About Melissa

I feel deeply honored to work with individuals doing this most intimate and transformative inner work.  In 2010, I graduated from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) with a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology, specializing in somatic or body-mind psychotherapy.  

I have been offering my psychotherapy services and trauma informed work to clients for over 13 years.  I have specialized in working with individuals overcoming trauma, anxiety, depression and highs and lows of life.  I completed the Parnell Institutes, Advanced Training in Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy and I continue to hone those valued skills.  I spent three years of somatic psychotherapeutic training at the Center for Somatic Psychotherapy and three years serving children and their families as an elementary school psychotherapy & Sandplay Therapy intern.    

It was my personal healing journey led me to take a special interest in working with individuals seeking to heal the physiological imprint of trauma on the nervous system.  In my graduate research seminar, I co-founded “Trauma Sensitive Somatic Resourcing,” a treatment protocol for dual diagnosis of substance abuse & post-traumatic stress.   This work was grounded in volunteering TSSR workshops to the underserved women at Options Recovery Services in Berkeley, CA.