New to Grow
I'm Jalieh (pronounced *dja-leh*) — a trilingual licensed therapist (English, Spanish, Portuguese) with 30+ years of education, training, and practice across clinical, coaching, and community-health work in five countries: Spain, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. My practice is Dynamic Coherence™. I work with women across the lifespan who are striving to live their cherished principles in daily practice — from healing to flourishing. Clients often arrive at a threshold: a career shift, a season of parenting or empty-nesting, caregiving, perimenopause, grief, identity, a quiet *"here I go again,"* a longing that no longer fits the life they've built. Many are women of faith — Bahá'í, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and seekers — alongside those exploring their spirituality, values, and principles. Some carry religious trauma; some long to live their cherished faith more fully. My approach is integrative — humanistic, existential and transpersonal at the foundation, with mindfulness, somatic, trauma-informed, and relational-cultural threads woven in. I draw from the current and unfolding evidence-based science and the wisdom of spiritual heritage in my work, for both are complementary systems of knowledge and practice. I work, like the women I serve, as one still becoming — committed to my own unfolding alongside theirs. What clients tell me, again and again, is that they leave our work knowing how to pause, that they have a choice, and ways to direct that choice with confidence and meaning — clearer about who they are, what they're about, and the gifts they are striving to embody and contribute to a more unified, loving, just and creative world.
Welcome — we're here. The first session is an open door, a time for us to begin to meet — and to learn, gently, with and about each other. There is an element of mystery in any first hour — what it wants to become. Before we meet, I'll send a brief intake — and may invite you to sit with a question or two, just as a doorway. Across decades of psychotherapy research, the therapeutic relationship — fit, trust, feeling met — is the single strongest predictor of whether the work helps, more than any specific method (Norcross & Lambert, 2018; Wampold, 2015). I share this with my clients often. It's why our first session matters less for technique and more for fit. I welcome you, we ground ourselves with a few slow breaths — co-regulating, tuning and attuning — and I share how I work: integrative, trauma-informed, paced to what your system can hold. Then I listen — to what is pressing, what has been carrying you, and what you are quietly hoping for. Toward the close, we name one small step. Sometimes I'll invite a brief reflection or assessment to carry between sessions. Truthfulness, I hold, is the foundation of all healing, growth, and progress — the elixir of trust and sustainability. The work we do together is, in part, a slow practice of truth-telling: connecting with what moves you — your subjective truth — and learning to share it, gradually, within the safety of our growing relationship, so that in time you carry that voice into the other spaces of your life, in alignment with your values, who you are, and where you are going. If I'm not the right fit, I'll say so plainly and help you find a colleague who is. Sessions in English, Spanish, or Portuguese — welcome.
What stands out is fostering integration — the clinical, the somatic, the spiritual held together rather than asked to take turns. The visible and the invisible. The verbal and the nonverbal. Body, mind, spirit, culture, language — threads woven, not separated. I sometimes think of the work as the SSS — science, somatic, spirituality — three streams of knowing that, held together consciously, are generative. Thirty years of education, training, and practice across five countries (Spain, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, the United States) and three languages have made that integration reflex rather than aspiration. My undergraduate degree is from Dartmouth College; my graduate degree is in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. I trained in body-centered psychotherapy at the International Core-Energetics Institute (Essen, Germany, four-year certification, 1999), conflict resolution at Landegg International University (Switzerland, 2005), mindfulness-based stress reduction at Brown, and relational-cultural theory at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute. Within the U.S.: Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, California, and Texas. I co-authored Flexing Your Soul, Moving with Energy and Consciousness — published in English, Portuguese, and German. I have led a fully bilingual integrated behavioral health team in a Latinx, multilingual community — most recently as Assistant Program Director at Baystate Brightwood Health Center, where I helped pioneer the first ER recovery-coach placement at Mercy Medical Center and a community-based partnership with the Holyoke Police Department. That experience anchors