Background

What brought you to trauma work?

Over the past two decades of working with people as a former somatic bodyworker and current professional counselor and academic, I’ve come to recognize that trauma touches nearly everyone’s life in some form. I remain convinced—alongside experts like Bessel van der Kolk—that the mental health field still lags behind in fully understanding the complexity of trauma. It took decades of persistent research and advocacy for Dr. van der Kolk to bring traditional PTSD into the spotlight. Now, the next frontier is expanding that awareness to Complex PTSD—a distinct condition that differs fundamentally from traditional PTSD and is increasingly recognized as underlying many other diagnoses, especially the widespread anxiety and depression seen across cultures and societies.

What deeply drew me to specialize in Complex PTSD is the realization that conventional PTSD treatments often fall short for this population. The distress in Complex PTSD is layered and deeply intertwined with personality development, due to repeated traumas occurring during vulnerable stages of life. While traditional PTSD is primarily fear-based, Complex PTSD is rooted in betrayal—something I often describe as Post-Traumatic Betrayal Disorder—because of the relational abuse and profound injustice experienced by those affected.

During my Ph.D. research, I explored the prevalence of trauma, including its presence among counselors themselves—a surprisingly under-researched area. The findings, including my own work, suggest that approximately 95% of counselors have a trauma history, and 12-15% meet criteria for PTSD, though the rates of CPTSD for this population have not been distinguished. My anecdotal thoughts on this —as a professor and trainer of new counselors— is that the rates of CPTSD in the student counselor population is much higher. This awareness highlighted a crucial truth: if those trained to help are so deeply impacted by trauma, the broader population is likely suffering even more profoundly. I also discovered that while EMDR is effective for many with traditional PTSD, it often proves less effective alone for Complex PTSD due to the pervasive and complicated nature of the trauma narrative. This insight led me to deepen my training in internal family systems therapy, incorporating parts work to better address these complexities.

I’ve developed an integrative approach combining somatic therapy, parts work, and EMDR to access and process repressed trauma memories—particularly those at the core of betrayal trauma. By using body awareness and internal dialogue, we can gently uncover and reprocess these memories. For some clients, this blend works well; for others, a combination of somatic and parts work without EMDR is more beneficial—and that’s perfectly okay.

I am deeply passionate about this work. Through both my clinical practice and academic research, I continue to explore new frontiers of Complex PTSD with a small group of trusted colleagues, uncovering associated symptoms, root causes, and innovative treatment methods. I view all mental health diagnoses through a trauma-engaged lens because true healing requires addressing the heart of the experience. While not every issue stems from trauma, I believe far more do than the field currently acknowledges—and failing to explore this core component is a disservice to our clients on their healing journeys.

What brought you to working with religious trauma?

What brought me to working with religious trauma was a natural extension of my work with complex PTSD and betrayal-based trauma. As I listened to clients' stories, I began to notice a recurring theme: many had experienced deep psychological wounds not just in families or intimate relationships, but within spiritual communities and religious institutions. These wounds often involved the same hallmarks of CPTSD—chronic shame, emotional suppression, betrayal by trusted authority figures, and a fractured sense of self—but were complicated by layers of moral injury, spiritual confusion, and fear of divine punishment. Religious trauma, like complex PTSD, often arises from repeated relational harm during formative developmental periods, but it is further entrenched by teachings that invalidate one’s inner voice and autonomy. In many cases, clients didn’t even recognize their experiences as trauma because the abuse was spiritualized, normalized, or justified in the name of faith. My work in this area focuses on helping individuals deconstruct harmful belief systems, reclaim their inner authority, and rebuild a sense of self that is rooted in safety, authenticity, and personal meaning—without the shame-based frameworks that once defined them.

What brought you to working with grief?

My path to working with grief emerged organically through my personal and professional journey, especially as someone with a significant grief history of my own. Grief has been a constant thread in my life—not only in the loss of loved ones, but in the loss of identity, safety, relationships, and the version of life I once expected. As I began specializing in complex PTSD, I quickly realized that unresolved grief is often at the core of trauma—grief for what was lost, what was never safe, or what should have been. Many of my clients carried grief that had never been named or honored, often hidden beneath layers of anxiety, depression, or emotional numbness. I found that grief is not just a reaction to death, but a deep, human response to disconnection, abandonment, and betrayal. Working with grief allows me to create space for the full range of emotions—rage, sorrow, guilt, longing—and to support clients as they find meaning, resilience, and healing in the aftermath. My own grief has shaped how I sit with others in theirs: with reverence, patience, and a belief that even in the deepest pain, there is still something sacred to be witnessed and held.

