About Max
Max Kopeikin is Bay Area based psychotherapist and yoga teacher. He is a member of the LGBTQQI++ community and does much of his work in this community. Max specializes in therapy and yoga that celebrate diversity and he is committed to Queer Feminist and Anti-Racist organizing and action.
Max grew up in Southern CA and was involved in movement-centered performing arts throughout his childhood and teenage years. As a part of his high school’s pre-professional dance program, he choreographed and performed around the globe. He moved to the Bay Area at the age of 18 to attend U.C. Berkeley, where he received his B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with a Minor in Dance and Performance Studies. After graduating, Max worked in LGBTQQI++ centered and Jewish community nonprofits. During this time, he also became a yoga teacher after years of practice and study. Continuing his educational path, Max moved to Barcelona where he studied at la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, graduating with a Postgraduate Diploma in Dance/Movement Therapy. While in Catalunya, he also became a certified Level 1 AcroYoga teacher and started to teach that practice in Barcelona, San Francisco and around the world. Max came back to San Francisco, and got his Masters in Counseling Psychology with a concentration in Expressive Arts Therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He was certified as a Level 2 AcroYoga teacher and immersion instructor in Mexico in 2015. He currently is continuing his lifelong learning by both studying to become an Iyengar Yoga teacher and beginning his PhD in Expressive Arts Therapy, Education, Coaching, Consulting, Peace Building and Conflict Transformation at the European Graduate School.
He works in San Francisco and around the globe as a yoga teacher, AcroYoga instructor and teacher trainer. Max also works as a psychotherapist. Max has extensive experience offering psychotherapy to fellow members of the LGBTQQI++ community. He did his trainingship at Queer LifeSpace, a therapy clinic in the Castro District of San Francisco. Max completed the Advanced Associateship Program at The Liberation Institute, a Liberation Psychology-centered community mental health clinic in San Francisco. As part of this program, he saw a wide range of individuals and couples in psychotherapy. He currently works in private practice in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Max has dedicated the past few years to working with trauma from a yoga-centered perspective and teaching trauma-informed yoga teacher trainings. A teacher's teacher, Max is the lead teacher in yoga teacher trainings and mentors new teachers. He is also in the process of becoming a certified Feldenkrais Method practitioner. Max began his yoga and AcroYoga teaching in Barcelona, and continues to travel and teach in Barcelona, the rest of Europe and around the world.
Life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves.
— IRVIN D. YALOM