Healing Through Connection: Awakening the Joy of Being

— “The inner journey is a mystery, so we lean into the exploration with a sense of experimentation, of playfulness, of openness, trusting we have the answers inside of us.”

Valeria interviews Dr. Loi  — She is a somatic psychologist, coach ("midlife midwife"), mother, workshop presenter, guided meditation leader and Ecstatic Dance facilitator. 

Dr. Loi  integrates her years of clinical training with her movement and awareness-based practices, grounding them into connection with the earth to facilitate a deeper understanding of presence, embodiment and reverence.

Dr. Loi has a background in the non-profit world (founding the single parent resource network in Austin Tx), has worked in radio, co-produced newspapers and music festivals, and owned an event production company. Her clinical work began in 2005 when she began graduate school as a single mother (after an almost 10 year break from school). She has worked with pre-school aged victims of trauma and neglect, in low income clinics that offered depth therapy, in a college counseling center, with couples, those mandated to attend domestic violence batterer groups. Her CRP was entitled, “The Role of Empathy in the Domestic Violence Treatment of Male Batterers” through a feminist theory lens and she graduated in 2011. She was licensed in 2014 after 3 years of postdoctoral training in a private practice neuropsychology clinic where she offered neurocognitive assessments and treatment after TBI (traumatic brain injury). 

Dr. Loi currently is in private practice seeing individuals and couples throughout California for therapy and intensives, via teletherapy and in person with a collaborative, holistic approach. She incorporates Somatic, Ketamine-Assisted-Psychotherapy, mindfulness, parts therapy, CBT, neuropsychology, Brainspotting (certified), and energy psychology grounded in a psychodynamic, depth-oriented framework. She specializes in affect regulation (anger management/anxiety reduction), integrating transformational experiences, prenatal/postpartum, parenting issues, midlife and menopause with a focus on empowering clients and encouraging their connection to themselves, others and the earth. She occasionally offers workshops and trainings, and hosts Ecstatic Dance Sebastopol (since 2014), often offering the closing sound baths and meditations.

Through her own journey of healing from physical and emotional over-sensitivities, she learned how to manage these overwhelming states and teaches this to others. More recently, after a TBI forced her to stop "business as usual" she created a program to assist women in midlife learn to slow down and reconnect to their inner wisdom. 

Dr. Loi educates and empowers her clients with practical strategies and guides them to a place of greater coherence and vibrancy. She believes that we are born wise and can re-learn how to live with ease and pleasure. She offers these clinical, spiritual and heart-based practices to assist humans in healing, reconnecting and awakening to the joy of being.

To learn more about Dr. Loi and her work, please visit: https://www.drloi.com/