Whether you’re exploring your gender and sexual identities, are clear about your identities, or are deliberate about loosely defining them, you are welcome here. I aim to hold clients with marginalized genders and sexualities with the utmost care, especially those from BIPOC/PoGM experiences. As a queer and nonbinary therapist, my hope is that 2SLGBTQIA+ clients can access deeper layers of healing when they don’t have to worry about microaggressions or educating their therapist when it comes to their gender and sexuality. See Pro Bono Letters of Support for Affirming Care.

Trauma, experienced in this lifetime or passed down to us transgenerationally, can leave lasting impacts. Some of these impacts include, emotional pain, relational strain, hypervigilance, and coping mechanisms that no longer serve us. My hope is to provide a gentle container to help alleviate the acuteness of these symptoms from a trauma-informed lens. Being trauma-informed to me means inviting client collaboration, centering client choice, building rapport and trust through empathic presence and transparency, practicing ongoing informed consent, and being culturally responsive. I specialize in the treatment of sexual trauma with sexually and gender diverse populations. See Mindfulness-Based and Somatic Therapy and KAP for specific interventions.

In a sex-negative culture, it’s completely common to have complicated feelings about sex, want to expand your sexual knowledge but don’t know where to begin, and/or have had a traumatic sexual experience. With a sex-postive lens, I provide a nonjudgemental, open, and curious container to explore your relationship to sex, and offer sex therapy tools when relevant. My practice is kink and poly affirming and I specialize in working with queer, trans, and gender expansive survivors of sexual trauma. I am also pleasure-positive in my approach, acknowledging the important role pleasure plays in holistic healing and living a fulfilling life. Pleasure comes in many forms; it’s not exclusively sexual in nature and is unique to every individual. 

These approaches are intertwined in my practice since we are not just becoming familiar with our thoughts and emotions through mindfulness practice, but where they live in our bodies. I believe that mindfulness, when done in a trauma-informed way, can bring an embodied presence to our current experience, facilitating a powerful sense of tenderness, compassion, and acceptance towards our current experience. I have over a decade of meditation experience in a Western Buddhist context and have had experience with secular mindfulness in a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) context. Mindfulness is foundational to several therapeutic modalities to treat trauma symptoms and other presenting problems including, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). 

I’m excited to offer Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) and Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration Therapy (PHRI) as an extension of my background in community and spiritual herbalism, DJing, harm reduction in dance spaces, contemplative practice, and postgraduate training through Fluence. With KAP, I offer unique opportunities for creative collaboration with clients from a culturally relevant lens including, playlists, accompanying plant allies, client-directed altar (or meaningful space) building, and trauma-informed mindfulness practices.

Ketamine, along with other psychedelics and meditation, are considered non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSCs). NOSCs enhance neuroplasticity, which can help loosen stuck patterns and create new pathways for growth and change, opening new possibilities for healing. This is especially useful when working through trauma and other presenting problems. KAP consists of preparation sessions, a 3-hour dosing session (at the Blue Canary Therapy office in Tribeca, NYC), and integration sessions.

I provide preparation and integration sessions for psychedelic use in a wide range of contexts including, ceremonial use, medicinal use (e.g. ketamine infusion clinics), underground guided use, recreational use (e.g. nightclubs, music festivals, in nature with friends) or self-guided use. In our preparation sessions we explore your intentions for use, set and setting, and go over any relevant harm reduction information. In our integration sessions I will support you with making sense of your experiences, process any challenging experiences, work with the insights that emerged from these states, and explore ways to incorporate gained insights into your everyday life. I have a wealth of experiential knowledge that lends to a genuinely nonjudgmental and compassionate container free from stigma.

For many individuals and cultures, spiritual wellbeing is fundamental to emotional and mental wellbeing; however, spirituality is often left out of the mainstream Western mental health field. I offer space to those whose worldview can’t be untangled from their religious and/or spiritual practice(s), to those who are exploring and/or questioning their relationship to spirituality or religion, and to those who want to unpack religious or spiritual trauma. I welcome clients from all religious and spiritual backgrounds, including those on the agnostic and atheist spectrum.

When approached with reverence and reciprocity, plants have the ability to be deeply supportive allies to our healing journeys. They can cultivate connection with our bodies, ancestors, earth and communities. Nature Freak Therapy fka Nature Freak Herbs is transitioning to becoming a mental health and herbal education resource. Stay tuned for updates on our social media account. Copies of the Apothecary Zine can be found here.

At Blue Canary Psychotherapy & Sex Therapy, we provide letters of support for access to affirming care/identification for trans, non binary, and many more non cis people including hormones, surgeries, and procedures. This service is provided in one session and is offered pro bono.

Coaching services are offered to clients outside of New York State and outside of the U.S. Through coaching, I will support you in getting clear on your goals, identifying challenges or patterns that might be holding you back, and developing a plan to help you move toward the life you want. Coaching is not a replacement for therapy.