Jodi Alieksaites (she/her)

All of us have fear, whether it be emotionally-based or survival instinct that has become overwhelming, flooding our body with anxiety & panic attacks. Many of us have in many ways told ourselves a story that we should not be or feel a certain way, which causes conflict & stress in the body & mind. Perhaps we would like to move to a place in our life where fear does not hold us back? Together, we work with mindfulness techniques & body-centered practices to regulate fear & anxiety.

Burnout is often associated with prolonged stress in the workplace, but I apply this term also to relationships, personal goals, school & burnout related to neurodiversity & sensory burnout. Once one is in burnout we feel emotionally unwell, psychologically stuck & physically exhausted. It is challenging to find our way out once we are at this point. I help clients to acknowledge burnout & begin to address stress & the build-up of prolonged stress or exposure to toxic environments.

The work we do together includes awareness of the body: breath, movement & posture. Cognitive knowledge & learning are amazing, but including the body in psychotherapy ensures that ALL parts of you feel safe in the therapy room. The body knows exactly what pace to move for there to be room for change. Many of us have moved away from the body & are over-riding our instincts. This work is about listening & reconnecting to how & what the body knows.

Mindfulness has become a commonly used term that in some ways has become watered-down due to overly broad use. From my point of view, Mindfulness is our effort to turn our attention & awareness to the present moment in an intentional way. This includes mindfulness of what our thoughts & mind are doing, but we can go further & use mindfulness to work with body, breath, movement & posture. Combining mindfulness of body & mind can create what we call an "embodied" way of being.

Jodi is a graduate of Naropa's Contemplative Psychotherapy Graduate Program. Naropa University’s concentration in Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology master's degree is a counseling program that grounds itself in the Buddhist contemplative wisdom tradition and includes current humanistic psychological approaches to give insight and skills to show up fully for one's self and others.

My view of self-esteem includes a skills in boundary setting & loving-kindness. Sometimes we are not very skilled at being gentle & kind to ourselves. Often the opposite is the norm, which results in an endless barrage of self-aggressive thoughts riddled with "shoulds." It's impossible to connect to our life from this place of self-judgement. We can't fake it. Loving ourselves is not fluffy, unimportant stuff. It is the most essential ingredient to living a life of purpose & connection.