Elyse Gardner (she/her)

Somatic Therapy (Body Centered)

I hold a certification in Advanced Post-Traumatic Growth Somatic Therapy from Southwest Trauma Training, grounded in applied Polyvagal Theory and the neurobiology of resilience. Your body holds information your mind alone can't access. I help clients slow down enough to notice what your body already knows, so change happens at a felt level, not just an intellectual one.

Transpersonal

My Master's is in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling from Naropa University, grounded in meditation practice, Gestalt principles, and presence in the here and now. Transpersonal work makes space for what reaches beyond ordinary psychology, spiritual openings, mystical or non-ordinary states, moments that feel bigger than the everyday self. This training helps me hold that material without pathologizing it, so you can integrate what surfaced into how you actually live.

Mindfulness-based

My graduate training gave me a deep grounding in mindfulness-based interventions, learned through meditation practice, body awareness work, and direct clinical experience, not just theory. Presence is harder than it sounds when you're used to running on autopilot. Mindfulness-based interventions help you actually be in your experience as it happens, noticing thoughts, sensations, and emotions without judgment, so awareness becomes a resource you can return to, not another task.

Gestalt

Gestalt was a core part of my clinical training at Naropa University, and it continues to shape how I work moment to moment in sessions. What's happening between us in the room often mirrors what's happening in the rest of your life. Gestalt work uses the present moment, your posture, your pauses, what you avoid saying, as material itself, so insight comes from direct experience rather than analysis alone.

Anxiety

I help clients work with anxiety at the level of the body, not just the mind. Using somatic and gestalt approaches, we slow down enough to notice what anxiety feels like as it's happening, rather than only talking about it after the fact. Over time, you build a felt sense of steadiness you can return to, so anxiety doesn't run the show.

Body Image Issues

I support clients in rebuilding a felt, embodied relationship with their bodies, rather than one based only on appearance or control. Through somatic and gestalt work, we explore what it feels like to actually inhabit your body, so you can move from managing it to trusting it.

Women's Issues

Many of the women I work with have learned to stay steady for everyone else, often at the cost of their own needs. We slow down enough to notice what your body already knows, so trusting your own signals again becomes possible, and relationships start to feel mutual instead of like performance.

Personal Growth

Sometimes clients arrive functioning well by every outward measure, but sensing there's a deeper wholeness still out of reach. This work draws on somatic, gestalt, and transpersonal approaches to explore what's beneath the surface, guiding you back to wholeness through your body's organic intelligence rather than more striving.

Self-Esteem

Worth doesn't have to be earned through output, performance, or how well you take care of others, though it's easy to learn it that way. I help clients build a felt sense of self-worth from the inside out, so confidence stops depending on achievement or approval.