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What is EMDR ANKR

Treatment Approach

✨ EMDR Therapy at Mended Heart ✨

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At Mended Heart Family Counseling & Trauma Recovery Center, we provide online EMDR therapy to clients throughout California.

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Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a well-researched, evidence-based therapy approach that helps individuals heal from trauma and other deeply distressing life experiences such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, chronic stress, and childhood wounds.

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Unlike traditional talk therapy, EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (such as eye movements, tapping, or auditory tones) to help the brain reprocess stuck memories and emotions. This technique taps into your brain’s natural ability to heal, bringing relief, clarity, and emotional freedom where you may have once felt powerless.

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💻 Online EMDR is Just as Effective as In-Person
EMDR therapy works beautifully in a virtual setting. Many clients actually find it more soothing to do this deep healing work from the comfort and safety of their own home. As long as you have a private space, a strong internet connection, and a willingness to show up for yourself, the outcomes can be just as powerful if not more so.

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💠 Globally Recognized as a Gold Standard in Trauma Therapy
EMDR is recommended by leading organizations around the world, including:
✔️ American Psychiatric Association
✔️ American Psychological Association
✔️ World Health Organization (WHO)
✔️ SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)
✔️ U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs & Department of Defense
✔️ National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
✔️ International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
✔️ Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
✔️ U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

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⚡ For Faster Healing: Try the EMDR Intensive Program

For those who feel like weekly therapy just isn’t enough, or who are eager to move through trauma more efficiently, we offer a powerful EMDR Intensive Outpatient Program.

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This program is designed to accelerate the healing process by providing three hours of focused EMDR in a single session. Instead of spreading treatment out over months, intensives allow you to dive deep and process more material in a shorter period of time. In traditional weekly therapy, clearing one traumatic event can take 2–6 months. With intensives, that same work may be completed in as little as one week to a month, depending on your unique healing pace.

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Intensive Options:

  • 3-Hour EMDR Intensive: $950

  • Package of 3 Intensives: $2,700 ($900 each)

  • Half-Day Intensives (4 hours): Coming Soon

 

Intensives are ideal for clients with complex trauma, DID, or those who feel “stuck” in weekly therapy and are ready for focused, transformative healing.

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🌟Why Work With Me

EMDR is only as effective as the therapist guiding the process. As an EMDR-certified therapist with six years of clinical experience, I specialize in complex trauma and dissociative disorders (DID), areas that many therapists avoid due to their complexity. What sets me apart is the way I blend clinical expertise with creativity and intuition.

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I don’t follow EMDR as a rigid script. Instead, I adapt pacing to meet your nervous system, read subtle cues to keep you safe, and use creativity to help you move forward when you feel stuck. My goal is not only to help you process the past but to empower you to step into a future of resilience, confidence, and freedom.

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What to Expect:
🌿 Day One:
We begin with a comprehensive history, a trauma timeline, and development of personalized coping tools and emotional resources.

🌿 Following Sessions:
Most sessions focus on trauma processing through EMDR, cognitive restructuring, and somatic practices tailored to your needs. Each 3-hour session includes two 10-minute breaks.

​🌿 Between Sessions:
You’ll be given supportive “homework” like journaling, meditation, and mindful tracking of triggers, behaviors, and thoughts related to the trauma we’re working through.

This program is ideal if trauma symptoms are interfering with work, school, or daily functioning, but it’s also powerful for anyone seeking deep, rapid transformation.

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👉 [Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation]

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CBT ANKR

🧠 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) 🧠

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Trauma-Informed CBT

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Helping You Unravel the Thoughts That Keep You Stuck

At Mended Heart Family Counseling & Trauma Recovery Center, I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Trauma-Informed CBT as part of a holistic, heart-centered approach to healing. These powerful tools help you untangle the limiting beliefs, thought loops, and behavioral patterns that keep you feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or emotionally blocked.

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💡 What is CBT?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of the most researched and widely used forms of psychotherapy. It works by helping you identify and shift the thoughts and beliefs that influence your emotions and actions. In short:

🌀 Change your thoughts, change your experience.

