Alumni Careers

• Where are our graduates working?
• What can you do with a degree in somatic psychology?
• What do our graduates say was most important to them about the program?
• How can I get in touch with graduates to ask more questions?

Find answers to those questions and many more by reading what a few of our graduates had to say about life after the Somatic Psychology program at Naropa.

Jenny Epstein
2003 Graduate, Somatic Psychology: Dance Movement Therapy

Jenny Epstein, MA, DTR, specializes in cross-cultural work with survivors of politically-motivated trauma. Her clients come from Africa and other war-torn regions and have come to Colorado in order to seek asylum in the United States. She works with groups and individuals and also does training, outreach and program development. She works as a mental health therapist at Rocky Mountain Survivors Center in Denver, Colorado.

Gretchen Spiro
2000 Graduate, Somatic Psychology: Dance Movement Therapy

Completing the program at Naropa supported me in growing personally and professionally into the work that I do now. Here's what I'm doing with my "wild and precious life" right now:

I am a personal trainer in Gyrotonic, which involves working with clients in a system that works with both the body and mind. I have been surprised with how much my training as a therapist . . . provides a foundation in working one-on-one. People are always changing, often in transition and (hopefully) striving for more balance and aliveness in their lives. In our conversations, and in the powerful context of moving the body, energy moves, memories arise and issues come to the surface. Some of my clients have injuries or patterns relating to past traumas. We work with it through the body. My training helps me to stay present with them and to skillfully navigate the tides of growth and self-revelation.

I teach and perform contact improvisation in the United States and Europe. In guiding groups, my Naropa experience helps me recognize issues that are arising personally for students and to track group dynamics as a whole. My confidence in leading deep movement experiences and my sensitivity is facilitating rich group discussions has been deepened by my training as a therapist. My master's thesis, "MOVING TOGETHER: Contact Improvisation as a DMT Approach for Couples," has opened the doors for me to work privately with couples using contact improvisation as a practice to increase awareness, intimacy and explore relationship patterns. As a guiding force in the burgeoning Boulder CI community and as the leader of the CI Performance group, Tumblebones, I feel that my practices at Naropa help me to understand ways to support people in accessing their own creativity and passion for expression through movement. My BFA (from Cal Arts) was in choreography; a MA in dance therapy has added a level of honesty and fearlessness in expression that I value.

I lead women's adventure retreats for Womens Quest (www.womensquest.com). In this work I offer yoga and dance practices to inspire and awaken women to the power of their body wisdom. In supporting women in outdoor adventures and ropes courses, I have seen transformations that have brought tears to my eyes. Introducing myself as a somatic psychotherapist often opens the doors for the participants to speak with me about body image challenges and other issues that arise in the context of a fitness/personal growth retreat. At these retreats I lead meditations and speak about the embodiment of personal vision and passion through somatic expression and experience.

I teach yoga classes and workshops, which is work that I did prior to coming to Naropa. Part of my inspiration to attend Naropa was to have more understanding of how to skillfully deal with people's emotions, which can be very present in yoga exploration. My training has opened me to more compassion and clarity in teaching, and I believe that I now integrate more focus on the mind-body connection.

Personally, I find that my Naropa education offered me a degree, perspective and insight into myself, and also made me the sort of friend whom people can turn to when they need a witness or support in challenging times. I am also the "guardian" of my brother, who has schizophrenia. He lives across the street, and I see him daily. My Naropa education helps me to understand his challenges and be a better sister and caregiver for him.

One of the other things that I am grateful for about going to Naropa-I now live in the beautiful Rocky Mountains above Boulder. I remember an exercise in a class: visioning an active life in the mountains, committing to working in tangible ways with individuals and groups, desiring an independent life that includes a fulfilling relationship and setting my sights on the satisfaction of doing work that is inspiring and creative. I am living that life. Going to Naropa helped to get me here.

I can be contacted at: gretchen@magnoliaroad.net

Jenny Dees 2001 Graduate, Somatic Psychology: Body Psychotherapy

I am the director of undergraduate advising at Naropa University, running an office that oversees an undergraduate population of 450 students as they progress toward their degrees. This journey begins with orientation and ends with graduation, and all of the successes, failures and learning that happens in between.

