I’m Levi Weinhagen — a therapist, facilitator, writer, theater maker, and educator based in the Twin Cities. My work lives at the intersection of emotional health, creativity, relationships, leadership, humor, and justice.
Across therapy offices, rehearsal rooms, classrooms, community spaces, workshops, and stages, I keep returning to the same core questions:
How do people become more fully themselves?
How do we build more honest relationships?
How do we stay connected to humanity, creativity, and care inside systems that often reward disconnection and performance?
Whether I’m facilitating a difficult workplace conversation, sitting with a therapy client, writing an essay, teaching improvisation, or performing comedy, I’m interested in helping people move toward greater emotional honesty, flexibility, connection, and possibility.
I’m a therapist with Sentier Therapy, where I work with teens, adults, emerging adults, and groups. My therapeutic work focuses on emotional growth, relationships, identity, anxiety, self-understanding, communication, and helping people reconnect with themselves in more compassionate and grounded ways.
My approach is collaborative, relational, strengths-based, trauma-informed, and deeply human. I draw from narrative therapy, mindfulness practices, EMDR, interpersonal process work, and creativity-informed approaches to healing. I believe therapy works best when people feel safe enough to be honest — not perfect.
I’m especially interested in:
Humor also matters deeply to me as a therapist. Sometimes laughter creates enough space for people to finally say something true. Sometimes playfulness helps us reconnect with parts of ourselves that have been buried under stress, fear, or expectation.
I don’t see creativity and mental health as separate things. I think imagination is part of healing.
Alongside therapy, I run Routine Maintenance LLC, a facilitation and consulting practice focused on leadership, equity, communication, emotional intelligence, and organizational culture.
Before becoming a therapist, I spent years as a teaching artist, trainer, performer, community facilitator, and race and gender justice educator. Those experiences continue to shape how I think about systems, relationships, communication, accountability, and leadership.
My facilitation work blends:
I’m interested in helping individuals and organizations:
I’m also a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and the Intercultural Conflict Styles Inventory (ICS), tools that support deeper intercultural awareness and communication.
Much of my work asks: What happens when organizations value emotional intelligence, creativity, curiosity, and humanity as much as efficiency and productivity?
Art has always been one of the ways I understand people.
I’m a longtime theater maker, comedy writer, improviser, performer, producer, and teaching artist. I’m a Brave New Workshop alum and co-founder of Comedy Suitcase, a Twin Cities-based theater company dedicated to making smart, emotionally grounded comedy for audiences of all ages.
Over the years, I’ve created original theatrical work, podcasts, essays, workshops, and performances that explore identity, relationships, parenting, justice, vulnerability, aging, masculinity, and the absurdity of being human. My work has ranged from performances for preschool audiences to facilitation with educators, community organizations, and leaders.
In 2012, I was named a City Pages Artist of the Year, and in 2014–2015 I became the first-ever Artist in Residence for the Walker Art Center’s Education and Family Programs department.
I’ve also written essays and commentary for outlets including Minnesota Playlist and the Walker Art Center Reader, often reflecting on creativity, burnout, parenting, vulnerability, art-making, and community.
More recently, my wife, Laura Zabel, and I created Empty Nest, a live comedy show about marriage, parenting, identity shifts, aging, and transition — an attempt to find humor and tenderness inside major life changes.
Improvisation has deeply shaped how I move through the world.
Improv teaches:
Those lessons show up in every part of my work.
I believe kindness, creativity, justice, emotional honesty, curiosity, accountability, and connection matter deeply.
I care about helping people move beyond shame and toward deeper self-understanding. I care about relationships rooted in respect, openness, repair, and care. I care about creating environments where people feel more able to think clearly, feel fully, communicate honestly, and stay connected to their humanity.
I’m especially interested in:
I don’t think growth happens through perfection.
I think it usually happens through attention, honesty, experimentation, discomfort, reflection, and relationship.
Growth often means:
I also believe people cannot be separated from context.
We are shaped by:
That means healing and growth are rarely just individual experiences.
Connection matters.
Context matters.
Community matters.
I believe people are far more capable of creativity, repair, resilience, and transformation than they often realize.
A lot of modern life pushes people toward disconnection.
Toward performance instead of presence.
Toward productivity instead of meaning.
Toward certainty instead of curiosity.
Toward isolation instead of relationship.
The work I do — in therapy, facilitation, leadership development, writing, and performance — is ultimately about helping people reconnect:
I don’t think therapy, leadership, art, humor, and emotional growth are separate practices.
I think they are all connected expressions of what it means to become more fully human.
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