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CBT is especially helpful for:

  • Anxiety and panic

  • Depression

  • Negative self-talk

  • Perfectionism

  • Phobias or fears

  • Behavioral patterns you can’t seem to break

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We work together to recognize distorted thinking, challenge it with truth, and replace it with more balanced, empowering perspectives. Over time, this leads to noticeable shifts in how you feel, how you respond to life, and how you see yourself.

 

🧬 What Makes CBT Trauma-Informed?

Trauma-Informed CBT acknowledges that many of your current thought patterns were not randomly chosen—but were shaped by past experiences, survival instincts, and protective adaptations. This approach honors your nervous system, your story, and your resilience.

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Here’s how Trauma-Informed CBT differs:

  • 💛 We move at the pace of your nervous system, not just your intellect

  • 💛 We stay mindful of trauma responses like dissociation, emotional flooding, or inner critics

  • 💛 We weave in body awareness, grounding techniques, and compassionate curiosity

  • 💛 We treat your symptoms not as flaws, but as once-useful strategies for staying safe

You won’t just “reframe” your thoughts, you’ll begin to feel safe enough to believe new truths about yourself.

 

🔄 CBT + EMDR: A Powerful Combination

In most sessions, CBT is used in conjunction with EMDR therapy, and together they make a powerful pair.
While EMDR helps process the emotional and somatic residue of trauma, CBT brings clarity to the thought patterns that often accompany it. This integrative approach helps clients not only reprocess old memories but also build new mental frameworks that support long-term change, resilience, and peace.

 

✨ What Does a Session Look Like?

Your session may include:

  • Identifying a painful thought or belief

  • Tracing it back to its emotional or childhood root

  • Exploring what that part of you needed at the time

  • Challenging the belief with curiosity, truth, and self-compassion

  • Replacing it with a more empowering, soul-aligned perspective

  • Practicing daily tools to interrupt old patterns and reinforce healing

This work is gentle but powerful. Even the smallest shift in thought can open the door to lasting emotional freedom.

 

💬 Ready to Release What’s No Longer Serving You?

CBT and Trauma-Informed CBT can help you gain insight, build emotional resilience, and rewrite the inner narrative that’s been holding you back.

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Let’s explore what’s possible, together.
👉 [Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation]

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Positive Psych ANKR

🌟 Positive Psychology 🌟

Shifting the Focus from "What's Wrong" to "What's Strong"

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At Mended Heart Family Counseling & Trauma Recovery Center, I integrate the principles of Positive Psychology; a powerful, research-based approach pioneered by Dr. Martin Seligman to help clients reconnect with their inner strengths, core values, and sense of meaning in life.

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While traditional therapy often focuses on resolving symptoms or dysfunction, Positive Psychology invites us to look at what’s already working inside of you and build from there. It doesn’t deny pain or trauma, it simply expands the lens to include hope, resilience, joy, and growth.

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💡 What is Positive Psychology?

Positive Psychology is the scientific study of human flourishing. It asks:
🌱 What makes life worth living?
🌱 What are the keys to thriving, not just surviving?

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Rather than focusing solely on what’s “wrong,” Positive Psychology emphasizes:

  • Personal strengths & character traits

  • Gratitude & appreciation

  • Purpose & meaning

  • Optimism & hope

  • Flow states (being fully engaged in something you love)

  • Emotional intelligence & relationships

Using tools grounded in research, we begin identifying what’s right with you, what lights you up, and what values guide your best self.

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✨ Positive Psychology in Trauma Work

For clients healing from trauma, Positive Psychology isn’t about bypassing or ignoring the pain. Instead, it provides a counterbalance, a way to remember your wholeness, even as you heal your wounds.

We might explore:

  • 🌟 What gave you strength when everything felt dark?

  • 🌟 What values helped you survive?

  • 🌟 What do you want to grow toward now that you’re no longer in survival mode?

In this way, Positive Psychology pairs beautifully with EMDR, CBT, and other trauma-informed modalities. It restores the belief that life can be good again, that you are capable of joy, connection, and purpose even after hardship.

