WILD WISE THERAPY
Unconventional therapy for depth and growth
When the body genuinely feels safe, it organically generates creative, adaptive, and resilient responses to life’s challenges.
“Conventional” talk therapies can be incredibly valuable to support the Mind within the mind-body connection, but sometimes our bodies hold onto distress in ways that words alone cannot reach.
“Unconventional” Somatic and Energy Psychology therapies step in to support the Body, working directly with our felt sense and energetic systems.
Your body is not something “wild” to be tamed or controlled. Your body is a wise partner. Once the body feels understood and supported, limiting thoughts and beliefs update naturally, and healing and change is holistic and sustainable.
Using body-forward techniques, cognitive therapy, and real-time nervous system regulation, we can gently work together to understand the unique language of your body, teach you practices that genuinely care for your nervous system, and move and release stress response in healthy ways.
About Me
Like most who work in healing professions, Life has been the main educator. My path has included childhood trauma, grief/loss, learning how to navigate as a sensing/feeling person in territories where these qualities are not valued, and finding inner equilibrium and groundedness even during a cancer journey, elder care, and midlife.
This means I have tested the tools and techniques I offer and find them sound and meaningful. These methods can help reduce the effect of traumas that separate us from body and soul. They can be helpful to heal the mindsets that make our bodies the enemy. Applied over time, these techniques can help us be comfortable in our own skin, appreciative of our own uniqueness and purpose.
My qualifications
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCS#27189) - State of California
Certified Somatic Stress Release® Practitioner - Embody Lab
Reiki Master - Alternative Healing Center
Reiki Instructor - Alternative Healing Center
Hypnotherapist - Alternative Healing Center
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT/Tapping) – Association for Energy Psychology
Professional Training
BA in Psychology – University of California
Masters in Social Work – San Jose State University
20+ years working as a Medical Social Worker in hospitals, Hospice, and Palliative Care.
Healing Through Art – CSU Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care
Evidence Based Hypnosis for Cancer Pain Management – AMEDCO LLC and Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai
Certified Grief Support Specialist – University of Madison Wisconsin
Memberships
National Association of Social Workers
Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology
My Services
The common link in each of my therapeutic approaches is collaboration with the body and nervous system to enable changes in the mind/thoughts. The goal of each modality is to:
Understand the unique language of your body.
Regulate your nervous system so you can stay present in your own life.
Discharge excess threat response and increase feelings of clarity and calm.
Some sessions you may simply need deep rest, which Reiki can provide. Other times you may need to talk and tap (EFT) to regulate your nervous system while working through content that is distressing. Some sessions may call for movement to explore the body’s language (Somatic Stress Release®). Other sessions you may want to quiet the chatter of the mind to find the quiet, solid understanding held deep in your inner experience (hypnotherapy and Reiki-supported hypnotherapy).
I offer session lengths of 60, 75, and 90 minute with fees as follows:
60 minute session: $90
75 minute session: $105
90 minute session: $120
If you would like a session but cannot afford the fee, please talk with me about my sliding scale option.
Relax
Reiki
This is a gentle, Japanese-based energy session which promotes a deeply restful state in the nervous system. Reiki restores the flow of vital energy in meridians, chakras and biofields to establish harmony and alignment between the body’s energy pathways, organizing fields, and neural activity. This allows the body’s inherent healing systems to work to their potential – be it the immune or digestive systems or mental and emotional processing.
Release
Somatic Stress Release® & Movement
Using gentle curiosity to befriend the body's sensations, we can begin to understand our holding patterns and stress responses. Than we offer them movement, expression, and rest to help complete stress response cycles and discharge stuck energies.
Re-Set
EFT/Tapping
Emotional Freedom Techniques/EFT is an evidence-based tapping technique that combines real-time nervous system regulation (tapping on acu-points) with cognitive therapy to calm the body's distress, re-organize thought patterns and bring the creative, problem-solving parts of the brain back into play to help make permanent cognitive shifts for lasting change.
Re-Connect
Hypnotherapy
Using guided relaxation, quiet the chatter of the mind, enter the "imaginal" or image-based realm of the deep inner world and gain solid understanding and guidance re: daily themes and challenges. Hypnotherapy can also be supported using gentle Reiki energy work during session.
Your Questions, Answered
How do I know if this is right for me?
