The Hollow Path Experiential Therapy

I believe that we experience the world with all of our senses and all of our kishkas and I believe it is with all of our senses that we heal. My approach is experiential; strengths-based; art, nature and animal-assisted; and it is relational. It is a therapy that just might be enjoyable, as it is healing. My hope is to make the therapeutic process adaptive, accessible and engaging so people of all ages will be willing to enter their own hollow places.  

There is a thread here that weaves through all the places & makes an integrated professional life. These are my beliefs, my studies, and my tools.  My approach is inspired by a life long desire to find summer camp in real life.  I was born an athlete and it will always be my primary way of being in the world.  It took years to realize the creativity I harbor. For we all are both movers and creators. My intention is to honor the athletic, creative camper in all of us and reoffer that chance to explore.

In education, I am a Recreational Therapist (MEd) and a Clinical Social Worker (MSW) with a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Expressive Arts (CAGS) and an Israeli Teaching Certificate. This means I am designed to meet you where you are in the intersection of experience, expression, education, trauma & challenge.
 
It means I see the value that Activity/Adventure-Based Counseling brings in stirring the senses; I can adapt any activity to include everyone. It is your choice to choose the level of challenge you wish and to engage in simple, sporty, creative, calming or adventurous activities.  
 
I use the Clinical Social Work Perspective to see people in relation to the worlds we live in and to reach the depths of our traumas. It is a dedicated focus on strengths.

Recreational Therapy reminds us that everyone deserves to have a quality of life, recreation and play; something that trauma often takes away, and healing restores.

After 20 years of working with youth at risk in the United States, I learned to be adaptive. Then I moved to Israel to practice a different kind of risk & resilience in the Israeli school system. I have spent many years at the intersection of trauma and learning. The Israeli Teaching License has led me to explore the effects of harmful language experiences on learning English as a requirement for a college education, in diverse social interactions and for successful integration of life here. Negative experiences with English at any age and in any way can have a real effect on what you can do with your life.   

Just as the mind thinks and body needs to move, our inner life also requires expression. Each and every single one of us has creative urges that our personal being requires us to honor. Every single one of us has the creative potential for expression as an outlet for shifting and releasing experiences. Creative Expressive Arts allows us to find any minute or expansive act of natural and necessary creative expression. Even when you think you're not creative. We are expressing all the time. 
 
The mind and the body have a cohesive interactive communication that is unbelievably brilliant. I believe it’s worth it for us to take a trip inside, outside, and around and to realize the wisdom we have within us. The stresses and blessings of living in Israel pose an enormous challenge for living an integrated balanced life with a calm well-functioning nervous system. From neuroscience to nature, life is seeking a way toward balance and offering us many pathways.  

Sometimes we need a small quiet space.  
Sometimes we need art, nature or a trampoline to accompany us to a more integrated place. 
Sometimes we just need a dog in the room.

A session can be as simple or as adventurous as you wish or can handle on any given day.  

Life is an adventure.  So is therapy. There is a path for everyone.