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🛠️ What Tools Might We Use?

Some tools I integrate into sessions include:

  • Strengths-based assessments (such as VIA Character Strengths)

  • Gratitude practices

  • Meaning and purpose journaling

  • Visualization and values alignment exercises

  • Goal-setting that reflects your heart’s calling, not just your to-do list

  • Identifying “flow” activities that bring fulfillment and vitality

These tools are especially helpful for clients who feel stuck, discouraged, or disconnected from their identity after trauma or major life changes.

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💬 Ready to Reclaim Your Inner Light?

Positive Psychology can help you shift from a survival mindset to one of thriving, self-trust, and possibility.
Let’s remember who you are beneath the pain and build a future that reflects your highest truth.

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👉 [Book a Free 15-Minute Consultation]

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IFS ANKR

🧩 Internal Family Systems (IFS) 🧩

Healing the Inner System with Compassion and Curiosity

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At Mended Heart Family Counseling & Trauma Recovery Center, I use Internal Family Systems (IFS) to help clients heal by building relationships with their inner parts; the protective, wounded, and wise aspects of themselves that often hold the key to lasting transformation.

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IFS, developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, is a deeply respectful and non-pathologizing approach to therapy. It views the mind not as broken or disordered, but as an inner ecosystem, one that is naturally designed to heal when given the right conditions.

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🌿 You Are Not One Thing! You Are a System of Parts

Have you ever said something like:

  • “A part of me wants to move forward, but another part is terrified.”

  • “There’s a part of me that still believes I’m not enough.”

  • “I know I’m safe now, but a younger part of me doesn’t feel that way.”

IFS sees these inner voices not as flaws, but as protective parts trying to help you survive, even if their strategies are outdated or extreme.
Every part has a purpose. Every part is welcome.

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🕊️ The Goal: Healing Through Self-Leadership

The heart of IFS therapy is helping you access what Schwartz calls the Self your calm, compassionate, intuitive core. When you lead from this place, your inner parts can soften, unburden, and relax.

IFS helps you:

  • Develop compassion for your protective parts (like the inner critic or the avoider)

  • Gently connect with wounded parts carrying shame, fear, or grief

  • Release the burdens these parts carry from past trauma

  • Build a more trusting, peaceful internal system

  • Access clarity, creativity, and courage from your authentic Self

 

🤍 How IFS Supports Trauma Healing

For trauma survivors, IFS is a game-changer. Instead of pushing parts away or trying to “fix” yourself, IFS teaches you to listen, witness, and befriend the parts of you that have been screaming for attention.

IFS pairs beautifully with EMDR and other trauma modalities. Sometimes, before we can reprocess a memory, we need to meet the part of you that’s scared to go there. When your inner world feels heard and respected, healing becomes possible.

 

🛠️ What Might an IFS Session Look Like?

A session may include:

  • Naming the parts that are showing up in the moment

  • Identifying which parts are protectors, managers, or exiles

  • Exploring their story and when they first came online

  • Offering compassion and curiosity from your Self

  • Witnessing and releasing emotional burdens

  • Creating inner harmony and trust between parts

 

IFS is especially powerful for:

  • Complex trauma

  • Dissociation or feeling fragmented

  • Inner conflict or self-sabotage

  • Childhood trauma and attachment wounds

  • Clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), where IFS offers language that honors and respects the reality of inner experience

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💬 Ready to Meet the Inner You?

IFS shows us that true healing doesn’t come from silencing parts of ourselves, it comes from learning to lead them with love.

Let’s build that inner trust, together.


👉 [Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation]

Jungian Psych ANKR

🌌 Jungian Psychology 🌌

Healing the Soul by Making the Unconscious Conscious

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At Mended Heart Family Counseling & Trauma Recovery Center, I often integrate the principles of Jungian Psychology, developed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, for clients seeking deeper insight, spiritual alignment, and inner transformation.

