About Alisa
Alisa is committed to living what she teaches and is a deep meditator and somatics practitioner. Her commitment to embodiment includes recognizing the intersectionalities of oppression and privilege that shape the ease or difficulty each person may experience as they navigate their lives. She works with a diverse clientele across racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender and sexual identity boundaries. She has a deep appreciation for the richness, depth, and complexity that comes from living on the margins of what is considered mainstream.
Alisa has come to understand and appreciate how mindfulness allows the insights we discover to be realized in our mind-bodies in an integrated way. It is this integration that facilitates transformation in our daily lives. Insights that arise in somatically and mindfulness-oriented therapies are much more likely to lead to the changes we want to see than the insights that are gleaned in traditional talk therapy. Alisa cherishes the healing power of mindfulness to create a sense of ease and well-being and to re-connect us to our own natural capacity to meet the moments of our lives with kindness, openness, and flexibility.
In addition to utilizing mindfulness, MBSR techniques, and contemplative practices in her work with clients, Alisa also incorporates the creative arts, including visual art, poetry, psychodrama, and music and sound. Alisa’s approach to psychotherapy is intuitive, experiential, somatic, and holistic. She supports clients in achieving balance and integration, mind, body, and spirit. She utilizes a range of techniques to support clients in cultivating self-awareness, self-empowerment, and a more complex understanding of themselves. She begins with the assumption that each client possesses unique gifts and strengths that allow them to overcome life challenges. She draws on their strengths and resiliency to create meaningful change, self-love and compassion.
Alisa is a teacher at Insight L.A and serves on the Teacher’s Council at Dhamma Dena Meditation Center in Joshua Tree. Alisa teaches meditation retreats at Spirit Rock in Northern California, Insight Meditation Society and BCBS in Barre, Massachusetts, and other retreat centers around the country and world. She also offers mindfulness trainings for community-based organizations and corporations internationally.
Education & Training
B.A., Columbia University, New York, NY
Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Clinical Internship: Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY
Coach Training
Academy of Coaching Excellence, Sacramento, CA
Sound Training
California Institute of Integral Studies, Sound, Voice and Music Healing Program, San Francisco, CA
Trained Brainspotting Practitioner
Brainspotting.com
Trained Somatic Experiencing Practitioner
Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute
Mindfulness and Dharma Teacher Training
Spirit Rock, Woodacre, CA