About

I focus on alleviating symptoms, choice, and awareness, and improving relationships. I draw foremost from evidence-based methodologies including neuroscientific and neurobiological findings, wisdom traditions such as Buddhist psychology, and best practices by specialists. I also draw from the consistently effective practical applications of gestalt, mindfulness, and somatic work. Living is fundamentally creative, so I learn from philosophy, art, and literature, especially the human condition. My responses to the questions the New York Times says every client should ask here.

Areas of Specialization

All practitioners have their strengths and vulnerabilities. I am especially effective and interested in a few areas that I will describe below that all share the core components of resetting the nervous system, addressing underlying issues and creating flexible alternatives to behaviors that aren’t working.

• I am particularly adept at working with active trauma such as physical and sexual abuse, murder and violence which can present as intense affect, but can also, and perhaps more often, look quite cold and detached at the outset.
• I am also particularly skilled at working through intense body experiences such as such as high anxiety, panic attacks, gut and indigestion with no medical cause, and depression.
• I find working with relational wounding, such as painful or dysfunctional family experiences, terrible previous relationships, or chronic low self esteem to be incredibly rich and rewarding.
• Unfortunately, there are too few therapists knowledgeable in working effectively with grief and death and I am incredibly honored to work with people with courage to bear their sadness and work with their experience to both honor their relationship and transform their lives.
• I work with partners, parents, children, and family members of people who have been diagnosed with personality disorders, such as BPD, suicidality traumatic brain injuries and those who have a history of hospitalization.
• Finally, I am especially well suited to work with couples and family pairs such as child-parent dynamics. I love the energy they bring, I love how quickly and dynamically things can change, and love knowing that what they are learning is going to help them with every relationship they ever have going forward.

Advanced Training

• I completed a two year practicum and internship at the only graduate-level Gestalt training center in the US, the Integral Counseling Center, where I completed intensive training and guidance in working with individuals and couples in a somatically-informed, highly experiential, modality that focuses on swift and effective change.
• I completed a somatic and experience-near, year-long training in treating trauma in multi-dimensional, effective, and resillency-building methods with the Buddhist Psychologist, author and professor, Dr. Kenneth Bradford
• To widen my breadth, I worked holistically with dual diagnosis, medically fragile, and severely disabled individuals and their families  at California Pacific Medical Center through their Integrative Psychotherapy Training Program.
• To deepened my understanding and experience with psychosis, catatonia, personality disorders, suicidality, sexual and physical abuse and trauma in adolescents, I worked in the McAauly Neuropsychiatric Institute, a dedicated adolescent inpatient unit.
• I was supervised by sex therapist, author, and Human Sexuality Professor, Dr. Nicolle Zapien, for a year of my training.
• I was supervised by and trained in affect regulation, radical acceptance, and depth psychotherapy under master existential therapist, author, professor, and Dharma teacher Dr. Ken Bradford for four years.
• I was invited to speak on a panel at the Existential Humanistic Institute’s Annual Conference in 2015.
• I was supervised and trained in phenomenological approaches to therapy, gestalt therapeutic techniques, and awareness under Gieve Patel, faculty at CIIS and Director of the Integral Counseling Center for six years.
• I trained with lead DBT trainer Charles Swenson for 40 hours to learn what is largely considered the most effective evidenced-based psychotherapy for treating borderline personality disorder and suicidal and persisuicidal behavior patterns.

• An advanced consultation group for non-dual and contemplative practitioners, actively since 2012
• Training with the Pacific Gestalt Institute to practice  contemporary approaches to gestalt psychotherapy
• A multi-year somatically-focused training program that is rooted in Core Energetics run by Core Trainer, Ann Bradney
• A 30 hour course on Attachment led by Dr. Daniel Siegel

My Professional Background

My two special areas of training, gestalt and contemplative psychotherapy, are exactly in line with our current understanding of neuropsychology and cognitive sciences. Working with awareness, compassion, mindfulness, and insight are both fundamental to these traditions as well as being at the heart of neural rewiring and neural plasticity.How we act on, are acted on, and interact with our environment has been my academic and professional specialization for close to 20 years.

We all know what it’s like to call out, hoping to be met on a deeper level, and my passion has always been focused on the development and care of skills and awareness. Before becoming a psychotherapist over twelve years ago, I worked with couples, therapists and coaches to help their clients build work/life balance and manage co-parenting.  This grew out of a desire to aid others in the construction of the lives they wanted to live. I began my career working for several years in community development, both in some of the most challenged communities in the United States as well abroad.  Though they didn’t seem related at the time, I can now see how my personal passion for understanding affect regulation, nonverbal communication, atunement, and energetic boundaries came from the  part of me that loves to be with systems in process and on journeys. 

I hold a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and have been working with couples, families, and individuals in the Bay Area since 2012. I am a licensed psychotherapist in the state of California, MFC94338.

I have a strong background in existential philosophy, yogic tradition, a personal foundation of living in communities of color and alternative lifestyle, and years of working with diverse populations that run the full gamut–of physicality, sexuality, cognitive ability, gender orientation, lifestyle arrangement and economic circumstance–around creating work, life, or environmental balance.