I use the skills I learned in the Somatic Program daily as I work with my staff and students. I think the most important thing I learned in the Somatic Program is the innate brilliance in each of us, in each of our bodies, and that facilitating connection with that brilliance is one of the most therapeutic contributions one can make, whether in an officially therapeutic context or not.

Molly Weiler 2003 Graduate, Somatic Psychology: Dance Movement Therapy

I just wanted to drop the department a quick note to let everyone know what I'm up to as a dance therapist lately. I feel so indebted to everyone back there!

I have a brand new website (www.vitaldance.com) that describes my work. Vital Dance is the work that Gina and I created while we were working on our theses. I've been having a lot of fun in California and am surprised to find myself able to focus on dance therapy! My previous job was as a counselor, and while I was certainly able to fit dance therapy into my work, I was not a dance therapist. Now, I facilitate weekly groups at a very neat recovery facility in Malibu called Renaissance (www.maliburecovery.com), and they love that I graduated from Naropa. I've started a private practice as a Vitality Coach, and I'm planning workshops, too. Lisa, Miyuki, Katie and I are creating a network of dance and movement therapists (primarily a referral network) called Healing in Motion, and we're planning to facilitate workshops together in contemplative dance and wellness. It's kind of a whirlwind of activity right now for us.

I hope all is well in beautiful Boulder, and that the current classes in the program are enjoying it as much as all of us did! I feel so blessed to have had the experience that I did with everyone there.

Katie McHugh
2003 Graduate, Somatic Psychotherapy: Dance Movement Therapy

I moved to San Diego expecting people to be familiar with mind/body approaches to healing. Turns out that there are pockets of people who understand this idea, but overall people are disconnected from the earth and their bodies.

I eventually got a job as a social worker with foster teenagers at a one-of-kind facility. It is full of potential. It is called San Pasqual Academy. I did more social work than anything which I did not find satisfying. I did however volunteer to do a Women's Group. I used DMT in that group. It was great. I got recognition for this group and became the group person!

One year and nine months later, I received a promotion to the health and wellness coordinator at the same facility. I am excited about this program. I implement programs as I see fit and facilitate dance movement therapy groups regularly. Ideally, I want to use this experience to support a career in the healing arts-with the potential of owning my own wellness center. What I know for sure is that I want to be around creative, healing, smart people, like the ones I met at Naropa while I was in Boulder. I want to promote healing and live to my full potential.

Please contact me with any questions or comments. katielachat@hotmail.com

Katherine Champlin Rice
1995 Graduate, Somatic Psychology: Dance Movement Therapy

Katherine is a licensed professional counselor, a meditation instructor and a student and facilitator of Moving Truth. Her work is informed by the Five Rhythms Practice and other contemplative movement Forms. She has been studying the edges of dance movement therapy with adults who live with major mental illness for almost fifteen years. Fascinated by the cycles of life, birth and death, she is currently growing accustomed to married life in the suburbs and will soon be the mother of twins.

Jilba Wallace
1992 Graduate-Somatic Psychology-Dance Movement Therapy

I am currently working, along with three other psychotherapists who graduated from the Somatic Psychology Department in Dance Movement Therapy, at West Pines Hospital, in Wheatridge, CO and have just devised and executed a pilot Intensive Outpatient Program which will now be fully funded in 2005, for folks with severe emotion dysregulation and Axis 2 disorders. We combine experiential and body based therapies with Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It is exciting! Meanwhile I continue to run my private practice and see a large number of insurance clients. I am happy to say I have had a consistent volume of clients. In addition, I supervise other dance movement therapists, on and offsite.

Noa Belling
2003 Graduate-Somatic Psychology-Dance Movement Therapy

I graduated in 2003 and have been living in Cape Town, South Africa, since then. Since graduating I have tried my hand at applying DMT work in various different contexts. I am registered in South Africa as a Movement Therapist, with the medical aids here, and run a private practice part time, alongside writing and teaching yoga. I am an author of 2 internationally published books on yoga, first published in 2001.

