My approach
I have been in practicing and teaching psychotherapy for nearly four decades. In that time, I have been a continuous learner investigating an expanding understanding of the complexities of the human lifespan and the problems of living an embodied life.
As a psychotherapist, I expect to be shape-shifted by each client. Every client is unique; personal history, narrative, and idioms are all individual, and clients must be met on the their own terms. The personality, culture, and experience of the client bring them to seek diverse methods to achieve diverse goals in the framework of therapy. The therapy relationship provides the foundational human environment for transformation and growth. In my work, I mix the basics of information, insight, support, and connection to align with each client's goals.
Much human suffering arises in relational failures; early and recent, small and large. Relationships are the “scene of the crime” but also the occasion for healing. Such is our human dilemma. Relational somatic psychotherapy supports and challenges relational patterns and internalized and embodied self-beliefs generated by our relational experiences
MY CAREER
I was politically active and aware long before I became psychologically sensitive. I moved naturally toward clinical social work where the social values and holistic bio-psycho-social model resonated. I remain firmly in that heritage today and it has a strong influence on my practice ethics, my clinical view of the socially embedded client, and on my management of power dynamics and inequalities in my practice.
My original academic training at UC Berkeley was in psychodynamic Clinical Social Work. The program was informed by a holistic model (bio-psycho-social) and continues to inform my practice and thinking as a Somatic Psychotherapist. My somatic psychotherapy training began in the mid 70’s at the Radix Institute, a neo-reichian training center that certified through a vigorous three-year training, and then continued in Switzerland in the early 80’s with David Boadella and an additional certification in Somatic Psychotherapy-Biosynthesis.
Subsequently I have expanded my clinical understanding with a series of depth trainings in early development within the parent-infant mental health model (Fellow in the Harvard Children’s Hospital-Napa County Department of Health Infant-Parent Program 2002-03). I studied interpersonal neuropsychology in the Allan Schore Study Group in Berkeley (2004-2012) and attachment theory applications to adult therapy in my training with Diana Fosha and her AEDP faculty (2006-08). I will finish my three-year training in Somatic Experiencing trauma work this fall and qualify as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). I am currently in a one year training in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics a developmental trauma model designed by Bruce Perry MD.
I have been an international trainer (Western and Southern Europe, Australia, North and South America) in both schools of Somatic Psychotherapy from which I graduated and have served as core faculty and, at times, Program Director at the two San Francisco Bay Area universities with Somatic Psychology MA programs (JFK University and the California Institute for Integral Studies).