If you would like to try therapies that restore the body as an ally and source of wisdom rather than something to be controlled with discipline, these "unconventional" therapies may be a good match for you. If talk therapy has been helpful but you want to see if you can enhance your results, these active, targeted, and purposeful modalities can be used alongside your regular therapy - either on an occasional basis or as a complement. Lastly, if you appreciate therapies that welcome your deeply held, more spiritual/less rational senses, all of my modalities can support this as well.
Does my insurance cover these services?
Insurance companies follow a medical model that requires therapists to pathologize your experiences with a diagnosis, or to name something "wrong" about you. My perspective is strengths-based and optimistic. My modalities all believe that with proper time, space, permission and support, your holistic system knows what it needs to grow, settle, and heal. Therefore, I do not bill insurance or provide a superbill for you to bill on your own. I do, however, offer sliding scale fees, and am happy to have a conversation with you around what fee might enable you to get the support you want.
Is hypnotherapy the same as hypnosis?
No. Hypnotherapy is a guided and personalized experience to help you relax, but you remain aware and awake at all times. Once relaxed, I can facilitate your deep inner inquiry. You and I collaborate to explore and expand on any internal experiences or images that arise, and then invite your consideration on how to bring the insights back to everyday life and practice. Hypnosis, such as stage hypnosis, is a deep trance state where you lose awareness and control. It's worth saying again - In hypnotherapy you remain aware and in control at all times.
Do any of these methods treat medical illness or chronic pain?
None of these treatment modalities cure or treat diagnosed medical conditions. They can, however, support your system through the stress, anxiety, and emotional wear-and-tear of living with a serious or chronic condition.
Is EFT evidence-based?
EFT is one of the most widely used and researched forms of Energy Psychology (therapy that includes some component to address the body's resonance/energy fields). To date, over 300 clinical trials of EFT's efficacy appear in peer-reviewed professional journals globally. Nearly all trials show statistically significant improvement in at least one of the targeted symptoms. The consistency of positive findings by independent research teams across multiple countries has prompted the US Department of Veterans affairs to approve EFT as an evidence-based practice that VA therapists may use for treating PTSD, depression, anxiety, and pain. Additional studies that document the biological effects have shown measurable physical changes such as reductions in cortisol, brainwave shifts associated with emotional regulation, and up-regulation of genes associated with immune response.
Course for professionals
Reiki 1 – Self-Care for Healthcare Professionals
This course is an introduction to Reiki as well as a deep dive on staying healthy in the healing professions.
It introduces you to Reiki, Level 1, which focuses on using Reiki for Self-treatment. Reiki fundamentally is a practice of self care. We must nourish our own vitality and help ourselves as a true pre-requisite to helping others. Reiki’s structure is a way to learn how to be in, create or participate in a healing environment while maintaining our own health and healthy boundaries.
If you are new to energy work, you will learn the core concepts of working with subtle energy: how to prepare mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to engage in healing work. We learn the specific hand positions for providing Reiki treatments and study/contemplate the Reiki Principles.
I supplement basic Reiki teachings with Energy Psychology and Neurobiology, adding practices from Somatic Experiencing, Somatic Stress Release, and PolyVagal Theory. We’ll address the concepts of capacity, boundaries, energy preservation/maintenance, and recognizing subtle signs of overwhelm. We explore the highs and lows of being empathic in fast-paced work settings, bombarded by human suffering, where emotional distress is ever-present and self-care is difficult to fit in. We bring Reiki principles and practices from the Somatics world to bear on exhaustion, vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral distress.
The goal of this course is to equip you to better know yourself, care well for your own energy, and stay within capacity while enjoying your calling as a Healer.
This is a 6-week course: 2 sessions per month for 3 months.
Tuition includes:
a ½ hour energy attunement
a private Reiki session scheduled outside of class time during the course period.
24 hours of instruction, experiential and practice.
Tuition: $425 (Payment plans available)
Maximum 8 people per class.
$50 Discount per person if you and a friend sign up together (this is great for supporting practice outside class).
I offer this class on demand basis. If you are interested in this course, please fill out and submit the secure contact form (link below).
This is an in-person class that takes place in Santa Cruz, California. There is no online or recorded option.
Class meetings take place over 2 meetings per month for three months. Each class meeting is 4 hours.
Contact me
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