Meet Angela Alfieri

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Angela Alfieri. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Angela below.

Angela , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I grew up in a home where I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know that feeling—when everything seems calm, but chaos can erupt at any moment? That undercurrent of unpredictability shaped me in ways I didn’t fully understand until I started digging deeper during my college years as a psychology major.

Looking back, I realize this is where my ability to read a room in nanoseconds was born—a skill that has since become my superpower in both life and career. It also led me to live with hypersensitivity, attuning myself to the world in a way that others often can’t. While this heightened awareness has, at times, been overwhelming, it has also gifted me with deep listening, allowing me to hear what often goes unspoken.

Managing my own sense of safety from a young age paradoxically gave me the ability to create spaces where others feel truly held—environments that welcome the fullness of who they are.

We’re often sold the idea that home is a place of comfort, connection, and safety. And while I did experience moments of that, the deeper truth is that my parents’ trauma shaped me just as much as their love. Their survival strategies became my blueprint for navigating the world.

My father, an immigrant from Italy, moved to Rochester, New York, at 14, leaving behind his home and his dream of a professional soccer career when he became a father in his mid-20’s. My mother, one of seven siblings, lost both of her parents before the age of five and was tossed through the foster care system in Brooklyn until she found stability in her late teens. By 16, she had become an emancipated minor, determined to carve out a life on her own terms—one that wasn’t dictated by authority figures. Even as she found success in her career, she remained a free spirit, always searching for what “home” truly meant before she had three children of her own.

Their foundations were shaken before they even had a chance to build them. They were uprooted from what they knew and thrown into survival mode, trying to redefine what home meant. I only wish they had found peace in their shared pain rather than the storms that erupted from their unhealed wounds.

And while this story isn’t about them, their experiences laid the foundation for how I learned to face the world. It was only safe sometimes. Boundaries were fluid, shifting, uncertain. My mother’s stories and pain often took precedence over everything else.

From a young age, I became obsessed with the question “why?” Even at 11, I was diving into books on human behavior, astrology, and personality types, searching for meaning. I didn’t yet have the language for trauma, but I felt its presence—woven into the fabric of my childhood, shaping the way I saw the world.

That curiosity led me to investigate the world itself—seeking answers, testing boundaries, and, through trial and error, learning the hard truths about life. Even though the world seemed safer than my home, it came with its own traumatic experiences—each one becoming an unexpected invitation into healing. I began to see how the body speaks to us, calling for harmony in the wake of unprocessed pain.

By my mid-20s, after a five-year relationship that surfaced deep wounds from my past, I made a bold decision: I moved to the Virgin Islands. That transition cracked me open in ways I never anticipated, revealing just how deeply my history had shaped me. It was there that I truly began the work of body-mind transformation.

I learned. I unlearned. I adapted. I listened.

And in doing so, I discovered my ability to hold space—not just for myself, but for others who, like me, are seeking a place where they can finally exhale. Ultimately, this journey has not only shaped my life, but has helped me develop a robust career in wellness—one that doesn’t just provide knowledge, but guides others toward embodied wisdom. It offers them the opportunity to step into a new path—one that is truly their own.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Angela Alfieri is a holistic and integrative somatic healer with 25 years of experience, working between New York City and the Virgin Islands. Through her H.E.A.L. practice, she integrates therapeutic bodywork, yoga therapy, shamanic breathwork, energy work, intuitive coaching, and her latest focus, NeuroSomatic Flow, to support healing and transformation.

As a fire dancer, Angela uses fire as a potent “medicine” where she leads a community in Long Island City, Queens, providing a space for individuals to explore this elemental force to create nervous system regulation, explore flow states, and embodiment. Guided by the principle “We Rise by Lifting Others,” Angela empowers clients through her experiential approach to self-care.

Her latest focus, fire dancing and NeuroSomatic Flow, deepens the mind-body connection, offering an innovative approach to healing. In addition to working with individuals, Angela partners with organizations and corporate teams, bringing a human-centered approach to wellness in today’s fast-paced world.

She also partners with organizations to develop wellness programs rooted in a human-centered approach in corporate wellness.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The willingness to be with what is being presented, a desire to change our trajectory to shift feelings or current reality and allowing others to help me along the way.

To develop these qualities, I would encourage other to learn how to sit with uncomfortable feelings and breathe with them. When we do that, we give the tension or resistant less to grip onto, which then offers us more space to think outside the box, and lean into our resources we have toward support.

I often go back to Paolo Cohelo’s, “Feelings are the language of the Soul” from his book, The Alchemist. When we begin to understand our “feelings” are simply a compass back to our wholeness, what births is a new relationship with what is here for us versus against us.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

I would say the most impactful thing my parents did for me was showing me the strength in resilience. Even though they both had incredibly difficult pasts—my father immigrating at a young age and my mother navigating loss and hardship—they both found ways to adapt and survive. This instilled in me an understanding that life doesn’t always go according to plan, but we have the power to transform our circumstances by how we respond to them.

It wasn’t always perfect or easy, but their ability to keep going, despite their own struggles, taught me the value of endurance, purpose, and the power of love, even in adversity. Ultimately, this has become my guiding light to remember that “this too shall pass” no matter what I am presented with.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Profile Photo with white jacket + looking over the shoulder in black
Lily Marceau Telford

Smile in the Chaos + Prayer
Anne Bequette

Massage Photo
Raúl Espinoza

2 Fire Photos
Revital Simmons

2 Group Photos
Island Media Company

Beach Shot
Steve Simonsen

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