Hi! I’m Rakhel.

I can’t wait to support you to listen inside, and live in a way that cares for your full humanity.

You get to have a life you actually want. You get to have a life you enjoy!

I’ve been providing attachment- and trauma-focused therapy since 2017, and IFS since 2020. I’m a PhD candidate in clinical psychology, in my 8th year of training and clinical practice. I am “ABD,” meaning I have completed all clinical training and coursework, but have not yet finished my dissertation.

My research integrates the clinical and the contemplative. My master’s thesis explored the relationship between meditation practice, trait mindfulness, and attachment security. And my current research explores the roles of decentering and self-compassion in the relationship between potentially traumatic experiences and post-traumatic symptoms, and the capacity of IFS-based meditation to increase state self-compassion and decentering.

I am a Level 2 IFS practitioner. My approach to working with clients centers in IFS as my home modality. In my IFS work, I integrate attachment, relational, feminist, and pleasure activist approaches. I focus on being client-centered and trauma-informed in all my IFS relationships. This means I’m here to facilitate your connection to yourself and your values. I’m here to collaborate with you. And I’m here to support you to listen to yourself about what care looks like for you in each moment.

My approach to IFS work also integrates my experience as a meditator and meditation facilitator. I have been practicing in Theravada traditions, and in Shinzen Young’s trans-denominational Buddhist approach for over 15 years. My current meditation practice centers in IFS and nondual experiences, integrating the transpersonal and the deeply personal. I am a certified meditation mentor through the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society and Mettagroup, with a focus on meditation and attachment. And I hold a certificate in Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness with Dr. David Treleaven.

My approach to IFS work is also influenced by my experience as a dancer and a mover. It is embodied and somatic. I have been a modern dancer for over 30 years, and continue to choreograph, perform, and play in modern dance, ecstatic dance, 5Rhythms, and Gaga modalities. I am a graduate of the Mariposa Movement Foundations program. I integrate my intimate relationship with the body — as home, refuge, and source of information — in my IFS facilitation.

I’m queer, and I have years of personal and professional experience with a range of monogamous and non-monogamous relationship structures. I’m passionate about supporting people to build relationships based on listening inside to our genuine desires, and freeing ourselves from the constraints of externally articulated relationship expectations and myths that don’t match our insides. I practice from a liberation-oriented lens that affirms the breadth of gender identities and expressions, sexual identities and desires (including queerness and kink), and experiences of race, culture, and class — and explores how we can imagine and create a world where all our genuine ways of being are affirmed.

I live in Brooklyn with my partner Brian, and my pup Sila :)

I look forward to working with you!