Contemplative Therapy

Masters of Clinical Mental Health - focus on Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology

With a master's degree in Contemplative Psychotherapy, I specialize in using mindfulness and present-moment awareness to help you explore your thoughts and emotions with compassion. This approach allows us to uncover patterns and beliefs that may be holding you back, creating space for deeper understanding and healing. By fostering a connection with your inner self, we can work together to find clarity and cultivate personal growth.

I had the privilege of engaging in a 3 year intensive study with a Dharma teacher in the Plum Village Buddhist tradition. This deeply informs the way I think about how the mind works and the art of healing and transformation with clients. Where appropriate, I offer teachings and practices that I have learned, in conjunction with traditional Western modalities. I also invite the integration of clients' own spiritual practice(s) into their healing work.

Jodi is a graduate of Naropa's Contemplative Psychotherapy Graduate Program. Naropa University’s concentration in Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology master's degree is a counseling program that grounds itself in the Buddhist contemplative wisdom tradition and includes current humanistic psychological approaches to give insight and skills to show up fully for one's self and others.

I completed my master's degree in contemplative psychotherapy (now titled Buddhist Psychology) at Naropa University. This included a great deal of study beyond traditional therapy programs to learn Buddhist philosophy and practice meditation and mindfulness techniques. We embodied these practices beyond just intellectual understanding by undertaking two-week-long meditation retreats every semester, during which we would implement what we were learning to better understand it within ourselves.

With a master's degree in Contemplative Psychotherapy, I specialize in using mindfulness and present-moment awareness to help you explore your thoughts and emotions with compassion. This approach allows us to uncover patterns and beliefs that may be holding you back, creating space for deeper understanding and healing. By fostering a connection with your inner self, we can work together to find clarity and cultivate personal growth.

Contemplative practices include contemplation, meditation, and yoga, and are usually part of a larger worldview and way of life, optimizing well-being. These practices offer psychological and psychosomatic benefits. Through contemplative therapy, we can train and develop the mind, resulting in enhanced mental capacities, well-being, and maturity. This training therapy can heighten calm, concentration, insight, and joy.

Buddhism + psychology is an incredibly powerful combination for personal growth. Buddhism provides the analogy and wisdoms for living a life free from suffering — we are lotuses that transform the murky mud of our world and its challenges into nutrients for growth — psychology provides insight and guidance into the process of human development and offer tools for change. Up for the challenge? I will dive deep with you to tackle the most fundamental questions about life and who we are.

I specialized in Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology for my MA training. This largely informs my work and how I hold space for clients. My daily sitting meditation practice supports my ability to be a contemplative therapist.

I am a trained spiritual director, and I have been formed in both the Christian and Buddhist contemplative traditions.

My focus is on the person and their narrative, and the work is based on contemplative, humanistic, and experiential principles. It includes looking at emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and memories while cultivating heightened mindfulness throughout the process. This is the path to connecting one’s response (mind, body, spirit, emotion) to experience, and bringing them to a fuller understanding and integration. This may ease some suffering.

Contemplative therapy holds the view that at our core, all humans have innate wisdom and health. This wisdom can be covered up by traumas (familial, societal, and more), but it can never be destroyed. My role as a therapist then is not to 'fix' or 'change' you, nor is it to act as the 'expert' on your life. Rather, it is to walk beside you as a guide to help you uncover that basic health and wisdom that already lives within you.

I use deep meditation, hypnotherapy and yoga to assist in grounding you into your body.

Just as the breath calms the body, meditation calms the mind. Meditation has physical, emotional, mental and spiritual benefits. Elizabeth guides her clients in different styles of meditating to determine which form is most effective in giving them the deepest sense of wellbeing, maintain equanimity and handle difficult situations. Meditation has been proven to change the brain in ways that correlate with less stress and depression, less pain and anxiety, and a stronger immune system.

We work toward deep and transformative reflection together in sessions.

Contemplative therapy addresses our need for mindfulness and spirituality. Acknowledging and creating a place of safety, trust, and a place where you can be free to share whatever is on your mind with no judgement. I help you go deep into your psyche to find answers - your truth that may be buried so far down with layers of confusion, second guessing, filled with anxiety wondering what you really want and who you really are.

Exploration into intellect and emotion in the context of thoughts and actions. Building a deeper connection with body and spirit through experience, legacy, and life orientation.

I received my Master's Degree in Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology from Naropa University in Boulder, CO. I believe in the power of presence, which we can access through meditation and mindfulness. Contemplative Therapy embodies these principles; by staying with our present experience we are able to understand our patterns and behaviors that no longer serve us, and then work towards change.