NEW APPROACHES TO THERAPYPractical and spiritual approaches to
healing and growth.
My journey into new approaches to therapy and growth
Over the past decade my own growth as a therapist and healer has led me to become simultaneously more practical and more spiritually oriented. The practical side is working with my clients to develop daily practices that help improve their health, energy and well-being and the spiritual side includes preparing for and integrating transpersonal experiences thru entheogenic plant medicines and the creative use of Astrology. For me this growth began in 2015 with an introduction to Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations and Wildfit’s lifestyle for enhanced health and energy. I then trained as a Holobody Coach through MindValley, incorporated Intermittent Fasting. At the beginning of 1023 I began training in Level 1 SOMA Breathwork in Denver and in 2024 began the Grof Legacy Training (GLT) in Holotropic Breathwork in preparation for their Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy program already intiaited in Spain and Denmark and slated to begin in the US. in 2025.. Most recently I attended GLT’s 1st ever week-long workshop in the integration of Holotropic Breathwork and Archteypal Astrology.
Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy
Integration coaching
With past training in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy in 2020-21, I am available to help orient you to the therapeutic use of psychedelics and help you integrate your micro- and/or macro-dosed journeys into your daily life, where they aquire their full capacity to transform the quality of your choices and deepen the meaning, purpose and enjoyment you experience in life..
As of 2024, California has not yet followed the lead of Oregon and Colorado in legalizing psychedelics, even though legislation has been proposed for years and Oakland was one of the first cities to deprioritize criminal enforcement of possession for personal use.
This means that, as of now, neither I nor any other California licensed mental health professional can legally prescribe or facilitate the use of these profound medicines outside treatment in a medical Ketamine clinic or a sanctioned psychedelic clinical trial. I can, however, help you navigate the integration of experiences you do have, whether in these settings or with a competent and trustworthy guide, and have done so with a number of my clients, some of whom became aware of past trauma during psychedelic journeys.
Psychedelics and psychotherapy
When I first learned about microdosing in 2018 from a colleague using it to manage depression, I immediately sensed psychedelics would become a major force in the future of psychotherapy. Then, like many of us, I discovered the extensive literature in therapeutic psychedelics, starting with Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. As a trauma therapist I was impressed with the results being achieved by MAPS and in other clinical trials treating PTSD, depression, and anxiety, supported by the FDA’s 2017/19 decisions to grant MDMA and psilocybin ‘Breakthrough Status.’ I sought out training as soon as I could qualify and continue to explore treatment and training opportunities.
Breathwork
SOMA and Grof Holotropic Breathwork
In recent years, breathwork has been spreading through the fields of health, wellness, and spirituality like a benign mycelial network.
SOMA Breathwork and Holotropic Breathwork represent two ends of a spectrum of practice, with SOMA offering progressive levels of training to develop daily personal breathwork practices and optionally to teach and facilitate sessions live and online for others. It was developed by ex-pharmacist, Niraj Naik after he used the traditional Indian practices of pranayama (breath yoga) and Ayurvedic medicine to successfully cure his own own serious case of ulcerative colitis.
Holotropic Breathwork is an intensive multi-day experience created and facilitated by psychiatrist and researcher Stan Grof and his wife Christina, beginning in 1975, as an alternative to what had been a legal use of psychedelics in psychotherapy, until psychedelics became illegal 1968. Grof was one of the earliest researchers in the therapeutic use of psychedelics, beginning in Czechoslovakia in the 50’s.
Astrology
Astrology as therapeutic support
Along with his colleague , Stan Grof - Scholar-in-Residence at Esalen Institute between 1973 and 1987- and Rick Tarnas -then program director at Esalen- developed a deep interest in the use of Astrology to make sense of psychedelic/Holotropic experiences. Together they discovered a deep correspondence between altered state experiences induced by psychedelics and the mythology associated with the outer planets Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. These planetary archetypes, very closely correspond with what Grof had independently formulated as the ‘Basic Perinatal Matrices,’ 4 distinct stages in the process of birth.
Building on an interest in the traditions of Western Astrology in my own family, including the metaphysical researcher and writer, Manly Hall, I studied it extensively in the late 1990’s, and formed a consultation group for therapists who were also astrologers, before turning to focus on deepening my clinical skills through the newly forming field of Relational Psychoanalysis. I also pursued an interest in how movies represent sexual abuse trauma and and beginning around 2005 studied more somatic approaches to therapy for trauma. In the last half decade, however, my interest in Astrology returned and I am currently exploring it’s usefulness in therapy for those clients who are interested and request it.
In spite of being grounded in the science of Astronomy, Astrology is a metaphoric language often assumed to violate scientific method and dismissed as the gold standard of superstition. However, as a discipline and a profession it is very complex and multifaceted, with a long and rich history, and requires the equivalent of a 4-year college degree to practice competently. As I practice it, the ‘authority’ of Astrology lies in the authorship we bring to how it’s mythology and timing relate to our daily, lived experience, and in this sense it is a fully empirical practice. While it can become a belief system, it is best held lightly and open to new learning from experience. It parallels the current use of ‘parts’ language in psychotherapy, as developed through Internal Family Systems, with the added ability to predict when certain personality ‘parts’ and their interactions are likely to be activated for healing and growth.