MIND-BODY THERAPY
Embodied Healing
Embodiment - it’s a word that gets used a lot these days, but what does it mean and how do you ‘get it’? The dictionary defines “to embody” as “making visible,” and for me that is exactly what our bodies and movement do. We all have bodies and we are always moving, even if it is just breathing. Our movement and body makes visible all of who we are: our mood, personality, history, family, and culture.
For those living in or experiencing a state of chronic traumatic stress, it is more the regular to feel overwhelmed and tense or trend more toward feeling numb and shut down, perhaps even dissociated, but regardless of how the experiences show up in our bodies, one thing remains the same: Being “inside ourselves,” with our thoughts, feelings and emotions, feels scary, overwhelming, confusing and painful.
When we feel confident in our ability to navigate the worlds both inside and outside of us, our bodies and the feelings and experiences they contain start to feel like less threatening and we begin to build a new relationship with them.
Purposefully creating a sense of safety, security and vitality inside ourselves after trauma, illness or crisis can be likened to “returning home'“ and it’s a journey of reclamation.
Of your body, your mind, your soul…your life.
"Weakness is a great thing...strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being...what has hardened will never win."//Andrei Tarkovsky
What Will We Do Together?
Embodied Healing is a mind body connection approach to healing that looks at a person as an integrated whole: mind + body + spirit. Traditional “talk therapy” often focuses solely on life history and the analysis of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In contrast, mind body therapy incorporates these same principals, yet integrates the body and its' experience into the journey. The body holds memories, emotions, and sensations. It can be profoundly impactful to understand the body through the sensations, while allowing space for the nervous system to regulate.
As your practitioner, it is my job to facilitate and support your healing by giving you appropriate skills and resources to feel safe and secure while teaching you how to implement them into your daily practice.
During our time together, you will learn effective strategies for self-regulation and nervous system soothing, how to re-establish a communicative relationship with your body and emotions, what boundaries you need in place to feel safe and secure, what needs of yours are not being met and how to meet them, which core wounds are playing themselves on repeat in your life, what distorted beliefs about yourself are holding you back from thriving and how to increase your ability to be with big energy and emotions without feeling overwhelmed.
Working with me requires a willingness to do hard, deep, but gentle, work. I will not take on clients who are looking for someone to heal them. I offer support, tools, guidance, deep processing work, compassion, empathy and years of research, study and training, but I cannot do the healing for you. This is ultimately a co-created experience wherein my desire for you is to become your own best resource of wisdom, truth, healing and love. I believe in our innate ability to understand what we need and my hope is to create a space where you begin to uncover the innate wisdom within and use it as a guide in your life.
If this work feels like a match for your journey and where you’re hoping to go, let's schedule a consultation to see if we are aligned for the journey together.
SERVICES OFFERED
COUPLES & FAMILY THERAPY
INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
CLINICAL SUPERVISION
BRAINSPOTTING - TRAUMA PROCESSING
KETAMINE ASSISTED PSYCHOTHERAPY AND INTEGRATION
KETAMINE ASSISTED PSYCHOTHERAPY AND INTEGRATION SERVICES
What is Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)?
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy is a deep psychotherapeutic process that can produce rapid improvement for a number of conditions, including depression, anxiety, suicidality, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and more. Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy can be supportive for chronic pain, chronic illness and end of life care.
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy is compatible with most other psychiatric medicines, and it can create powerful, sustained healing when all other traditional interventions fail.
Unlike the IV medical model, sessions are conducted with the support of a therapist and a physician. Sessions that include medicine last 2 hours, and the experience is focused on therapy.
We support your process throughout with integrative sessions, email and phone contact. Our team collaborates with your psychiatrists and therapists when needed.
Expenses tend to be more with Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy than with the IV method. The cost of treatment relates to the thoroughness of our work and the long duration of the sessions--with two practitioners in attendance with you.
WHAT IS PSYCHEDELIC INTEGRATION?
Some say that integration is a process that begins before the psychedelic experience itself, with thoughtful, conscious preparation. I work with patients to identify their intentions or goals, think through safety considerations and prepare for possible outcomes. Once the experience is complete, we work together to integrate insights into daily life and embody these changes. Sometimes the experience is challenging and we work together to create a narrative of the experience that promotes safety and stability.
WHAT MODALITIES DO YOU USE?
I approach Ketamine Assisted Therapy and Integration from a harm reduction framework. Harm reduction allows for patient self determination and autonomy, while simultaneously inviting them to explore their choices from all angles. During the integration process, we will use mindfulness techniques and contemplative practices. We will also use experiential techniques, which can be useful for embodying the insights and incorporating them into daily life.
I'M SO GLAD YOU ARE HERE!
I am a Nevada/Arizona/California-based Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). I received my BA from Arizona State University and MSW from the University of Nevada, Reno. My experience includes 14 years of clinical experience in a range of settings, including both outpatient and inpatient psychiatric services, acute inpatient hospital services (telemetry, medical & Behavioral Health), disaster mental health (humanitarian work), psychedelic assisted integration therapy and private practice therapy.
In my work, I believe that the true health and freedom we crave present themselves when we align body, mind and soul and return to the instinctual, intuitive wisdom that exists within us to guide us on our life journey. Through returning to ourselves and the sense of safety, security and love that come with feeling safe and at home in our bodies, we are able to open to life and live fully. Working with me requires a willingness to do hard, deep, but gentle, work. I will not take on clients who are looking for someone to heal them. I offer support, tools, guidance, deep processing work, compassion, empathy and years of research, study and training, but I cannot do the healing for you. This is ultimately a co-created experience wherein my desire for you is to become your own best resource of wisdom, truth, healing and love.
So why therapy? Well, I believe this quote speaks to such question...
"Therapy will drastically increase the depth and authenticity of your happiness AND it will honor the cathartic beauty of your sadness AND it will make the profoundly necessary space for everything that lives in between" - Emily Anhalt