Services

  • Services
  • Body Mind Therapy
I provide services to adults and youth (14 +) who struggle with diverse problems. I specialize in helping people overcome the legacy of trauma (including verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse), as well as addictions. I also work with:

• anxiety
• grief
• relationship issues
• life transitions
• personal growth (self esteem, boundary setting, etc.)

Approaches and influences

I use a blend of approaches, with an emphasis on mindfulness based body-mind therapy. These include:

• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (Level 2, Certification in Process)
• EMDR (Certified Practitioner)
• Ego State Therapy
• CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
• Motivational dialogue
• Internal Family Systems
• Mindfulness approaches
• Nondual Meditation Technique

For those who request it, I offer instructional sessions in Nondual Meditation Technique. Nondual Mediation is a simple, awareness-based practice that includes mindfulness and other traditional meditation skills.

Everyone has a right to a present and a future that is not completely dominated by the past.
–Karen Saakvitne, PhD

Our physical and emotional bodies hold memories—as well as strengths and resources—that are sometimes not accessible to our thinking minds. Consider how we may act in ways that we ‘know’ are not in our best interest, that contradict our values, or that reflect choices belonging to past ways we are working to change. Sometimes we experience emotions (fear, anger, grief...) rising up in a flash that overwhelm our rational intentions. Those big feelings can overtake us and put us (and those we are in relationship with) on a roller coaster ride we didn’t buy a ticket for, or keep us frozen in place.
When we include the knowledge held in the physical and feeling parts of us, it can shed light on the otherwise hidden logic that informs our experience and our actions. Of course, this occurs most easily within the safety of a respectful and collaborative therapeutic relationship. Working with the organic resilience of the body-mind complex creates effective transformation. It allows us to move towards desired goals in a way that intellectual insight and problem solving does not always reach.

Body-Mind Therapy helps us:

• Manage emotions which may be thrown into chaos by the forces of anxiety and depression
• Heal and strengthen a nervous system shaped by the legacy of trauma and other struggles
• Explore the confusion of ambivalence and move forward toward preferred goals
• Improve relationships and heal developmental wounds
• Cope with the process of grief and loss

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a well-known, highly respected body-mind approach developed by Pat Ogden and Kikuni Minton. SP is a talk therapy (i.e., it does not require physical contact between client and therapist) that applies neuro-scientific findings, attachment theory and mindfulness skills to the therapeutic process. It was created to address the limitations of talk-only therapy in helping with problems that arise as a result of trauma. It is also applicable to more common issues associated with the effects of growing up in imperfect families in an imperfect world (known as developmental or attachment injuries)
The process of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy uncovers and integrates the strengths and underlying processes found in the physical, emotional, and thinking parts of us. Mindfulness skills play a large role in SP by helping people cultivate moment-to-moment awareness as they safely explore the wisdom, as well as the (transformable) barriers, held in the many layers of self. We always proceed with the greatest sensitivity and respect for a person’s in-the-moment aims, insights, and possible needs for emotional management.