping others cultivate embodied, creative, meaningful, and soulful lives.
Professional Experience
Brilliant Healing Inc. Director 1995 to present
Somatic Relational Trauma-informed Facilitator 2015 to present
Somatic Psychedelic Therapist 2017 to present
Somatic Transformation Educator 2024 to present
Teaching Experience
Somatic Relational Trauma-informed Practices for Medicine-Assisted Facilitation Cohort Training 2019 to present
Touch Lab and Embodiment Lab On line Workshops
Brilliant Labs (Canada, US, Sweden, Australia) 2021 to present
Psychedelic Association of Canada - When Wise Interventions are Required in Medicine Spaces (to Intervene or Not?)
ATMA Guest Facilitator 2024 to present
University of Victoria - A Human Response to Medicine Lecture
Rita’s Training in Alternative Health Care
Somatic Transformation Educator Practicum – Sharon Stanley PhD
Somatic Transformation/Basic + Advanced Training – Sharon Stanley PhD
Touch Skills Training for Trauma Therapists, Modules 1-2 - Kathy Kain
Creative Fire Training – Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Reyes
NARM Basics Training
Spiritual Trauma and Redeeming of Soul – Sharon Stanley
Compassionate Inquiry – Gabor Maté
Psychedelic Therapist Training – Dr. Devon Christie, Sasha Cuff
Body, Brain and Trauma – Bessel Van der Kolk
Authentic Movement – Judith Koltai
Consultant Facilitator – One Brain System
Three in One Concepts
Tools of the Trade
Under the Code
Advanced One Brain
Louder than Words
Structure Neurology
Relationships in Jeopardy
Advanced Structure/Function
Body Circuits, Pain and Understanding
Childhood, Sexuality and Aging
Adolescence, Maturity and Love
Consultant Facilitator Training
Sexuality
Craniosacral - Upledger Institute
Craniosacral I, Craniosacral II
SomatoEmotional Release I, SomatoEmotional Release II
Visceral Manipulation I
Certified Body Talk Practitioner
PaRama College
PaRama Unit 1 – Practical
BodyTalk Modules 1,2,3,4/7,5,6,9
Orthopaedic Evaluation
Breakthrough 1
Mindscape
Certified Shiatsu Practitioner
Shiatsu Practitioner Program – Diploma, Sourcepoint Shiatsu Centre
Reiki Level I, Reiki Level II
Flower Essences: Spiritual and Emotional Evolution
Non-Violent Communication
Landmark Forum