Jung believed that lasting healing happens not just by managing symptoms, but by bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness, reconnecting with our true Self, and integrating the forgotten or hidden parts of who we are.

This is the work of soul.

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🧠 What is Jungian Psychology?

Jungian therapy helps us explore the inner architecture of the psyche, which includes:

  • The conscious mind (your present thoughts, decisions, and identity)

  • The unconscious (memories, symbols, and archetypes beneath awareness)

  • The shadow (the parts of yourself you’ve disowned or rejected)

  • The persona (the mask or identity you wear for the world)

  • The anima/animus (inner feminine and masculine aspects of the soul)

  • And the Self - the center of wholeness and spiritual truth within you

Rather than labeling or diagnosing, Jungian work invites you to become a curious observer of your own story, dreams, emotions, and patterns.

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🌑 Shadow Work: The Path to Wholeness

Many clients come to therapy feeling stuck, lost, or like part of themselves is missing. Often, this is the shadow calling out the part of you that holds disowned feelings, truths, and inner power.

Shadow work doesn’t mean fighting the dark, it means turning toward it with honesty and compassion, reclaiming the gold within.

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Through this work, you’ll begin to:

  • Understand the root of recurring emotional triggers

  • Heal shame and self-rejection

  • Reclaim suppressed gifts and wisdom

  • Stop projecting pain onto others

  • Move toward true integration and self-acceptance

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🌙 Dreams, Symbols & Synchronicity

Jung believed the psyche speaks in symbols, especially through dreams and synchronicities (those meaningful “coincidences” that feel divinely timed).

In therapy, we may explore:

  • Your recent dreams and what they reveal about your inner world

  • Archetypes and myths that resonate with your life journey

  • Symbols, animals, or recurring images that arise in meditation or intuition

  • Synchronicities guiding your healing path

This is especially powerful for clients who feel spiritually open or drawn to meaning beyond the material world.

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🛠️ Jungian Tools I May Integrate

Depending on your needs and interests, our work may include:

  • Shadow work and parts dialogue

  • Active imagination and visualization

  • Dream analysis and symbolic interpretation

  • Archetypal exploration (e.g., inner child, healer, warrior, victim, lover)

  • Values-based guidance for soulful living

  • Guided journaling and rituals for integration

Jungian psychology pairs beautifully with EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and Positive Psychology for clients ready to go beyond symptom relief and into soul-level healing.

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💬 Ready to Begin the Journey Within?

Jung wrote, “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
If you feel a stirring inside you… an invitation to meet yourself more fully… this path may be calling.

Let’s explore your inner world together.

 

👉 [Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation]

Energy Psych ANKR

⚡ Energy Psychology ⚡

Healing at the Level of Mind, Body, and Energy Field

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At Mended Heart Family Counseling & Trauma Recovery Center, I integrate Energy Psychology as a complementary approach for clients who feel drawn to holistic, body-based, and spiritually aligned healing.

Energy Psychology is a newer field of therapy that recognizes what ancient traditions have always known: our thoughts, emotions, and trauma are stored not just in the mind, but in the energy systems of the body. By working with both, we open the door to deeper, more lasting transformation.

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🌿 What is Energy Psychology?

Energy Psychology blends insights from:

  • Traditional Chinese Medicine (like acupuncture meridians)

  • Neuroscience

  • Somatic awareness

  • Quantum field theory

  • Modern psychology

It works with the body’s subtle energy systems such as meridians, chakras, and biofields—alongside traditional talk therapy to gently release emotional blocks, regulate the nervous system, and support deep healing.

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🛠️ Techniques I May Integrate

In sessions, I may incorporate energy-based techniques that are gentle, intuitive, and trauma-sensitive, such as:

  • Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or “Tapping”

  • Touch-and-Breathe or acupoint holding methods

  • Energy clearing visualizations and light-based healing

  • Guided somatic scanning and intuitive awareness

  • Chakra balancing or meridian tracing (when appropriate)

These tools are always offered with consent and tailored to your unique needs and beliefs. Some are subtle enough to be done silently in session or practiced at home for empowerment between visits.

