spiritual counseling

“Our true journey in life is interior.”

-Thomas Merton

When Life Asks Questions the Mind Alone Cannot Answer

There are seasons when the frameworks that once held you simply stop working.

You may be questioning beliefs you carried for decades without examining them. You may be recovering from spiritual injury — the kind that doesn't appear on any intake form. You may be deep inside what the mystics call a "dark night of the soul," and what you need is not advice but someone who can sit with you in it without flinching.

Illness, grief, trauma, psychedelic experiences, meditation intensives, spontaneous awakenings — any of these can crack open the familiar story of who you are. That cracking is disorienting. It can also be an initiation — if it's met with care, with steadiness, and with a willingness to engage the full weight of what's being asked.

Spiritual counseling is for people who want to meet what's emerging without bypassing the difficult human work it requires.

What Is Spiritual Counseling?

Spiritual counseling, as I practice it, is not religious instruction and it is not pastoral care. When I use the word "spirituality," I am referring to the human search for meaning, purpose, connection, and coherence — how we orient ourselves toward suffering, mystery, love, death, vocation, and belonging.

People come to this work from every background: atheist, agnostic, interfaith, mystical, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, spiritual-but-not-religious, or quietly curious. No belief system is imposed. Inquiry is the center.

The work blends Depth psychotherapy, psychoeducation, and contemplative practice. In practical terms, this means helping you make sense of spiritually charged experiences, steadying the nervous system during upheaval, integrating insight into the texture of daily life, and getting clearer about your values, your vocation, and what you're being called toward.

Who This Work Is For

This work may be a fit if you are navigating a spiritual or existential crisis, integrating a mystical or near-death experience, recovering from religious trauma, or questioning inherited beliefs. It may also speak to you if you are experiencing kundalini or energetic shifts that don't fit neatly into clinical categories, facing mortality in a new way, sensing something reorganizing inside you that resists easy language — or if you are simply seeking something from your inner life that goes beyond symptom reduction.

My Background & Orientation

I have been studying and practicing Buddhism since 2004, with training across Theravada, Zen, and Dzogchen traditions. I am also a certified Reiki Master-Teacher and a Depth Psychotherapist with a Jungian orientation, trained in integrative medicine mental health, neuroplasticity-based brain retraining, Positive Psychology, and contemplative science.

I hold a deep fascination with near-death experiences and what they reveal about consciousness, mortality, and meaning. My own path has been shaped by what I sometimes describe as "near-life experiences" — periods of illness, spiritual intensity, and psychological descent that radically reorganized how I understood existence, purpose, and resilience.

What those experiences taught me, more than anything, was how to sit calmly in spaces where certainty collapses and identity loosens — where new symbolic worlds are emerging and the old language no longer holds. This is the territory I know well, and it is the territory I invite others into with care.

I work with skeptics, mystics, scientists, clergy, creatives, healthcare workers, and those who are simply asking honest questions about what it means to be alive.

Spiritual Crisis, Awakening & Transformation

Spiritual openings are not always blissful. They can arrive as panic, grief, disorientation, insomnia, depersonalization, or an existential dread that won't resolve. These are moments when the psyche is reorganizing faster than the ego can track — and without proper support, the experience can feel more like dissolution than growth.

I do not pathologize these experiences, and I do not romanticize them. What I offer is a slowing down — a steadying of the nervous system, an exploration of what is emerging symbolically, and the sustained support needed for integration. This is the long and often unglamorous work of allowing what has ruptured to become something you can actually live from.

Spirituality Without Bypassing

I hold a firm boundary here. We do not leap over grief, rage, fear, or despair in the name of transcendence. We work directly with the body, the emotional life, and the relational field — because genuine spiritual maturity is not an escape from being human. It expresses itself in how we live, how we love, how we choose, and how we show up in service to others.

How We Work Together

I offer this work through ongoing psychotherapy, educational consultations, "Ask Me Anything" sessions for spiritual inquiry, and post-traumatic growth integration. Some people come for long-term depth work. Others seek focused consultation around a specific spiritual transition.

What I Do Not Provide

Spiritual counseling is not appropriate for acute psychosis or mania, imminent risk of harm, crisis stabilization, or active substance-use disorders requiring residential care. If you are in immediate distress, I will always prioritize helping you find the right level of care.

In-Person & Telehealth

My practice is primarily in-person in Burlington, Vermont, grounded in the belief that nervous systems co-regulate most effectively through shared physical presence — and that this work, in particular, tends to deepen through it. Telehealth is available when clinically appropriate or for accessibility.

Interested in Exploring This Work?

If spiritual counseling feels aligned with where you are, I invite you to begin with my:

Exploring Fit — Initial Inquiry Form

Estimated time to complete: 10–15 minutes

This brief onboarding step helps determine whether my approach and current capacity match what you are seeking before we schedule a first conversation.