What is "spiritual counseling"?

It's an approach to whole-self health that invites and includes body, mind, culture, environment, relationship, and the ineffable soul. Purposes of spiritual counseling may be to nurture a greater sense of peace, wellbeing or satisfaction with life; to strengthen or soften relationships; or to open a greater capacity to make a contribution to this world.

What are sessions like?

One gift of my approach is that we don't have to settle into a pattern if we don't want to. We have lots of options at our fingertips, and we can use as many or as few as we want. With your innate drives toward healing and wholeness and my intuition and gentle invitations, our sessions may include things such as:

Chatting 
Talking deeply
Exploring feelings
Exploring memories
Inviting new ideas and outlooks
Listening to teachings together

Mindfulness practices
​Meditating
Exploring consciousness
​Visualizations
​Movement
​Sharing of passages and poems

Simple physical touch
​Breema bodywork
​Art making 
​Creative writing
​​Ritual making
and anything that feels intuitively useful

What benefits might I expect from spiritual counseling?

Between stimulus and response is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. This idea from Victor Frankl and others is one heart of spiritual counseling. Exploring together helps the seeker to expand the space between life's stimuli and our patterned responses by addressing developmental wounds and limiting beliefs and lessening their influence over time. In this way, spiritual counseling can build self-confidence, resilience and satisfaction. It can support us to make changes in our relationships, livelihood or living situation. It can help us make our experience of living more wonderful.

What's the difference between a spiritual counseler and a therapist?

Excellent healers operate both inside and outside the structures of licensure. Spiritual counseling is a broad category of healing practices that are protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The basis for calling oneself a spiritual counselor is less standardized than for calling oneself a therapist, and the practice has fewer official regulatory organizations or laws. Because of this, spiritual counselors often have greater leeway in their practice in terms of approach and relational models and methods. There are both benefits and risks to working with non-licensed healers:

Potential Benefits
+ Greater options within sessions means more ways to explore
+ Greater flexibility in the healing relationship can model possibilities for other responsible, mature relationships
+ Greater opportunity to improvise and co-create means that the healing path can be more personalized
+ Whole-self approach means all of you can be included

How to benefit from these benefits
+ Explore with your spiritual counselor how you want
+ Include your spirituality and expressions of it
+ Cultivate the working relationship you want 

Potential Risks
+ Exposure to dogma that may not align with your beliefs
+ Lack of official oversight means that less skilled or scrupulous people may not be barred as quickly
+ Less chance of insurance coverage

How to navigate potential risks
+ Ask questions and keep asking throughout the relationship
+ Ask for references and referrals; use the power of word of mouth to find the trusted practitioners of people who you personally trust
+ Tell friends and allies about the work you're doing; never isolate yourself in a relationship with any practitioner, licensed or not

I, personally, am extensively trained in counseling approaches, ethical healing touch, creative modalities and consciousness exploration. I work with people throughout preparation, exploration and long-term integration. It's likely that you're here because you were referred by someone you trust; and I can connect you with many past and present clients who can tell you more about me.

What's my next step?

Email [email protected] to schedule a conversation.

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