me in systems-level care as much as one-to-one work. For five years I have served with a SAMHSA-funded national program, Todo Por Mi Familia, supporting immigrant and refugee families healing from forced separation, displacement, and complex cross-cultural trauma. That work taught me to honor the speed at which the body can metabolize what is rising — in service of the body's own integrity. Across 5,000+ telehealth encounters in three languages, the thread has held: welcoming listening, gentle pacing, genuine warmth. Embodiment is not theory for me. I was a ranked gymnast, an MVP cheerleader, a competitive high jumper, a modern dancer in the Duke American Dance Festival lineage of Martha Graham, and a 500+ mile walker. The body is the receptacle, the conduit — essential to the work and to one's own knowing. For women
Are you noticing patterns that no longer serve you, that keep you spiraling in a quiet "here I go again" while something in you knows there's more? Ready to surprise yourself, see with new eyes, walk into new possibilities? Welcome! I work with women across the lifespan through a whole-person lens — medical, behavioral, and psychiatric health; the social determinants of health; and the cultural, somatic, and spiritual dimensions that shape, sustain, and enhance wellbeing. Clients arrive at a transition — adulting, partnering, new career, parenthood, empty-nesting, grandparenthood, retiring, caregiving, relocation, immigration, perimenopause, grief, identity, faith — or the slow recognition that the life they built is no longer the one they're being called to live. Many accompany others in growth. They are women striving to embody their values, beliefs, and principles in daily flourishing practice — building habits that nourish whole health, lasting, loving relationships, purposeful work, and deep awe for life — harnessing their inner power to cultivate greater inner and outer coherence, confidence, and creative contribution. Sessions in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with competence in Latinx, Central American, immigrant, and refugee communities. Faith-affirming across the world's traditions — Bahá'í, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh — welcoming both those exploring their spirituality, values, and principles and those self-identifying, holding space for religious trauma and the longing to live one's cherished faith more fully. If you're in active crisis or seek short-term symptom alleviation, a therapist colleague may serve you better — happy to help find that fit. Our work is not change but progress — purposeful growth. We cultivate inner coherence, outer expression, impact, and lasting legacy: from healing to flourishing, in service of who you are, who you are becoming, the part you play in our world, and the gifts you're sowing and sharing.
Other specialties
I identify as
Integrative
Drawing on 30+ years of practice across community clinics, integrated primary care, and private practice on three continents, I weave together humanistic, transpersonal, mindfulness-based, CBT, solution-focused, and body-centered methods — tailored to each client's whole-health needs and cultural context. My aim is to meet you where you are, from everyday stress through chronic conditions to time-sensitive crisis, across the full span of life.
Humanistic
My graduate training is in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, and it's the foundation of every session. I hold each person as inherently whole, creative, and capable of growth. My work supports clients to live their principles in practice — from healing to flourishing — and to cultivate the patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing that instantiate who they are and the gift they bring to the world.
Transpersonal
Rooted in my graduate degree in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, this work opens space for the questions that matter most — meaning, purpose, loneliness, legacy, the psychology of faith and love, and the spiritual dimensions of being human. Together we clarify values and cultivate the habits that allow you to live in greater alignment with what you stand for and what you are here to give.
Trauma Informed Care
Every session is grounded in trauma-informed principles — safety, choice, trust, collaboration, and pacing. For the past five years I've served with a SAMHSA-funded national program supporting immigrant and refugee families healing from forced separation, displacement, and complex cross-cultural trauma. I bring that same attunement to every client: honoring the nervous system's rhythm so healing happens without re-injury.
Somatic
Certified through a four-year Core-Energetics training in Germany and Switzerland, with clinical practice in Spain, Brazil, and the United States, I integrate body-centered work to help clients reach what lives below words. I'm co-author of *Flexing Your Soul: Moving with Energy and Consciousness* (published in English, Portuguese, and German), and I draw on that somatic lineage to support whole-person healing across body, mind, and spirit.