Therapeutic Approach Overview
My therapeutic approach is person-centered, prioritizing a safe, empathetic, and non-judgmental space where you are fully seen and heard. My style is warm, informal, humor-filled, and down-to-earth, creating a relaxed space for meaningful exploration. But I won’t just smile and nod—I’m also not afraid to gently challenge you, provide practices to explore between sessions, and hold you accountable to your intentions to transform and heal.
I believe you are the expert on your own life and fundamentally whole as you are. My role is to offer a safe container and tools to help you connect more deeply with your lived experience, your body’s wisdom, and your mind’s innate capacity for healing. Drawing from mindful and somatic practices rooted in Buddhist psychology, Hakomi Method principles, and Expressive Arts therapy, I help clients approach their experiences with curiosity and non-judgment, fostering radical self-compassion and present-moment awareness. I am in the process of training to receive Level 1 certification in Expressive Arts Therapy.
To support emotion regulation and healing, I incorporate skills from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), a mindfulness-based approach designed to help navigate intense emotions. Additionally, I offer trauma treatment through Flash Technique, which uses bilateral stimulation to reduce emotional distress while reprocessing traumatic memories gently and effectively.
I am deeply committed to creating an inclusive, affirming space for people of all identities, including those in LGBTQIA+ communities, consensually non-monogamous relationships, and individuals from diverse racial, ethnic, and spiritual backgrounds. This space is a collaborative one, designed to support exploration, growth, and healing while respecting the uniqueness of every person’s experience.
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Somatic and Body-Oriented Therapy
Your body holds so much wisdom—memories, emotions, and stories that your thinking mind may not even be aware of. In our work together, we’ll gently tune into what’s happening beneath the surface, using the body as a doorway to healing.
I pull from:
Buddhist Practices of learning to cultivate compassionate awareness, helping you notice and befriend bodily sensations and feelings rather than resist or judge them.
Hakomi Method, a mindful and exploratory approach that allows your body-mind to reveal its own story and innate path toward healing.
Flash Technique, a gentle bilateral stimulation method to help soften the grip of distressing memories without overwhelming your system. (see more below)
Trauma-informed Expressive Arts Therapy, incorporating movement, rhythm, sound, music, vocalization, and visual arts to engage the whole brain and body. This integrates bottom-up (body-based) and top-down (cognitive) processing to support trauma recovery and resilience.
This approach isn’t about forcing change—it’s about listening deeply, creating space for what needs to be felt, and letting your inner wisdom lead the way.
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Spirituality in Therapy: A Path to Healing
Spirituality can be a profound source of guidance and strength, whether you follow a particular religious tradition or are exploring a path of your own. In spiritually based counseling from a Buddhist lens, I offer support in navigating life on life’s terms with wisdom, compassion, and understanding. Buddhism is not meant to replace your root religion (if you don’t practice Buddhism) but can complement it by offering tools to see reality more clearly, recognize our interdependence, and find meaning and direction in your healing journey. We can also collaborate to identify practices that will feel meaningful and aligned with you, whether from the lineages I am familiar with, or from your own tradition(s), to integrate into your path of transformation.
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Expanding Your Toolkit for Resilience and Thriving
Healing isn’t just about insight—it’s also about having the right tools to navigate life’s challenges with more ease and stability. In our work together, I often offer psychoeducation on neurobiology, helping you understand how your nervous system responds to stress, challenging emotions, and attachment relationships. With this knowledge, you can begin to work with your body and mind, rather than feeling at their mercy.
We’ll integrate skills from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) to support emotion regulation, effective communication, expanding your capacity for overcoming challenges, and deepening mindfulness. We may also practice body-based resourcing strategies to help regulate your nervous system—especially when trauma responses like hyperarousal (feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or reactive) or hypoarousal (feeling shut down, numb, or disconnected) arise.
The goal isn’t just to cope but to thrive—building a sense of safety, flexibility, and resilience so that you can engage more fully with life.
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Flash Technique for Trauma
Flash Technique is a powerful, trauma-focused therapy designed to help individuals process distressing memories with minimal emotional discomfort. This technique, which is often used as part of trauma therapy, involves rapidly stimulating both sides of the brain to help reprocess traumatic memories, similar to the bilateral stimulation used in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). However, Flash Technique differs by helping clients process trauma without needing to focus on or re-live the painful memory itself. It is often experienced as a less intrusive method compared to other trauma therapies, allowing for greater emotional safety and quicker processing. Many clients report feeling lighter and more at ease after sessions. If you are looking for a compassionate and effective way to process trauma without becoming overwhelmed by intense emotions, Flash Technique may be an avenue to explore. To learn more about Flash Technique and its applications in trauma therapy, read more on the official Flash Technique website.
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Expressive Arts Therapy
As an artist and dancer, I’ve experienced firsthand the transformative power of creative expression. Art, movement, rhythm, and sound have a way of reaching places that words alone cannot, making them invaluable tools in the healing process—especially for trauma work.
Our bodies hold our experiences, and healing requires more than just talking; it asks us to engage all parts of the brain, not just the thinking mind. Expressive Arts Therapy allows us to do just that. Whether through rhythm, music, visual art, vocalization, gesture, or movement, we invite the body into the process, offering new ways to express, release, and integrate what’s been held inside. These action-oriented practices help regulate the nervous system, restore a sense of agency, and reconnect us to our own aliveness, curiosity, and playfulness.
Through expressive arts, we tap into a well of possibility, where healing isn’t just about processing pain but also about reconnecting with joy, creativity, and the deeper wisdom that lives within us.
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Get in touch
Think we might be a good fit for therapy? Let’s schedule a free 20 minute phone consultation to see if and how I may be able to help.