 

💫 How Energy Psychology Supports Trauma Healing

Unprocessed trauma often creates disruptions in both the nervous system and the energy system leading to symptoms like anxiety, fear, emotional shutdown, chronic fatigue, and even physical illness.

Energy Psychology helps:

  • Restore energetic flow where trauma has created blockages

  • Release emotional charge held in the body

  • Support grounding and regulation for dissociative symptoms

  • Complement EMDR and other trauma therapies beautifully

  • Reconnect clients to their own inner guidance and sense of peace

Many clients describe feeling “lighter,” “more clear,” or “reconnected to their body” after incorporating energy-based practices.

 

🤍 A Spiritual Yet Grounded Path

You do not need to believe in chakras or energy fields to benefit from this work, but if you’re spiritually inclined or energy-aware, this approach often feels like coming home.

As a certified energy healer, I’ve studied several energy healing systems including Reconnective Healing with Dr. Eric Pearl. This training deepened my ability to tune in to the body’s natural frequencies and support clients in releasing emotional pain held in the energetic field.

All energy-based interventions are offered gently, with permission, and are seamlessly blended with traditional psychotherapy tools. Healing doesn’t need to be forced it simply needs space to unfold.

 

💬 Curious About Energy Psychology?

If you’ve tried talk therapy alone and felt like something deeper is still unresolved, Energy Psychology may be the missing piece.
Let’s work with your whole system; mind, body, and energy field—to restore flow, peace, and clarity.

 

👉 [Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation]

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Reconnective Heal ANKR

✨ Reconnective Healing™ ✨

A Return to Wholeness. A New Level of Healing.

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As part of the Energy Psychology work I offer, I’m also certified in Reconnective Healing®, a groundbreaking energy healing modality developed by Dr. Eric Pearl. This isn’t just another technique, it’s a frequency-based experience of balance, restoration, and transformation.

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Reconnective Healing is not a therapy. It’s not a treatment. It doesn’t rely on diagnosing symptoms or applying “fixes.” Instead, it allows your body and soul to interact directly with a field of Energy, Light, and Information™ a spectrum of healing frequencies that transcends traditional energy work.

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🌀 What Makes Reconnective Healing Unique?

  • It doesn’t focus on symptoms, though symptoms often shift

  • It doesn’t require tools, crystals, steps, or rituals

  • It invites you into a deeper field of intelligence—one that reorganizes your system at the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels

  • It supports healing beyond limitation, including transformation in ways the mind might not expect or understand

 

This work is often described as a return to your natural state of balance, free of interference or expectation. Clients may experience feelings of peace, inner stillness, physical sensations, emotional shifts, or visions, and yet the goal is not to chase an experience. It is to receive what your being is ready for.

As the founder states:

“Reconnective Healing® is Life Progress.”

 

🌍 Distance Reconnective Healing Sessions

Although I’m not currently offering in-person sessions, distance Reconnective Healing is equally powerful because these frequencies are not bound by time or space.

During a distance session:

  • You will lie down in a quiet, comfortable space at home (fully clothed, undisturbed)

  • I will attune to the Reconnective Healing frequencies and begin facilitating the session from my location

  • No physical touch or verbal processing is required, your body and energy field do the receiving

  • The session lasts approximately 30 minutes

  • Afterward, I invite you to journal, reflect, or rest, noticing any shifts in sensation, emotion, or awareness

 

Clients often report a deep sense of calm, warmth, energetic movement, spontaneous emotion, or simply a feeling of lightness and presence. Each session is unique, and the healing continues beyond the moment of the session itself.

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🔁 How Many Sessions Are Needed?

One to three sessions are typically recommended to allow the body and energy field to integrate the frequencies and shift into a new energetic alignment. However, no two people are the same, and you are always welcome to listen to your inner guidance.

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💫 Ready to Experience a New Level of Healing?

If you're feeling the call to something beyond conventional healing… something subtle, intelligent, and timeless… Reconnective Healing may be your next step.


👉 [Schedule a Free Consultation to Learn More]

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