An Integrative Approach to Therapy: Tending Mind, Body & Spirit

Let Life Break You Open.

My work as a therapist is rooted in psychodynamic theory, which emphasizes the unconscious or what is not ordinarily obvious in our understanding of how we experience life and behave. This means we move slowly and intentionally, spending meaningful time understanding your history—and how the patterns, adaptations, and stories you’ve carried shape your life and inform your reasons for seeking therapy. 

In the first three sessions, I assess what’s happening in the mind, body, and soul.  These sessions forge the therapeutic relationship, which is recognized as the strongest predictor of positive results in psychotherapy.  Our relationship thus becomes a vehicle for repatterning maladaptive behaviors, cognitive distortions, and trauma-informed narratives.

In practice, I use psychoeducation as a primary intervention to provide context for why your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors manifest the way they do. Drawing from attachment theory, polyvagal theory, and parts work, we’ll explore how your patterns of connection, protection, and meaning-making formed—and how they can soften and evolve.

My extensive history in somatic work as a licensed massage therapist and yoga teacher informs my orientation to the emotional process stored in the body, enabling a holistic approach to understanding your whole story. I offer breathwork and mindfulness meditations to support nervous system regulation, increase emotional tolerance, and deepen self-awareness.

Body: Before words take shape in the mind, emotions are felt in the body. In the first few years of our lives, this felt sense is our only tool for communicating with and interpreting our surroundings. As language develops, our felt sense becomes overpowered by the mind. This is especially true when the felt sense in the body is dense and hard to metabolize. Life events that conjure experiences of grief, forgiveness, abandonment, and even more positive processes like self-love require a willingness to express feelings of pain, discomfort, growth, and acceptance. Emotional content left unprocessed by the felt sense reinforces fragmentation and perpetuates a disconnect from our body, sometimes leading to chronic illness and pain. In practice, I identify coping mechanisms that block felt sensations to provide comprehensive healing throughout a person's whole system.

Soul: At an introductory level, soul can be understood as the power of the breath and its movement in and out of the body. The ancient Greeks referred to the diaphragm—the primary muscle of respiration—as Phren, recognizing it as an intersection of mind, spirit, and heart consciousness. How we breathe directly informs our capacity to regulate the nervous system, quiet the “monkey mind,” and return to the body. A chronic disconnection from the breath often reflects a deep entanglement with mental overactivation, which can perpetuate anxiety and contribute to chronic pain. Re-establishing a conscious relationship with the breath becomes a gateway to presence, regulation, and inner coherence.