HeartMind Therapy
Specializing in Healing Intensives: Come for a day, a weekend, or a week of life-changing work!
HeartMind Therapy incorporates perspectives and techniques drawn from Buddhism, shamanism, hypnotherapy, energy medicine, Focusing, and other external and internal sources. I work with individuals, couples and groups, and offer an initial consultation and/or first session FREE, so you can assess whether my work feels like a good fit for you.
I also teach workshops in shamanic journeying, an ancient method of connecting with inner wisdom and healing resources, and am available to do more traditional shamanic work upon request.
I do phone sessions all over the world, and work in person most often at my home office in Oakland, California. In-person work in Shelburne Falls, MA can also be arranged.
HeartMind Therapy: Frequently-Asked Questions
How does HeartMind Therapy work?
If you are reading this website, you have probably already done a lot of inner exploration -- and perhaps a lot of therapy as well. You may have a lot of intellectual understanding about both your emotional history, and your present patterns. Yet, you have likely also encountered the frustrating reality that cognitive knowledge alone does not shift those patterns, nor does it go very far to help us achieve the happy, healthy, fulfilled lives we want.
For this reason, HeartMind Integration Therapy utilizes the much deeper healing potential available in an altered state — a state of deep, yet alert relaxation, which can be achieved through guided visualization and body awareness. In this state, clients are fully aware of what is going on, and remain in control of the process; the conscious mind is still present, it’s just not running the show. In this altered state, we can access and shift the energetic patterns that are no longer serving you.
Clay can provide a useful analogy. Most of us tend to experience ourselves as a clay sculpture that has already dried. After all, we believe, it’s not possible to change the past -- the things that happened to us cannot be undone. Cognitive knowledge of what happened can help us understand why our sculpture took on the shapes it did — yet, if the clay is truly dry, we’re stuck with it.
HeartMind Therapy works with the understanding that, in fact, the past isn’t really past at all. All of the significant things that ever happened to us -- or, more accurately, all of the beliefs and postures we formed as a result — are still alive in us at this very moment. This is the source of the tremendous difficulty we experience in trying to change our deeply-rooted patterns. Yet it is also the reason why change and healing are possible. In HeartMind Integration Therapy sessions, we can follow these patterns back to their source — an energetic place inside of us where the clay of our beings is still moist and malleable, and can be re-sculpted into more life-affirming forms.
HeartMind Therapy differs from traditional psychotherapy, where much of the healing is believed to result from the relationship between the therapist and the client. In this work, the significant healing relationship is between you and your own inner wellspring of balance, wholeness and health. My primary role as a therapist is to facilitate your reconnection with that part of yourself.
Who can benefit from HeartMind Therapy?
Some people come for help with seemingly localized issues like physical pain, weight, insomnia, smoking, phobias or creative blocks. Others come with more generalized concerns like depression, anxiety, sexuality or relationship problems. Some come because they are battling with addictions, eating disorders or other compulsive behaviors, or because they have been diagnosed with a serious illness. Regardless of where you are, HeartMind Integration Therapy can meet you there — and help you access the healing you seek.
This isn’t a “one size fits all” approach; each session is unique. Yet it operates on the understanding that on the deepest level, all of our symptoms and problems have the same cause: a blocked or distorted connection to ourselves and to the life force.
You do not need to hold any particular spiritual beliefs in order to benefit from HeartMind Therapy. I am delighted to work with anyone who feels drawn to this work. I believe we all have much to teach each other, and to learn from each other. I work with both individuals and couples.
My background has also led me to develop several areas of special interest. These include:
- Health issues (physical pain; preparation for, and recovery from, surgery; organ donation and transplantation)
- Sex and sexuality
- Creativity and creative blocks
What happens in a HeartMind Therapy session?
Early on, we explore your “emotional biography,” including both the external events and circumstances of your life, and your internal responses to them. This helps us begin to recognize the energetic patterns that probably became established very early, and have most likely continued, in one form or another, ever since. If you have come with a specific issue to work on, we will also cover the history of that issue, and examine how it relates to the themes of your emotional biography.
Also early on -- generally in the first session, where possible -- I will help you make contact with an inner source of guidance, however you may conceive of it (one phrase I like to use is, “a part of yourself which has only your highest good as its sole intent.”) Regardless of whether you view this guide as your own Higher Self, an interdimensional being, or a product of your imagination or unconscious, this contact will help to ground and support the rest of our work together.
My work with each client is unique. However, the work will often involve some or all of the following techniques, as needed and appropriate.
Focusing and/or Body Bridge: By tuning into your body and paying close attention to subtle physical sensations and accompanying emotions, we allow all the different parts of yourself to be heard. In some cases, this is enough to allow stuck places to shift. At other times we may use physical sensations as a bridge into a regression, allowing us to revisit the origin of an issue.
Age Regression: Revisiting childhood traumas in an altered state can provide much deeper insight into their true nature, as well as how they contribute to imbalances in your current life. Particularly when combined with Soul Retrieval, regressions can also help heal the energy distortions caused by such events.
Prenatal and/or Birth Regression: Many theorists believe that the prenatal and birth experiences have a profound impact on peoples’ lives. Even if you do not think you can remember these events, revisiting them while in an altered state may provide surprisingly deep levels of insight and healing.
Past Life Regression: Regardless of whether you believe in the paradigm of past lives or approach this as an imaginative or metaphorical process, it can provide another way to understand — and heal -- recurring dynamics in your current life.
Soul Retrieval: Shamans use this term to refer to the “retrieval” and reconnection of parts of the self which had become disconnected from the core, generally due to trauma or shock. Although traditionally shamans do soul retrievals for their clients, in HeartMind Integration Therapy I will most often guide you to do your own — which can be both more empowering, and more effective.
Dream Work: Shamanic-style exploration of dreams, and/or hypnotherapy regressions based on the emotions you’ve experienced in dreams, can provide us with important information about levels of your consciousness which might otherwise remain hidden.
Spirit Releasement and Shamanic Extraction: Traumatic situations, enmeshed relationships and relationship breakups are just a few of the situations in which people commonly take on emotional energies or thought patterns which are not their own. The spirit releasement/extraction process can help restore you to proper energetic balance.
Shamanic Journeying: Shamanic journeying is an ancient technology for accessing higher levels of wisdom. I can teach you to journey on your own, as well as assist you with journeying in sessions. We may also work together to interpret the images you receive while journeying -- since this form of inner guidance, like dreams, tends to present its messages metaphorically.
Power of Intention: Working consciously with our intentions for our lives is the most powerful tool of all. However, many of us are holding multiple, often conflicting intentions at different levels of our being. I can help you identify the intentions which resonate most deeply for you, and re-focus your energy toward them. For some, this tool can also be combined with prayer.