Approach & Expertise

Ellen is a counselor who strives to provide uniquely tailored therapeutic experiences to all people in all walks of life. She believes that honoring your authentic self and sensate experiences are the most effective avenues to support your healing. Ellen is also equipped to facilitate a wide range of themes.

Specialties

  • Somatic Based

  • Dance / Movement Therapy

  • Dying, Death, and Grief

Areas of Expertise

  • ADHD

  • Adoption

  • Adrenaline-Seeking / Risk-Taking

  • Anger Management

  • Anxiety

  • Autism Spectrum

  • Boundaries

  • Cancer

  • Codependency

  • Coping Skills

  • Developmental Delays

  • Divorce / Blended Families / Step-Parenting

  • Emotional Regulation

  • Empathic and Intuitive

  • Enneagram Types

  • Family Conflict

  • Gender Identity

  • Highly Sensitive People

  • Infidelity

  • Life Coaching

  • Life Transitions

  • Neurodivergence

  • Parentification / Children of Mentally Ill Parents

  • Parenting

  • Peer Relationships

  • Pregnancy, Birth, Postpartum - including NICU

  • Relationship Issues

  • School Issues

  • Self Esteem

  • Self-Identity and Purpose

  • Sexual Expression and Consent

  • Sexual Orientation

  • Sex and Intimacy

  • Sexual Abuse

  • Spirituality / Metaphysical

  • Sports Performance

  • Stress

  • Terminal Illness

  • Transgender

  • Trauma and PTSD

  • Women's & AFAB Issues

Serving All Ages

  • Elders (65+)

  • Adults

  • Teen (13 to 18)

  • Preteen (10 to 12)

  • Children (6 to 10)

  • Toddler/Preschoolers (2 to 6)

  • Babies (0 to 2)

Queer Identities & Gender Nonconformity

  • All people on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum can be assured a welcoming and brave space with Ellen & Spring Wind Resourcing.

Therapy Types

  • Attachment-based

  • Coaching

  • Compassion Focused

  • Dance / Movement Therapy

  • Existential

  • Experiential Therapy

  • Expressive Arts

  • Gestalt

  • Mindfulness-Based

  • Person-Centered

  • Somatic

  • Strength-Based

What is somatic therapy?

Soma is of Greek origin, loosely translating to ‘the body,’ or ‘cells.’ Somatic therapy is a form that recognizes the healing inherent in learning about and building awareness around information contained in our bodies.

Teaching a client to notice their sensate experience and the feedback loop it offers can be restorative instead of re-traumatizing. For example, anxiety can often manifest in a variety of ways - an upset or tight stomach, a heavy chest, challenges with taking a full breath, a lump in the throat. With practice, these sensations can be regarded not as inherently negative, but as intelligent cues to slow down and pay attention.

Techniques in somatic therapy support a client to recognize and understand their body’s cues, and to then make conscious choices based upon this deeper intelligence and resourcing. This can include beginning with meditation, visualization, gesture, and tracking sensation into creative conversation, art-making, singing, movement, play, or whatever may feel resourceful to a client.

What is Dance / Movement Therapy?

Dance / Movement Therapy is defined by the American Dance Therapy Association as: “the psychotherapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical and social integration of the individual.”

Dance and movement have always been a vital form of human expression; communities gather around celebratory movement, find solace and spirituality within dance, and deepen into self-awareness through embodied motion.

Dance / movement therapy allows clients to explore the dynamic relationship between their mind and body. Both the movements of client and therapist become a pathway for conscious self-exploration and evolution. Techniques build awareness around the interconnectedness between movement and breath, posture, spatial relationships, gestures, sensations, and creative arts expression. Non-verbal witnessing and attunement within movement can also provide a bridge toward healing pre-verbal, young childhood ruptures.

Dance / movement therapy can restore self-confidence and vitality, unlock developmental trauma, build healthy neural networks in the brain, lower stress and anxiety, and offer new insight and avenues for self-expression.

Counseling Philosophy

Ellen brings a radically joyful, compassionate, humorous, and vulnerably honest approach to her counseling. She believes that humans have innate goodness and worth, in addition to the need to be fully valued and seen. Through her soul's work, Ellen is dedicated to providing the encouragement and tools for creating empowered, life-affirming repair and healing. She also supports her clients to discover and contribute their creativity and unique purpose, for themselves and their larger communities.

Ellen specializes in a non-clinical approach; she believes that the most natural way to begin healing is to find the right fit with a therapist in an atmosphere that is friendly and authentic. She wants each of her clients to feel unconditionally supported to share their vulnerabilities, while also confident enough in the therapeutic relationship to value different perspectives that may challenge their detrimental core beliefs.

Ellen will typically begin a session by deeply listening to what has transpired since a last visit, reviewing previous sessions if desired, and will then organically focus on themes that clients most need support with. Ellen has an exceptional capacity for remembering her clients’ life circumstances, and asking follow-up questions. It is okay for a client to show up to a session in any state of being — exhaustion, not knowing, excitement, tears, or of little words. Ellen will prompt her clients with questions of curiosity, or listen intently if they have a lot to share. While Ellen typically has a free-flowing, emergent approach to sessions, she is also happy to structure the time and offer specific interventions and psycho-education based on her intuitive sense of what a client may be needing.

Ellen has supported many of her clients beyond their initial reason for desiring counseling, some for 10+ years. Continued in-depth conversations and the exchange of ideas can encourage resilience and a deeper sense of self-knowledge to navigate life transitions that will naturally arise.

Ellen especially receives inspiration from the healing power of nature and movement, and likes to reference these elements in a way that is most beneficial to her clients. Just as nature shifts through seasons, Ellen encourages natural rhythms with her clients, reminding them that most transitions take a minimum of 3 months to integrate, if not much longer.

Additionally, while Ellen does not personally identify with a religion, spirituality is highly important to her. She listens to clients’ religious beliefs or atheistic views with respect, and encourages all of her clients to love with acceptance and discernment, without passing judgement.

Ellen is soulful, and holds her clients’ stories, insights, and even weaknesses with reverence. She engages in consistent dance classes and therapy for herself, as well as an Authentic Movement practice that supports her growth as a human being and a professional.