DESCRIPTION OF CLINICAL PRACTICE
I call my approach centering psychotherapy because my services are offered to help bring your life, mind and spirit into balance when you are not feeling solidly grounded. I find that often humor helps in attaining clarity.
I provide short term solution focused therapy and longer term insight oriented therapy to adult individuals from 18 to over 80. I love doing couples counseling, facilitating communication and growth for couples of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The effect of male, female, gay, lesbian and transgender roles became a focus in my thinking in my first career as a college teacher, and has continued to inform my work as a therapist for over twenty-five years.
My practice is founded on psychodynamic and Gestalt approaches. In therapy, we can diminish suffering by understanding and solving problems in the here and now, while noting when the past comes to life in the present, sometimes creating blockages. I am also inspired by Control Mastery theory, which emphasizes your innate and intelligent striving towards emotional health.
I have integrated teaching about mindfulness and meditation into my psychotherapy practice, and also utilize twelve step program approaches to letting go of what one cannot control.
Specializations include career, retirement, and free time choices; life transitions; gender issues including male, female and GLBT roles; relationships; anxiety; depression; ADHD; dealing with dementia in the family; the immigrant experience; and bicultural families.

VIPASSANA/MEDITATION BACKGROUND
I discovered Vipassana Buddhism in the 1980s at a motherlode, the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and joined the Spirit Rock community when I moved to California in 1996. Since the l990s, my own ability to center is supported by my weekly Vipassana sitting and Buddhist study group in Oakland and by regular meditation at home. I took two courses in Buddhist psychology at the Insight Meditation Society. My Vipassana retreat experience comprises about fifty days, including three ten day retreats.

RELEVANT CLINICAL TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE
I completed a Master in Social Work degree at the University of Connecticut in 1983 and studied Gestalt therapy with Donna Talman. Earlier, I taught modern European cultural history and cross cultural women's studies after earning a PhD in New York. I have been licensed to practice psychotherapy since 1985. I am a member of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group. I have over twenty-five years of experience as a psychotherapist and two as a career counselor. I facilitated a weekly Vipassana meditation group for staff while working at Kaiser Permanente's San Francisco Psychiatry Department. I am bicultural and trilingual and came as a refugee and immigrant to the United States when I was ten. I lived and did research for two years in Africa and three years in Europe.