I was commissioned this year to write a college course-a 12-week program-on somatics in counseling and coaching. This program will run through a college of applied psychology and will be offered as a course toward their diploma or certificate programs. I wrote the course this year and am looking forward to teaching it and piloting the program beginning in February 2005. My education at Naropa University in the Somatic Psychology program was definitely more than sufficient preparation for being able to do this. The mindful perspective I have, and my ability to write skillfully about somatic psychology, I owe largely to my 3 years of constant writing assignments and thesis work at Naropa.

What was important to me about my Naropa master's degree education was the intelligent interweaving of mindful/meditative perspectives, taught in classes and demonstrated by those in the Naropa community (instructors, staff and students), grounded in scientific and empirical research, skills and theory. My education at Naropa was an important training ground that has offered me a new sense of possibility in my career and as an author. While in the program I also learned to incorporate somatic skills into my own life and it has almost become automatic for my attention to be drawn now and again during the day to my level of tension, quality of breath or any asymetry in my body. Becoming aware of and honoring my experience enables me to develop and heal naturally.

The most educational and fulfilling aspects of this program were: practicing mindful awareness, staying in description of my experience instead of judging my experience, the years of feedback on my quality of presence and interaction with others in a counseling context and in the context of groups and group processing, and sharing this program with my cohort-all people curious and willing to engage in the process of enhancing self-awareness and quality of presence in order to be in service to others.

I am truly grateful for the skills that I acquired at Naropa. I continue to practice them and they continue to prove relevant to my life and to those I share them with.

Jennifer White
1998 Graduate-Somatic Psychology-Body Psychotherapy

I graduated from Naropa University's Somatic Psychology-Body Psychotherapy program in 1998, and have found many of the skills I learned during the program to be essential in my life and work. The self-awareness I gained is by itself an invaluable outcome of my studies, but I have also found that the ability to engender trust and connect with a person (or a group) in a very deep and genuine way has made me a more effective educator and consultant. I am the founder & director of Root Systems Institute, an organization created to help people initiate deeply-rooted, long-term, systemic change that leads to personal well-being, social justice and environmental sustainability. In order to find out more about my current work or the path that I took after Naropa, please visit my website at www.RootSystemsInstitute.net.

Emily Sellergren
1998 Graduate-Somatic Psychology-Dance Movement Therapy

After graduating from Naropa, I worked at West Pines Hospital in Wheatridge, CO as an Expressive Arts Therapist. I then worked for 3 years with Columbine Connections ( a faction of Jefferson Center for Mental Health) where I was an Experiential Therapist responding to the needs of the Columbine Community after the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999. When that position ended I became a school based therapist in an Elementary School in Lakewood, CO and then worked on the Child Crisis team at the Mental Health Center of Boulder County.

I am currently working for the Mental Health Center of Boulder County in their Longmont Elementary Day Treatment Program with youth ranging in age from 4-13. I use Somatic Psychotherapy, Dance Movement Therapy, and other experiential techniques as much as possible. In addition, I have a small private practice and supervise Somatic Psychology students at Naropa University. I have also presented at the Colorado Behavioral Health Conference for the past 3 years on using Experiential Techniques with groups. I enjoy being a therapist-it's fun work and I love it!

Veronique Mead
2003 Graduate-Somatic Psychology-Body Psychotherapy

Prior to attending the Somatic Psychology program at Naropa University, I was a family physician. I served as faculty in a residency training program and provided full spectrum medical care, from delivering babies and assisting in cesarean sections, to working with women and their families from birth to end of life.

I left my career because I believed I was causing harm and because I wanted to better understand the intelligence that lies within a symptom. It seemed to me that high blood pressure couldn't simply be a problem of altered enzymes or bad blood vessels, and that it had to have some deeper relationship to the mind / body connection, and to an individual's thoughts, emotions, and life events.

After a year's sabbatical for deep reflection, I discovered Naropa and felt as though I had come home. My studies in somatic psychology were exactly what I needed. I learned how to refine my ability to be in the present moment, and to use this experience as a crucible for growth and curiosity, applicable to all aspects of my life. The program also introduced me to a body of knowledge that I had never been exposed to in my medical training, and my curiosity helped me find my new path, which feeds my soul.

