Photo by Matthew T Rader
WORKING TOGETHER
I believe that the soul has an innate drive toward healing. We each have the capacity to heal ourselves if we can slow down enough to notice what is asking for our attention. I approach therapy as a weekly collaborative ritual in which clients can become more skilled at listening and giving voice to their inner knowing. Together we work as a team to shed light on the subconscious and uncover the intuitive wisdom that already lies within you. Clients who are the best match for my style are ones who are ready to tap into their inner healer.
MODALITIES IN MY TOOLKIT
Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy. Talk therapy is usually the foundation of the work I do with clients. As a feminist practitioner, I honor the fact that you are the expert on your own life. My role is to facilitate a safe container for you to do your healing work and to offer insights from a psychological, trauma-informed perspective.
Expressive Arts Therapy and Somatic Therapy. Expressive Arts Therapy taps into the expressive arts (visual art, writing, music, movement, and drama) for therapeutic expression. Somatic Therapy recognizes the intertwined mind-body relationship and offers techniques for accessing the body’s intelligence. Expressive Arts and Somatics provide both catharsis and insight into how you feel about something that you might not have been aware of at a cognitive level. These modalities provide a way to deepen into your emotions in ways that go beyond the limits of talk therapy.
Ritual / Intuitive Arts Therapy. This is my own way of describing the therapeutic use of modalities that help connect people to their intuition/ higher self/ inner guidance. Such modalities include ritual, altar making, divination cards, guided visualization, movement meditation, automatic drawing, and more.
Ancestral Healing. Chances are it didn’t start with you! We each carry within our psyches and our DNA the imprint of generations of life experience. Clients often come to find that the issues they came in with turn out to be inherited from the legacies of those who came before them (“blood” ancestors and otherwise). Whether we explicitly work with your ancestors or not, I believe that the growth you are called to do provides growth for generations of ancestors, forwards and back in your lineages.
Reiki. I am a certified Level 3 Reiki Practitioner. Reiki is a modality of channeling universal healing energy through the physical and energetic body.
Birth Doula Support. I am a trained birth doula. I have a passion for accompanying people on the ceremony-journey of the birth rite of passage— both literal and metaphorical!
Photo by Sandy Millar
WHO I WORK WITH
I love working with healers, therapists, therapy students, artists, LGBTQ+ folks, people of multicultural experience, empaths, witches, spiritual seekers, pregnant people, new parents, birth workers, educators, facilitators, people working on transformative social change, people going through life transitions, people experiencing grief, and people ready to step into their healing journey. For those interested in psychotherapy, I offer virtual sessions to people located in California.
“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
510-545-2471 // ellielotantherapy@gmail.com
Berkeley CA & Northampton MA
© 2020 Eli (Ellie) Lotan, California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #119680.