SERVICES I OFFER

Psychotherapy

"I am a conventionally trained psychotherapist but I do offer a mindfulness-based therapy for clients who want it."

Professional consultation for therapists

I provide clinical supervision to interns and consultation to licensed mental health professionals. I have supervised therapists at all levels of professional development in the disciplines of social work, marriage/family therapy and psychology in private practice, outpatient and residential treatment settings, community clinics and Department of Mental Health contracted agencies. I specialize in helping clinicians sharpen their skills in the areas of assessment, differential diagnosis and treatment planning. I am helpful to clinicians who need to help their clients navigate therapeutic impasses, work with projective identification and perplexing transference phenomena. I can offer helpful suggestions to clinicians who work with high-risk clientele. Finally, I enjoy assisting therapists to incorporate principles of mindfulness (Jon Kabat Zin, Mark Epstein, Jack Kornfield)) and Zen practice (Thich Nhat Hanh, Shunryu Suzuki) in their psychotherapy practices.

Training for mental health professionals

I provide therapists with training that allows them to bring meditation and their personal understanding of spirituality, if any, into the therapeutic environment in a way that is ethical and respectful of their clients. I incorporate into traditional western psychotherapy Buddhist principles and mindfulness practices, yoga visualization, cultivation of wisdom, compassion and interpersonal skillfulness, as in "skillful means" as described in the crossover psychology-Dharma literature.

Through guided meditation and participant self observation, I assist therapists to observe and become acutely aware of their continuous but usually unobserved mental/physical processes of sensation, perception, emotion and thinking. As therapists become able to access, observe and become more familiar with the moment-to-moment activity of their minds and rely less on concept-to-concept interpretation of their process, and become more familiar with bare attention (Epstein: 1995), they become more observant of and conversant with their internal mental and emotional processes and they employ these subtle states of awareness in the interpersonal client--therapist field to facilitate attunement, affect tolerance, and attachment. As a consequence, therapists are better able to engage their clients in a dynamic process of observing, learning from their symptoms and experiencing the therapist as "good-enough" and able to help them transition to more flexible and integrated ego states.

This process gives rise to wisdom and a state of mindful being. From this position of observation and a position of "no position in this moment," obstacles, defenses, actually become rich opportunities for further growth as the therapist and client mindfully watch them arise and fall away. In mindful observing, without attachment to any single experience, including meditative tranquility, but with the deepest experiencing possible, the client is able to develop a method of acceptance and dynamic engagement with all of his/her experiences, including painful affect and diffuse and conflicting and split off self/other representations. Because this openness transcends reliance on familiar concepts, roles, the conventional wisdoms and old learning and the habitual defenses, the client is able to discard archaic defenses and become a courageous agent capable of shaping his or her views of self, other and the world. He or she gains familiarity with the way things really are---in flux, contingent and impermanent, not so solid but arising in dependence on innumerable causes and conditions, themselves arising from still other causes and conditions, and so on, and inherently empty of independent existence.

This rich exploration is not intended to replace valid psychotherapy. On the contrary, it is compatible with many conventional therapeutic approaches and addresses deep processes of experience that are commonly thought of as unconscious and difficult to access and transform through talk therapy. What the therapist and client soon apprehend but cannot grasp or keep is an experience that is concept-less and ineffable but pervasively liberating. When this experience emerges into consciousness awareness and is discussed, apprehended and objectified through language as a medium for communication, which is not the experience itself, it can then become an object for the client to store in memory and recall as a personal refuge, a "place" that is indestructible and enduring because it never really begins or ceases.

Meditation therapy/stress reduction training/alternative healing

" Meditation effectiveness is well-documented in reducing irritability and depressive symptoms."