ABOUT rosie
I am a lifelong learner with a long therapeutic journey behind and, also, in front of me. I have traveled extensively, including living in Mexico for five years where I studied comparative spirituality, martial arts and body centered transpersonal psychotherapy. I am a certified hypnotist with an emphasis in Ericksonian Hypnosis. I value and respect individual perspectives on life and I am interested in how we each live the human experience and can reach beyond perceived limitations both as individuals and as a collective.
I offer 50-60 minute individual therapy sessions to adults, children and teens. My out-of-pocket rate is $150 per session and I offer a sliding scale. I love working with people who are interested in where the therapeutic journey may bring them, regardless of whether they have been in therapy before or if their issues are long seated or newly arrived. My clients tend to be those who either already have a mindfulness, energetic or spiritual practice or are willing to embark on one as a compliment to our work together.
I am bilingual. I can hold therapy sessions in either English or Spanish.
I also offer groups for adults. Presently I offer a group for those with issues related to focusing and motivation.
FLOW THERAPY:
Using tantric principles to reclaim your essential Self
Flow Therapy is a term I coined to describe my unique approach that arose from weaving my extensive therapeutic expertise with my personal experience of being in therapy, plus more than 20 years of immersion in the ancient teachings of Tantra* and Tantric Buddhism. Drawing on both modern and sacred paths, I create safe, compassionate environments for my clients to feel into their painful places, connect to their fragmented parts, and return to their inherent wholeness.
One translation of the word tantra is flow.
Flow simply means “things keep changing.” All of life is a flow of energy and consciousness that is available to us when we are in direct contact with our body/mind systems. When we experience trauma, the flow stops: our energetic, biological, and mental systems become overwhelmed, our minds fixate, and our energy becomes lost, blocked, or stagnant. In tantric terms, the energy forms a samskara, a condensation of stuck energy that emerges as a pattern of behavior, an attitude, or a limiting belief. I believe in the innate intelligence of this process, that there is no need to try to change or fix it. (On the contrary, trying to fix it gets in the way of healing). Returning to flow means turning your energy and focus back to what is happening in the present moment in your body/mind system.
Life involves pain, but we needn’t suffer.
When we have unmetabolized trauma in our body/minds, we need the help of someone skilled at supporting our nervous systems, while we feel what wasn’t safe to feel during the initial traumatizing event or events. As a Flow Therapist, this is what I do: safely hold you as you feel into your painful places, connect to your fragmented parts, and return to wholeness.
When we partialize our experience, we create pain and worry about what is painful and develop resistance towards it. This concretizes suffering. But, if we allow ourselves to fully experience our pain or discomfort, transformation can occur and the possibility to learn and grow from our pain. With practice, we can experience deeper intimacy with ourselves, with life, and with joy.
A technology for growth and liberation.
At this moment in history, we are more depressed, distracted, anxious, lonely, and addicted than ever before. And yet we also have more material wealth than ever before. The source of this apparent paradox lies in the accumulation of stress inherent in our survival and in the technologies we have adopted that systematically reinforce moving away from our natural state. In the name of productivity, we are being separated from life itself, habitually identifying with ideologies and mental constructs about life instead of feeling, embodying, and living in direct contact with the world around us.
In this age of so-called progress, we then create more technologies to increase convenience and pleasure, which conveniently help us avoid dealing directly with the root causes of our stress. Today, even our ability to focus has been degraded. According to Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and author of Dopamine Nation, “We live in a dopamine-deficit state. We have changed our brains as a result of constantly bombarding them with high-reward substances and behaviors.”
No matter what you do to feed the pleasure center of your brain or to try to escape your pain, it will never substitute for the true bliss of connecting to your inner self, the self that abides in peace, which is your true nature. Flow Therapy offers tools that work with both our body/mind systems and our subtle energy bodies. These tools contain the power to break through the limiting conditions we have created for ourselves.
Practice makes progress.
What do you practice regularly? Do you do it with punishment and negative self-talk? Or do you practice with kindness towards yourself? I am a big believer in the power of practice. As a long-time practitioner of both Tantra and Qigong,** I have experienced first-hand how the body/mind system is transformed and repatterned by regular practice. The most essential elements of healing are self-love and self-compassion. Whatever your practice is, if it is approached with love and compassion, it will guide you back into flow. If you don’t presently have a regular practice and are interested in trying something new, let’s talk! There are lots of options to suit every temperament and that beautifully complement the tenets and practice of Flow Therapy.
You were designed to feel pleasure.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with desiring pleasure. What gives us pleasure can point us to the part of ourselves that longs for the True Self—the transcendent. All of life is a play of the Divine, the creative source of the universe. This includes the darker aspects of life or anything you would rather not experience. Life, itself, is your teacher if you are willing to sacrifice your desire to be right or perfect or [fill in the blank with anything that society tells you that you need to be in order to be “somebody”]. Most of us go through life interpreting reality, rather than being in direct relationship with it. But there is another way. When we are confronted by an experience that we don’t like, if we ask ourselves the question, “What can I learn from this?” then what we once suffered from becomes compost for growth. By not separating life into good or bad experiences, but rather calibrating our responses to those experiences, such that we learn and, yes, flow with them, life becomes less threatening, more interesting, and even more joyful. I’ve seen it play out in my own life and the lives of my clients. And I look forward to sharing this potent approach with you.
*Not to be confused with the distorted, Western definition of Tantra as a sexual practice. While this exists within the retinue of practices in this more than 5,000-year-old spiritual tradition, the word Tantra has been coopted by a school that is mainly referred to as Neo-Tantra.
**Qigong is an ancient Chinese practice of energy management, the basis of all martial arts, and a self-healing modality.