I am a Canadian post-graduate therapist who came to Colorado to complete Naropa’s Contemplative/Buddhist Psychology clinical counseling program. I have worked in several therapy clinics and multiple treatment facilities, and have extensive training in both Brainspotting and other specialized modalities at advanced levels.

I often combine Brainspotting with my advanced Somatic Experiencing training or Internal Family Systems parts work, Gestalt, PACT relationship and sex therapy training as needed. I have an orientation to the heart and mind which is informed by a mix of western and eastern approaches (* see below for more explanation of “eastern”!)

The underlying foundation is one of non-judgement, non-pathologizing and spaciousness.

My Brainspotting training includes all phases, and almost a dozen specialty trainings including: working with addictions, performance for sports / professional success / artistic and creativity, complex physical /medical conditions, developmental trauma.

I use Brainspotting and somatic approaches when working with a wide range of clients: those who have experienced accidents and injuries, trauma of all sorts including early/developmental or sexual trauma, people seeking ketamine therapy or other psychedelic integration, those who wish to make a lifestyle change, enhance performance in any part of life, as well as with couples and sex therapy (I am PACT couples therapy trained and currently in certification with the Sexual Health Alliance).

I bring the open, nonjudgmental foundations of my mindfulness-based training, alongside a set of skills that focuses on clients’ own healing and growth processes—rather than fitting a client into an overly simple box. This is not one size fits all 🙂

Brainspotting is a main avenue for my work, and I have seen clients do so much more with this approach than talk therapy. Where we look goes far beyond how we feel!

re: insurance, my clinic Peregrine Counseling takes Medicaid and multiple private carriers.

* The eastern component refers to the Naropa training in Contemplative Psychotherapy, which is influenced by Tibetan Buddhist approaches in the same lineage as the Dalai Lama and Shambhala; see writing by Pema Chödron. This framework is non-religious and works with anyone’s pre-existing faith or belief systems; it is more an approach to working with one’s own awareness, and is complementary to Brainspotting, parts work and somatic experiencing processes. There is a fundamental trust in each person’s basic good heart, our innate healing mechanisms, the radical acceptance of all that the body experiences and the mind generates including multiple, often contradictory and sometimes competing dynamics. However, it isn’t just a focus on giving up on change or growth: there is discernment around developing skilled, more freeing ways of living. There are methods of working with attention and sensation in order to create more choice, satisfaction, and less suffering. Almost all therapy is focused on the easing of pain and suffering, and this is no different; there is just more of an approach which blends seamlessly with Brainspotting’s core philosophies:

the therapist is to attune to their client first and foremost, and to maintain a level of what Brainspotting calls the foundational principle of “uncertainty”. We have an estimated 4 quadrillion synaptic connections in the nervous system, and a heritage of hundreds of thousands of years of healing and processing hardships within ourselves and with others in groups: our nervous systems have their own wisdom to process and heal, beyond talk therapy. Wounding is stored in the body, as are mechanisms to heal the wounding. Those same processes are what allows for going beyond just feeling less pain, but expand into realms of courage, excitement, freedom, safety, and the rarely-approached but necessary realm of pleasure. The Contemplative Psychotherapy approaches task the therapist with following the client’s nervous system, as does Brainspotting, and have an approach of curiosity rather than deterministic control and expectations of compliance. This does not mean boundarilessness or lack of structure: it just means that relationship is not founded upon what is called “therapeutic aggression” in Naropa’s Buddhist Psychology training. We tend to have parts and dynamics in ourselves, which we often inherent from our environment, which are aggressive enough; we learn to connect with these without judgement—and who needs more aggression from their therapist? This is fundamentally a process of exploration, of befriending and bringing compassion to all of us in ways which ware hard to do—if not impossible—exclusively on our own.Â