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Some Basics About Me
I am a therapist and movement guide offering an embodied and holistic approach to mental health and well-being. I’m passionate about helping people live meaningful lives filled with love, creativity and freedom.
My mission is to help my clients turn their biggest challenges into their greatest strengths. I believe that when we harness somatic, mindfulness and key psychological interventions, the sensitivity and darkness within can actually be portals into greater connection, clarity, joy and freedom.
For over 20 years, I’ve been at the forefront of mental health, incorporating integrative, embodied and holistic techniques to support my clients on their unique journey. I innovatively push the boundaries of traditional therapy and medication use.
Today, I offer individual and couples therapy, with a focus on providing holistic, inclusive and compassionate healing spaces to those interested in an embodied approach to wellness.
More About My Professional Background
I’m a multifaceted practitioner. I’m a trained psychiatrist and therapist, and identify as a dancer. I bring together these different facets to ultimately help individuals live fully embodied lives so they can become the people they are meant to be.
Here’s more about my professional background and education, which informs my work today. I trained for 9 years in medicine and psychiatry, building the foundation and deep understanding of the human body and mind. Very early on in my psychiatry training, I uncovered the limitations of external treatments like medications for healing. That’s when I began exploring modes of healing in the personal growth and psychotherapeutic realm. I have trained in cognitive, behavioral, somatic, movement, hypnotic, spiritual and interpersonal therapy and have created and taught many programs on movement, mindfulness and psychological wellbeing in Los Angeles including “The Mindful Path through Anxiety” and “Lifeforce Yoga for Anxiety.” From 2010 to 2019 I was on faculty in the department of psychiatry at the University of Southern California. There, I taught psychiatric trainees about how to prevent burnout and increase resiliency using mindfulness and compassion practices.
My Origin Story
The holistic practices that I share with my clients have had a profound impact on my own life in ways I never thought possible. That’s why it’s my mission and greatest honor to help as many people as possible do the same.
I have over 20 years of experience as a mindfulness practitioner, exploring the modality in stillness, movement and relationally. I started my own mindfulness practice and brought it to patients, when I was in my residency, as a way to reduce dependence on medication and external resources for well-being. I started out with the mindfulness teachings of John Kabat Zinn and the insight meditation community. Thereafter, I became a children's mindfulness teacher through Inner Kids: Mindfulness & Activity-Based Educational Model for Children | Susan Kaiser Greenland. I also studied and taught yoga for mental health and became certified to teach LifeForce Yoga.
However, it was not until I discovered 5 Rhythms movement practice, that I realized the power of dance as a means to cultivate mindfulness and access greater stillness. The 5Rhythms is a movement meditation practice which facilitates connection to self and spirit. Through dancing the 5 Rhythms, we can create our own unique dance. Once we can express ourselves through our own unique dance, we can leverage it not only to cultivate greater self and spiritual connection, but also to integrate and create art from our experience.
Insights from my own mental health journey
My own mental health journey informs my work as a therapist. When I first began experiencing intense anxiety 20 years ago as a psychiatry resident, I sought treatment in the form of medication as a means to continue functioning at a highly stressful level. As I continued to explore mindfulness and psychotherapy practices, I realized that while medication does have a place in treatment, it can only go so far. This led me on a path to explore any and every mode of mental health treatment I could find, including a fellowship in integrative psychiatry.
And after all this exploration, I have returned to something that’s been with me since birth: dance and movement. It gives me the ability to express what can’t be spoken and to integrate all that is arising in me, including intense anxiety, so I can live with more wholeness in the present moment.
While I can’t say I am living all my moments in the present, I can say that it’s a refuge that I am coming back to more and more as I deepen my commitment to embodiment. I practice every day so that I can be as integrated and free as possible for all those I love and support, including myself. It is my belief that no one is free until we are all free. My greatest desire is to make any contribution I can to help others feel free and to fully realize their potential in this life.