About

Clinician Hat

I am learning the craft of professional counseling, on my way to licensure in Northern California.

I have two overlapping specializations: one, for children and teens―especially in school environments, leveraging family and educational systems for a student's wellbeing.

The second, and more relevant for this site, is my approach as a Radical Rogerian. Carl Rogers, the father of modern counseling, laid the foundation of what it means to be an interpersonal healer: Namely, that the healing relationship requires unconditional positive regard, warmth, empathy, and a relentless desire to understand the worldview of the other.

Contemplative Hat

This approach to counseling is complemented and bolstered by my meditative training. As a practitioner, I mostly fall into the Pragmatic Dharma camp of Buddhist Modernism, as the majority of my practice has been cultivating insight a la Ingram, Burbea, and other wonderful/wild/compassionate teachers.

But my graduate training in the Humanities, coupled with some DP/DR experiences, somewhat broke my spell of infatuation with attainments and progress toward "A Big Goal" such as Enlightenment or\ Awakening. As I continue to experience derealization episodes, practice has shifted and mutated and broadened to much more than simply sitting.

In fact, I view my clinical work as the next frontier of contemplative development.

I owe this blooming perspective to the work of Matthew O'Connell and the Imperfect Buddha, as it exposed me to new critiques and conceptions of practice that include the immediate, the social, and the local.

Integration

The purpose of this site is to integrate these two domains, as I already act with the understanding that they are intimately connected. Thinking through this integration means considering the ideological, ethical, and practical dimensions of the conversation between counseling and contemplation.