How I work

Even when working together via “talk therapy”, creative and expressive approaches can help anyone seeking to explore and enhance their untapped creativity or expand beyond current blocks or limitations. Together, we embrace what’s known and embark upon the unknown through a range of trauma-informed best practices and established methods for creativity enhancement or entering “flow states” that can begin simply; from thinking or talking “As If…”, to writing or drawing exercises, to improvisational sound, movement or co-created therapeutic play and more.

Drama and expressive therapies are useful for anyone interested in the structured and skillful use of therapeutic theatre and/or allied arts media to discover and express the impact of deeply held relational, psycho-spiritual, and socio-cultural influences that may not be accessible by talk therapy alone. Drama therapy applies the artful and intentional use of various theatrical processes including improvisation, dramatic play/enactments, role play, and personal narrative re-storying to explore and create new ways of responding to habitual patterns that may no longer serve. Additionally, these methods can be effective tools for expanding the limits of one’s comfort zone or “play space” towards improving personal role flexibility while increasing creative potential, self-compassion, accountability and appreciation for others. 

Allied arts media and processes may include use of graphics/color for collage, word play and poetry, music, or dance/movement as preferred by the client and indicated as an arts-based therapeutic best practice.

Together, we intentionally create environments or revisit challenging experiences in a structured-yet-supportive setting, at your pace, as you are able to safely explore traumatic material or confront limitations. We can establish enhanced reality, co-create the ‘stage’ for you to tell and re-author your story, tap into and express all feelings, arrive at new insights, release through catharsis or apply problem solving strategies in new ways.

I also offer services for adults seeking Psychedelic Preparation, Integration and Risk/Harm Reduction therapy in conjunction with currently legal Ketamine therapy (KAP). I also support integration for past psychedelic experiences including “bad trips”, spiritual emergencies or other expansive states and transformative experiences that would benefit from processing within a clinically relational context.

Working with Stan and Christina Grof, Sandra Ingerman, Michael and Sandra Harner, Dr. Steven Goodman and others at CIIS in the early 2000’s was influential to my initial training and graduate level teaching, which informs my Preparation and Integration services and current practice today.  

I offer these services via private, individual therapy as sole provider and in a group setting with Dr. Daniel Irby, MD, via Grove Integration (new groups forming every 6-8 weeks, Grove Integration Flyer.)

Coming soon…

Grove Preparation: Entering the Paradoxical Playspace for KAP Inquiry and Anxiety      Launching Fall of 2023, this embodied practice is for anyone curious about the expansive-state process, from legal, non-medicated methods like Breathwork, Improv and past journeywork or other peak experiences, to KAP (Ketamine/esketamine), the only currently legal psychedelic treatment in the US. 

I do not offer or perform psychedelic services using medicines, as this practice remains illegal in the US, outside of approved, clinical trials. I do not make referrals to or have resources for illegal practices or unregulated activities.