I now have a private practice in which I use somatic psychology as my approach to working with individuals with chronic physical illness such as multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and Parkinson's disease. This focus arose out of passionate curiosity concerning the role of environmental factors in the origins of chronic illness. Naropa introduced me to the existence and value of qualitative research, and curiosity helped me begin to develop a model for understanding this problem. Scientific research supports our increasing understanding of the interdependence between mind and body. Somatic psychology's respect for this process may help us explain how environmental factors such as trauma influence our risk for symptoms and disease. I suspect that somatic psychology also holds a key to more effectively working with and treating chronic medical conditions and that it is not limited to working in the domain of mental health. This exploration thrills me to no end, and my first article on the topic is being published in the December issue of the medical journal Medical Hypotheses.

I am fed now by what I do and there is surprisingly little delineation between work and play. Naropa offers something that is sorely needed in our current social and political climate, particularly in a world that increasingly prizes speed and busy-ness. I continue to grow my ability to learn from each action and encounter that I have and I am grateful for the guidance that has enabled me to follow my bliss, for that is how I can best make a difference in the world. Please feel free to contact me:
Veronique Mead, MD, MA
303-581-0411(h) 303-527-0551(w)
vmead@mindspring.com
www.veroniquemead.com
a copy of the article is available from: http://veroniquemead.com/library_articles.php

Leah D'Abate
2000 Graduate-Somatic Psychology-Dance Movement Therapy

Before and after graduating from the Somatic Psychology program in 2000, I worked for 2 years as a youth treatment counselor at the Colorado Christian Home Tennyson Center for Children and Families with adjudicated youth(ranging in age from 10-14), and their families. During that time, I worked to incorporate somatic therapies, movement therapy and body based psychotherapy, into the children's everyday experience, emphasizing the importance of movement and body based awareness in the cycle of healing. The result of working to synthesize a main stream psychotherapeutic model for working with abuse and neglect with dance movement therapy, gave rise to my master's thesis as well as an American Dance Therapy Association annual conference presentation on the same material with my colleague dance movement therapists at the agency. I then worked for 1 year with Columbine Connections, a faction of the Jefferson Center for Mental Health in Littleton Colorado, developed to respond to the needs of the Littleton Community after the shootings at Columbine High School. While there, I served as a somatic/experiential therapist providing somatic psychotherapy to school groups, students, teachers and community members in need, taught violence prevention in area schools and conducted in-service presentations on the benefit of somatic modalities for working with trauma at the Arapahoe Community College and the University of Colorado/Denver. I have presented at the Colorado Behavioral Health Conference on using experiential body based techniques with groups and continue to consult and conduct in-service presentations on Somatic Psychotherapy at area universities.

I am currently the academic advisor and admissions coordinator for the Somatic Psychology Department at Naropa University, where I have been for three years. I also have a successful somatic psychotherapy practice in Boulder County.

One of the most important aspects of my education in the Somatic Psychology program at Naropa both for myself and as I experienced it in serving others, was the understanding and experience that what makes pain, suffering and feelings move and shift is an honest experience of them. By coming into my body and living fully in the domain that was mine, I gained a true locus of control, of perspective. I discovered that safety begins, not in controlling the external environment, but in coming back to the direct experience in my body, where the witnessing of my self is the control. With this understanding and experience I could tell the truth, make appropriate choices for action and accept my feelings for what they were as feelings. This understanding has been my blueprint for living a healthy life from a place of awareness and has been invaluable to those that I serve as a psychotherapist. Please feel free to contact me:
Leah D'Abate, MA, DTR
303-245-4854
leahd@naropa.edu

Neelambari Paradkar
2003 Graduate-Somatic Psychology-Dance Movement Therapy

Since graduation, I have become a full time mom. I am using the knowledge I gained in the Somatic Psychology program to help my family grow. One of the most important skills that I learned during the program, was the capacity to embody my present moment experience and follow my heart rather than conform to an ideal or perceived expectation. I am cherishing the rewards of the present moment as I raise a curious bilingual toddler who has exceptional language and cognitive skills. With an enhanced ability to observe and work with spoken and unspoken information, I feel confident that I will make a difference when I begin working again professionally.