I love being active outside and enjoying all that Bend has to offer. Running, skiing, paddling, hiking and backpacking with my Great Pyrenees dog, Lennon, are some of my favorites. A few of my guilty pleasures include The Office, Jack Ryan, fantasy fiction, Outlander and solo dance parties. Life’s too short!

With a private practice in Bend, Oregon and somatic skill-building groups around the world, I LOVE my job and I LOVE helping and connecting with YOU. I love my work because I’ve been through my own destructive habits and trauma. The kind-hearted people that helped me were like guides in the night, walking with me every step of the way. Once I knew what that felt like, I knew I wanted to be that person for others, whenever I could. When I found somatic therapy, it changed my life more than anything I’d ever experienced, even after years of talk therapy. It lights me up every day to share that work with you and help you feel better too – for good this time.

Before opening Bend Trauma Therapy, I was a primary therapist at one of the premier wilderness therapy companies in the world. Our clinical outcomes were 30% higher than the industry average. Spending years in that role taught me how to be highly effective, dynamic and creative in getting to the root of the issue, all while applying it to primitive living in the wilderness. I’ve also been a parent coach since 2015, helping parents be more effective at such an important job – raising emotionally healthy and resilient kids.

My wilderness clients were clinically complex adolescents and young adults who had a history of acute and long-term trauma and other co-occurring struggles and disorders. I guided families out of acute psychological crises. My priority is and always has been, helping the entire family heal- each person needs to do their work. Many clients I worked with were at the end of their rope – wondering if they’d ever get better after years of therapy. They did heal-they just needed more innovative, creative and dynamic treatment.

During graduate school in San Francisco, I taught yoga full time. I have been devoted to a daily mindfulness practice since 2011. My personal journey started with grief and loss, which cracked my heart open enough for yoga and therapy to step in and change my life.

As my teacher Sri Dharma Mittra reminds us, “it is not you that requires Enlightenment, it is the mind.” I am committed to connecting to this wholeness – and helping others connect to theirs as well. The greatest lie we can ever be told is that we are not already whole.

Overwhelming and traumatic life circumstances can sometimes make us forget that we’re still whole . Through my life’s work, I aim to help my students and clients find freedom from stress and trauma.

I was a Primary Therapist for one of the premier wilderness therapy companies in the world, with clinical outcomes 30% higher than the industry average. I treated adolescents aged 13-17 and young adults 18+ through their proven treatment model of whole-health and applied it to primitive living in the wilderness, free of distractions, and rich with metaphor. This experience consisted of backpacking and primitive living skills, coupled with personalized clinical treatment and individualized and group therapy. I tailored every client’s treatment plan to their unique needs and history.

I worked with clinically complex adolescents and young adults who had a history of acute or long-term trauma, grief, and insecure or disorganized attachment styles. I also worked specifically with trauma resolution by helping facilitate positive changes in the physiological states of depression and anxiety. My clients tended to be bright, strong-willed, and big-hearted but presented with depression, anxiety, suicidality/ideation and PTSD. They often felt overwhelmed and shut down due to difficult life events and family dynamics. I weaved Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, family systems, clinical aromatherapy, canine-assisted psychotherapy and mindfulness practices into my relational and transpersonal approach to psychotherapy. Many of my clients had been through significant amounts of treatment already to very little avail and were needing an innovative approach to therapy in order to truly heal.

Licensed Psychotherapist

MSc in Neuropsychology, King's College London - in progress.

Master of Arts, Integral Counseling Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA. 

Bachelors of Arts, Anthropology, UCLA 

Advanced Post-Graduate training in Medical Neuroscience, Duke University

Post-Graduate training, Cognitive Neuropsychology, University of Cambridge

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), a body-oriented approach to healing trauma and stress disorders. For more information visit the trauma page on my website or traumahealing.org. I am an Assistant for the Somatic Experiencing Institute, helping to teach other clinicians how to use SE in their practice.

Brainspotting and EMDR Trained, utilizes the ocular nerve and bilateral eye movement for trauma resolution. For more information visit: https://brainspotting.com/ and https://www.emdria.org.

Neuroaffective Relational Model (NARM) Master Level Therapist: an advanced clinical training for the healing of complex PTSD (cPTSD), attachment-related and developmental trauma. For more information visit: www.narmtraining.com

Advanced Post-Graduate Training in Psychological Research Methods, University of Queensland, Australia

Clinical certificate in Hypnosis for Trauma and PTSD. 

Advanced Post-Graduate training in Concussions and PTSD with Dave Berger

Advanced Post-Graduate Training with Peter Levine, PhD in near-death experiences, and medical and surgical trauma.

Advanced touch skills for trauma therapists

Advanced Somatic Trauma Coupling Dynamics

Board Certified Holistic Health Coach – Institute of Integrative Nutrition, New York, NY

Ayurvedic Wellness Coach, 300 hour level, The Shakti School. Ayurvedic Health Counselor training in progress, 2023.

Certified Dharma Yoga Instructor, 500 and 800 hour levels, New York, NY

Professional Memberships:

• USABP, US Association for Body Psychotherapy
• CAMFT, California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists