Meet Jennifer
I’m an integrative psychotherapist, somatic practitioner, and educator working at the intersection of psychotherapy, embodiment, mind-body medicine, and consciousness.
I’ve been exploring what helps people heal, change, and build lives that feel more meaningful for more than two decades. This curiosity has shaped both my professional path and the way I work. I’ve pursued a wide range of therapeutic approaches and worked across settings as varied as psychiatric hospitals, prisons, primary care, universities, recovery programs, psychedelic clinics and retreat centers.
These experiences have taught me that there is no single path to healing. I’m interested in how we bring together what we know about the mind, body, relationships, and human experience to support meaningful, lasting change.
Today, my work includes private practice, clinical supervision, teaching, and consulting, alongside developing The AMBIKA Method® and Bless the Medicine®. Across all of these, I bring a blend of clinical experience, embodied practice, and a deep interest in how we understand ourselves and navigate the complexities of being human.
My Story
My path has been shaped by a lifelong curiosity about the deeper questions of human experience.
I’ve always been interested in where different ways of knowing meet, where science and spirituality, the mystical and the mundane, begin to overlap. That curiosity has been deeply experiential. I’ve sought out people, practices, cultures, and experiences that have challenged me to see the world differently.
That exploration has taken me around the world and into many different ways of understanding healing and human experience. I’ve learned with Hawaiian cultural practitioners and Kumu, Q’ero practitioners in the Peruvian Andes, Shipibo practitioners in the Amazon, Mexican curanderas, North American herbalists, and others whose traditions offer different ways of understanding the relationship between body, spirit, nature, community, and medicine. I’ve also made pilgrimages to places connected to older healing traditions, including the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus, part of my own cultural lineage.
My curiosity has also been experiential in a more personal way. I’ve screamed and thrashed in rage rooms, sat in darkness for days on retreat, explored altered states of consciousness, and immersed myself in practices that ask very different things of the body, mind, and spirit. I’m interested in the full range of human experience, from the quiet and contemplative to the intense, embodied, relational, and mysterious.
That willingness to explore is something I bring into my work with others. I’m often willing to experience something myself before asking someone else to consider it. It keeps me curious, open, and close to the lived experience of the people I work with.
A significant chapter of that journey was my time caring for Ram Dass, which brought together many of the threads I had been following and deepened my understanding of contemplation, service, and consciousness.
The AMBIKA Method® and Bless the Medicine® grew from this larger body of work.
My Philosophy of Healing
I don't believe there is one right way to heal, grow, or make meaning of our lives.
We are complex beings, shaped by our bodies, histories, relationships, environments, beliefs, and experiences. What is helpful for one person may not be what another person needs. I’m interested in the whole person, and in understanding what may be happening across the different dimensions of their experience.
That’s why I take an integrative approach. Rather than asking someone to fit into a particular model, I draw from different therapeutic, somatic, movement-based, and contemplative traditions and consider what may best support the person and the process they’re moving through.
I also believe that you are the expert on your own experience. My role is not to tell you who you are or what your life means. It is to bring knowledge, experience, curiosity, and perspective to the relationship, and to help create the conditions for deeper understanding, agency, and change.
I have a deep respect for what we know about psychology, trauma, and the body, and an equally deep respect for what we don’t know.
There is room for evidence, experience, intuition, mystery, and curiosity.
At the heart of my work is a devotion to Love, Truth, and Service. This comes from a teaching of Maharaji, who instructed us to love everyone, serve everyone, remember God, and tell the truth. It continues to be a guiding principle in how I live and how I work.
I believe the body is intelligent, the mind is strong, and the soul is wise. My hope is that the people who find their way here are supported in remembering those things for themselves, and in meeting the healer that resides within.
Clinical Experience
My clinical experience spans a wide range of settings, populations, and therapeutic approaches, from psychiatric hospitals and prisons to primary care, recovery programs, schools, nonprofits, and psychedelic treatment settings.
I’ve supported people navigating trauma, chronic illness, pain-related psychological distress, mental health challenges, addiction and recovery, life transitions, and expanded states of consciousness.
I maintain a private practice and provide clinical supervision and consultation, with a focus on integrative psychotherapy, trauma healing, psychedelic preparation and integration, and somatic and experiential approaches to wellbeing.
Teaching +Training
Teaching has been a central part of my professional life for nearly two decades.
I've taught at NYU's Silver School of Social Work, The New School, Columbia University, and the Finger Lakes School of Massage, teaching courses and workshops in clinical practice, trauma, mindfulness, human development, diagnosis, and creative arts. I've also designed and taught courses of my own, and served as a faculty advisor and mentor to students and emerging clinicians.
My teaching has extended beyond the university classroom. I've taught and assisted in professional training programs, including with the Upledger Institute for CranioSacral Therapy and in Somatic Experiencing® training programs. I've led workshops, retreats, professional trainings, and continuing education for clinicians, educators, organizations, and communities.
Today, teaching remains an important part of my work, alongside psychotherapy, clinical supervision, consulting, and the development of The AMBIKA Method®.
Professional Education
My formal education and professional training span social work, psychotherapy, somatic practice, movement, bodywork, and expanded states of consciousness. I’ve continued to pursue education across conventional clinical disciplines as well as experiential and integrative approaches.
What I’ve Created
The AMBIKA Method® and Bless the Medicine® have grown out of my clinical practice, teaching, personal exploration, and ongoing inquiry into healing and human experience.
The AMBIKA Method® is my framework for preparing for, navigating, and integrating expanded states of consciousness, including psychedelic experiences.
Bless the Medicine® is a philosophy and practice for cultivating a more intentional relationship with medicine, inviting greater presence, meaning, and love into the ways we care for ourselves.