What brought you integrate mental health and spirituality?

I have been part of meditation, yoga, and spiritual communities for the last 20 years. Well before I became a licensed professional counselor, I was acutely aware of the profundity and pervasiveness of human suffering and the various philosophical and spiritual paradigms aiming to alleviate that suffering. Some philosophical models and communities I gravitated toward — such as Advaita Vedanta, Bhakti Yoga, and Zen Buddhism — while other communities I left because I found them unhelpful at best and harmful at worst. Some of the experiences that have stayed with me the most are the ones that I witnessed to be the most harmful.

For example, one of the biggest problems I have witnessed in spiritual communities, especially when Eastern philosophy is adopted in the West, is the problem of Spiritual Bypassing. People read or encounter these profound texts that equate non-attachment with the ultimate goal of peace and transcendence — which I agree with on the level in which it is intended — but the level in which these teachings are coming from is often not the level needed by the individual at that particular time. There appears to be a problem of inappropriate scaffolding or mixing levels, in which Eastern philosophical approaches are co-opted out of context and in a way that does more harm than good by training people to use avoidance and suppression at the expense of true non-attachment. The goal is not to give up your life and live alone in the forest with no material possessions and no other relationships. The goal is to sustain your mental peace while being in the world — but not of the world. That is consensual surrender.

I have also witnessed seekers on meditation or yoga retreats having real spiritual and mental health crises that needed the attention of a licensed mental health professional — but instead, the response they received from the teacher was dismissal for being “too attached” or “caught up in illusion”. This is harmful, retraumatizing, and unethical. These responses are not appropriately scaffolded to the level of the individual’s need. In these encounters, I realized that there are different types of truth, the things that are Ultimately Real (e.g., that we exist, that we have awareness), and there are things that are experientially real in the moment (e.g., suffering, pain, crisis, etc.) that are not eternal. We cannot apply a profoundly higher truth to a problem that needs a different level solution — we need to approach problems on the level in which they exist within a framework for how to move forward. This is how real growth happens, and there is incredible power within Eastern teachings to truly help people find peace and transcendence — but they must also be used wisely.

I do the work that I do because I have never encountered proper scaffolding in a spiritual community. Conversely, the field of mental health has a problem of dismissing and pathologizing people in the spiritual community — often taking a materialist perspective of mind and consciousness — reducing the human experience to a couple of pages in the diagnostic manual. Humans are profoundly complex and incredible beings with huge potential for growth, and they deserve better. I believe there needs to be a resource for combining spiritual practice and mental health for truly transformative personal work.

Therefore, the goal of Yogi Counseling is to bridge two worlds that for so long have felt unbridgeable.

What makes you qualified to specialize in these areas?

I have a Ph.D. in Counseling from a Research One University with the highest accreditation standards for our field — and one of the top 10 academic institutions in the world for what I do. My academic research relates to the utility of mindfulness for assisting both counselors and clients in improving their wellness and the overall therapeutic relationship. This work hinges on frontiers in neurocounseling and interpersonal neurobiology that looks at the energetic field that exists between people in relationship and the process of co-regulation. In addition to my Ph.D., I also have a Masters in clinical mental health counseling from a program that employs some of the top people in the field of counseling. These two degrees allowed me to become a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist — and an Assistant Professor of Counseling at a university in the Pacific Northwest. Finally, I have a double Bachelors in Philosophy and Religious Studies, with emphasis on Eastern philosophy and Asian Religions. I also have a 20 year meditation practice and have been involved in spiritual communities and retreat centers in four countries (New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, and the United States). In the five years, I have chosen to leave all spiritual community due to the pervasiveness of spiritual bypassing, narcissism, religious abuse, control, and self-delusion that often accompanies these organizations and groups, but I maintain my own spiritual-philosophical meaning-making system that informs my reality paradigm that is rooted in compassion, connection, and openness. Finally, I feel deeply honored to support other people’s authentic search for their personal meaning-making systems, in whatever what that emerges for them while also helping them avoid the pitfalls that often emerge along the journey.