I am a psychotherapist (LCSW/Licensed Clinical Social Worker) as well as a certified Soul Lightening Acupressure practitioner. I combine my skills and training as a psychotherapist with my Soul Lightening Acupressure skills in order to address most effectively my clients’ whole selves – body, mind, emotions, soul – and facilitate their healing journey.
My own experience with Soul Lightening Acupressure:
I came to experience Soul Lightening Acupressure along my own healing journey. I had been engaging in talk therapy with a skilled therapist for years when I began to also received Process Acupressure (PA) sessions (Soul Lightening Acupressure sessions that include verbally processing the information that arises within the session). I found both modalities to be very valuable and complementary, with talk therapy helping me understand intellectually what is going on with me, and Soul Lightening Acupressure helping me to embody this information (experience it in my body), experience deep insights, learn to listen to and work in harmony with my body and its wisdom, and experience permanent clearing of old emotional patterns and lasting healing. That is why I combine talk therapy/psychotherapy with Soul Lightening Acupressure in the sessions I offer.
In a Soul Lightening Acupressure session I feel like my whole being is listened to and attended to which in itself feels deeply healing. For example, I can bring all parts of myself into a session: I can bring in a dream I had about my mother who passed away, pain I am experiencing in my shoulders, recent conflict within my family, and my struggle to understand my life’s purpose, and all of these facets of myself are welcome, interconnected and important and attended to within a Soul Lightening session.
After some Soul Lightening Acupressure sessions I would feel like I had experienced the healing equivalent of three months’ worth of talk therapy sessions. Receiving PA sessions has strengthened my trust in myself and my body, my trust in my own inner wisdom, and my belief in the importance and purpose of my experiences and my actions even when I don’t intellectually understand them at first. I have learned that when an image or a memory bubbles up into my awareness not to dismiss it as the noise of a busy mind but to listen to it respectfully and learn what wisdom or insight it holds.
When I practice Soul Lightening Acupressure on others I feel honored and privileged to be welcomed into their healing journey and to help facilitate their process.
My training in Soul Lightening Acupressure:
I am a certified Soul Lightening Acupressure practitioner. After experiencing the healing power of Soul Lightening Acupressure for a few years through personally receiving sessions, I decided to enter into the training program to become a Soul Lightening practitioner and focus my practice on using this powerful modality. My training included 168 hours of intensive hands-on trainings in small group sessions, giving 150 hours of sessions which I analyzed and reviewed with my mentor as well as a focus on my own deep healing through this work.
Since then I have been using Soul Lightening Acupressure in all of my session and I have seen my clients experience deep transformation and healing, and gain trust in their own wisdom.
More about my training:
I earned my Masters in Social Work with a special focus on children and families from Hunter College School of Social Work in New York City. I focused on working with individuals as well as facilitating groups and I have worked with adults, teens, children, and families throughout my career. During my time in New York I worked with an array of people, many of whom had very difficult lives living with poverty, recent immigration, multi-generational trauma, drug use, living in dangerous housing, and chronic illness. I worked in hospitals, outpatient mental health clinics, family-based clinics, and did home visits throughout the city.
I received intensive training in the fields of family therapy and trauma recovery including a training in Structural Family Therapy from the Minchin Institute in New York City. I have received many further trainings on topics including working with children, working with children who have experienced trauma, working with trauma from many perspectives including complex/developmental trauma (trauma experienced in childhood especially in the family of origin), Buddhist psychology, parenting, neuropsychology, Polyvagal theory of the nervous system, and mindfulness-based interventions.
In my professional career I have been seeking knowledge about healing from many cultures and traditions – trying to weave together the wisdom of them all. I have been drawn to modalities that engage the whole self and not just the mind like play therapy, art therapy, family therapy, mindfulness-based therapies, yoga therapy, nature-based therapies and animal-assisted therapies. I see people as a part of their environment and how that environment affects them – and I love interventions that address people as holistically and completely as possible. I love facilitating group therapy and have seen so much healing take place when people connect together in this way.
I have always been seeking a therapy modality to use that is the most powerful and efficient at healing people so that they can lead the lives they want to lead. I believe I have found that in Soul Lightening Acupressure and I use Soul Lightening Acupressure as the structure for each of my sessions.
More about me:
I am a mom to two young children who have taught me a lot about how to love with an open heart, how to set healthy boundaries, how to keep moving through hard times, and how grateful I am for my life.