NAMASTE
& thanks for joining me.
NAMASTE
& thanks for joining me.
NITYDA GESSEL
LCSW, E-RYT
Licensed Psychotherapist, Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher, Trauma-Conscious Yoga Educator
I sit with people and help them hold their pain, so they don’t have to hold it alone.
I believe that we are all trauma survivors. We have all experienced pain in relationship to others, and while relationships can harm, relationships can heal. We are wired for relational survival and it is in healing our relationships with ourselves and others that we not only remember the truth about who we really are, but we evolve into exactly who we are meant to be.
I have studied trauma on an intellectual level, I understand the neuroscience deeply, I have gone to school and become licensed as a therapist and done all that society says I should do, and yet it is only through my own daily lived devotion to my own healing path, that I have gathered what is needed to support you along your personal journey to wholeness.
I like to say:
“No Darkness, No Light. Know Darkness, Know Light.”
It is only because I have sat intimately with my own pain, and that I have come to know and understand my own pain well, that I can sit with you as you navigate yours. And while it may sound daunting, the joy and freedom that come from truly knowing ourselves are worth every moment of transient discomfort.
——
I am licensed to provide psychotherapy in both Virginia and Texas state.
If you are interested in learning more about my practice as a psychotherapist, please click here.
If you don’t reside in Virginia or Texas and are interested in working together, please take a look at the groups, trainings and events that I offer (all listed throughout this website).
I have also authored a forthcoming book, to be published by Norton in 2023, to make the healing work I offer more accessible to a broader audience.
Sending you waves of peace and freedom along your journey.
How Trauma-Conscious Yoga Method℠ came to be
In my early twenties I had recently left a professional ballet career and was studying to become a therapist when I found that yoga supported me in managing my own trauma symptoms and anxiety more effectively than talk therapy alone could. I began to understand on a soul level that the body is a vehicle for transformation and liberation. Pieces of the yogic practice took me down a path of decolonizing my mind, my body, my heart and my soul – I began to return to myself, to remember my True Nature, and to feel a sense of freedom that I had never before known.
I began teaching yoga shortly after the healing practice came into my life in 2006. After graduating from Fordham University with a master’s in social work, and going on to specialize in trauma as a psychotherapist, I was passionate about brining yoga as a healing modality wherever I worked: substance abuse centers, community mental health clinics, hospitals, and schools.
It was after I opened my private practice and had the self-authority to practice as I felt intuitively right, that I began integrating trauma-conscious yoga more directly into my clinical sessions. Integrating yoga into session with somatic psychotherapies like Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) was incredibly powerful for my clients and it was refreshing for me as a clinician. Other clinicians in my community who intrigued and curious to learn how to do what I was doing and this is how the Trauma-Conscious Yoga Method (TCYM) was born!
To learn more about TCYM please click here and here and sign up for future certification trainings here on our website.
Yes, our bodies hold the pain and the traumatic memories, but they also hold the healing wisdom, the truth, all we need to remember who we really are.
MY LIFE NOWADAYS
I’m a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, I’m human. I make mistakes, I learn, I evolve.
I am here to heal. I am here to transform the legacy burdens passed down to me generationally. I am here to make my ancestors proud, and to support the future generations. I am here to be the change.
I love connecting to nature, to my ancestors, to my roots, to the freedom and joy that are my birthright.
I am here to help others do the same.
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
―
