Healing Parts as a Path to Wholeness
The most valuable relationship is the one you have with your true, natural Self. In my Parts Work-informed counseling and expressive arts therapy, I help you form loving bonds of secure attachment with Self.
Getting to know your Self, you also learn to let Self love you - all parts of you. Self gives all parts within the affection, space, compassion, protection, freedom, nourishment, and care they need.
The goal of counseling in this way is to restore harmony and flourishing in your inner natural kingdom, so that whatever else you encounter in your external life, you know your insides to be a place of relating, playfulness, replenishment, and deep safety.
Holistic Counseling
I integrate Parts Work-based approaches and mindsets into my holistic counseling. My style is informed by Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), Process Work, spiritual explorations, and the creative arts therapies.
If you’re longing to feel closer to your loving, real, playful, brilliant Self, I invite you to contact me about doing some sessions together.
My Parts Play counseling sessions are for people who want to heal through talk, light experiential somatic exercises, and active imagination primarily.
Expressive Arts Therapy
Expressive Arts Therapy (EXA) is a playful, potent, and creative approach to healing. EXA interweaves creative arts therapies. Movement, music, visual arts, enacting, and writing may all be part of a session.
The purpose of EXA is not only to heal from what has hurt us, but to unify with the richness, depth and joy of life, through expanding our creative, capable nature.
Parts Work and EXA work beautifully together. Using EXA practices to make friends with our parts and to embody Self energy is life-changing!
If you’re longing to connect more deeply with your creativity and/or your Self through arts play, I invite you to contact me about doing some sessions together.
My Arts Play sessions are for people who want to heal by getting deep into the arts, self-expression & creative play.
Groups and Playshops
I run groups for grown ups to experience healing co-creative play. My closed groups can be found on the Groups page, and Playshops which are open to the public can be found on the Open Playshops page.
DETAILS
To initiate the booking process, send me an inquiry using the button below. I will respond to your email with information about next steps.
My fee for a 50-minute counseling or expressive arts therapy session is $120. I offer sliding scale options, provided I have room in my practice.
Sessions may be booked for couples, family members and children, with a reasonable adjustment of the fee. Sessions are held remotely, online only at this time. For people who live in the Santa Barbara area, in-person options may be available in the future (working on it!)
I work as a non-clinical practitioner, providing holistic counseling and expressive arts therapy. You can inform yourself of my scope of practice by reading here.
Thank you!
Play Prompts
In EXA sessions, experientials are unscripted, arising organically out of the work we’re doing together.
Self-facilitated EXA isn’t quite the same, because the aspect of relationship is central for healing. But solo EXA spelunking is healing too! I have placed many records of my own creative healing encounters with the Inner Wild in the Ideas section of this site, for anyone to use on their own authority.
Here are some explorations you may want to try to get your feet wet:
Places, Grandmothers, or True Size for honoring yourself and where you come from
Body Map, Grounding or Containment for somatic skills explorations
Disasterpieces, Awkward Collaboration, Dictionary Song and Group Musical Play for playfulness
Parts Work Comics and Parts Work Dialogues for working with Inner Parts
Sandplay and Make Your Own Deck for vivifying intuition
For many more prompts, explore the LionSong IDEAS page.
See me talk about using the arts to connect with Self and heal parts in the video below
LionSong Influences
I have a Masters in Counseling Psychology and Expressive Arts Therapy from California Institute of Integral Studies.
I use an open, exploratory and collaborative approach influenced by Person Centered Expressive Arts Therapy, Internal Family Systems, nature therapy, somatics, Gestalt, Jung, 12 Step, trauma-informed practices, and Process Work.
I feel healing our inner relationship to Self/Spirit/GodSelf is the most reliable road to a good life.
Getting to know Self is a natural bridge into unity consciousness. As we get to know Self, we experience more personal connection with Higher Power/God/Great Spirit/Buddha nature/Christos consciousness/the Inner Wild, too - our own unique version of that relationship.
Background
I’m an artist-healer type - half artist, half therapist. I grew up in a big family on a working organic produce farm in Lompoc, California, so I grew up in nature. I went to college at UC Berkeley, where I graduated from the Department of Art Practice. I lived in a few metro areas around the world, including Berlin, Detroit, SF Bay Area, & Portland before finding my way back where I started, in Santa Barbara county.
Counseling Psychology and Expressive Arts Therapy
I earned my Masters in Counseling Psychology and Expressive Arts Therapy from California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, in 2007.
I worked for several years as a supervised marriage and family therapist (what is now called an AMFT) in clinical settings. I worked with incarcerated youth and their families, dual diagnosis adults, homeless children, and in addictions treatment, in the Bay Area and in Detroit.
When I moved to Berlin in 2010, I had a tiny private practice for two years but eventually shifted to workplace psychology, coaching, facilitation, conflict resolution, and organizational culture work at a tech startup that was willing to experiment. Since returning to the US in 2015, I carried on serving in the coach, teacher and facilitator role through my workplace coaching business, eventually offering holistic, non-clinical spiritual and creative counseling services through LionSong in parallel.
I continue to be passionately connected to all the ways that arts, healing, trauma, personal creative work, and collective consciousness evolution intersect.
Specializations
As a part of my Masters in Counseling and EXA, I trained in each of the core creative therapies: Art Therapy, Dance Movement, Music Therapy, Drama Therapy, and Creative Writing Therapy/Poetic Medicine. I also learned the art of interweaving the modalities.
I also trained in core clinical approaches, largely psychodynamic, transpersonal, family systems, group process, and person-centered.
Over the years since my MA I have trained further in Trauma Informed Expressive Arts Therapy, Internal Family Systems, somatics, Process Work, conflict resolution, and Neurobiologically-Informed Trauma Treatment.
I consider my main specialty to be supporting clients, using expressive arts and/or parts work approaches, to found and develop a deeply secure, loving relationship with their Inner Wild, or their own Spirit-Self, as the primary agent of change.
Art Practices & Interests
My most heartfelt personal creative practice is songwriting, mostly folk music. I’ve also played around with several other arts practices, including improv, theater, dance, poetry, and painting.
Playful creative collaboration is my favorite way to relate to people. A close second is talking about our parts and sharing what tender presences, beautiful or difficult, we discover to be living within us. I’m equally excited by arts and parts.
On my own time, I deep dive using IFS and EXA practices, offering the fruits of my solo process up to personal, collective, planetary and cosmic healing. I am here to serve unity consciousness, as best I can, imperfect as I am.
What about you? What’s your story?
Say hi using the button below! Thanks for visiting LionSong!