Adriana Popescu: Using Holistic and Alternative Approaches to Psychotherapy

Dr. Adriana Popescu is a licensed clinical psychologist, an addiction and trauma specialist, and empowerment coach with over 25 years of experience in the mental health field. In this podcast interview, she reveals her personal and academic journey which helped her identify, and overcome, her own experiences with severe illness, hopelessness, and depression. Dr. Popescu discusses her path to recovery and how her passion to learn more about alternative therapies and spirituality opened her mind, and world, to a holistic approach to physical and mental health. She applies these techniques and approaches to her clients and has directed a number of treatment programs in the San Francisco Bay area. She is also the Clinical Director at Avery Lane, an innovative and holistic treatment program for women with co-occuring addiction and mental health disorders.

Dr. Popescu has always known that she wanted to help people and go into the healing arts as her dad was a doctor. She originally planned on going into psychiatry because she wanted to help people with their problems, so she attended Dartmouth College and started premed. However, she eventually realized that psychiatry isn’t necessarily doing therapy with people anymore, rather, it is more focused on prescribing medications. Therefore, she changed her focus to psychology. After receiving her B.A. in Psychology, she wanted to take a year off of school before going on for her Ph.D., so she went to Vail, CO where she experienced a series of events that changed her life and academic path. She became very ill, and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her. She intuitively knew that she needed to find out what was happening with her body, so she began her journey towards health and wellness by going to massage therapy school in Boulder, CO.

She then continued her journey by learning more about meditation, muscle testing, chiropractic, and nutritional supplements. Her passion grew even more when attending graduate school at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA where she learned about Eastern philosophy, somatic psychology, shamanic traditions, and had classes in Yoga and Aikido. She was so driven that she became a certified hypnotherapist, Brainspotting Practitioner, Access Consciousness Facilitator, and Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) Practitioner. In 1999, her world opened up even further when she learned about Energy Psychology. Later she learned more about Talk to the Entities (TTTE), a specialty area of Access Consciousness.

Dr. Popescu shares some impactful advice for those interested in applying their graduate degree in psychology outside of the academic world. She states “Well, they don’t teach you in grad school how to run a business, unfortunately, and they should.” She also explains how being willing to go outside the bounds of the traditional model may increase your financial prospects. During the podcast interview, Dr. Popescu shares her belief that “Self-judgment, or judgment in general, is the greatest source of human suffering.”

Dr. Popescu enjoys travelling around the world facilitating and attending various workshops on Energy Psychology and Access Consciousness. She has contributed to a number of books, including TJ Woodward’s Conscious Being Workbook, The Conscious Recovery MethodTM Workbook, and the Conscious Creation Workbook. Her own book, What if You’re Not as F**ked Up As You Think You Are? is currently in press, due for release in late 2021.

Interests and Specializations

Dr. Popescu is a licensed clinical psychologist, an addiction and trauma specialist, and empowerment coach. She is trained and certified in a variety of approaches and modalities. She is a certified hypnotherapist, brainspotting practitioner, Access Consciousness Facilitator, and Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) Practitioner. Talk to the Entities (TTTE) is a specialty area of Access Consciousness and she offers this as well as the use of Energy Psychology in her practice.

Education

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Psychology (1993); Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.
Master of Arts (M.A.), Counseling Psychology (2001); Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Transpersonal Psychology (with Clinical Certification) (2006); Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.

Podcast Transcription

00:00:14 Bradley	Welcome to the Master’s in Psychology podcast where psychology students can learn from psychologists, educators, and practitioners to better understand what they do, how they got there, and hear the advice they have for those interested in getting a graduate degree in psychology. I’m your host Brad Schumacher and today we welcome Dr. Adriana Popescu to the show. Dr. Popescu is a licensed clinical psychologist, addiction specialist, and empowerment coach with over 25 years of experience in the mental health field. She is also a certified hypnotherapist, brainspotting practitioner, access consciousness facilitator, and neuro emotional technique (NET) practitioner. Today we will learn more about her academic journey and experiences leading to her opening a thriving and successful business in California, which is “creating a life of infinite possibilities” for her clients. Dr. Popescu, welcome to our show.
00:01:11 Adriana	Hi Brad, thanks for having me…happy to be here with you all today.
00:01:16 Bradley	Thank you, thank you and I appreciate your patience with me pronouncing your name correctly. It’s a, it’s a mouthful.
00:01:23 Adriana	That’s OK, my whole life I’ve been dealing with it, no worries.
00:01:27 Bradley	Well, I wanted to kind of give you a heads up. We usually go through kind of your career academic journey first and then we start talking about your passions, and you have a lot of passions based on our discussions and my research, so to start us off, go ahead and just tell us a little bit more about yourself.
00:01:47 Adriana	Sure, so I am a licensed clinical psychologist, an addiction and trauma specialist, and an empowerment coach based out of San Francisco, CA but also working with people worldwide. Uhm, my journey, actually, I was one of the lucky ones who really knew early on that I wanted to do this work. Uhm, my dad was a doctor, so I was already kind of oriented toward healing arts. And I figured I’d be a doctor just like him. And when he passed away when I was a teenager, I realized like I wanted to actually go into psychiatry. That was my original plan, psychiatry, because I wanted to help people with their problems because when I was a kid going through those things and there had been a really messy, ugly divorce prior to that and some other things, there was no one there for me. There was no one there to talk to. None of my friends had gone through what I’ve been through, and so I wanted to be, and then naturally people would gravitate towards me, you know, when I was growing up and, and sought my comfort and advice and whatever. So, I was like oh, I can get paid to do this. Cool, I’m going to do that, so I ended up going, so I grew up on the East Coast New York, I ended up going to Dartmouth for my undergrad and started premed and you know it’s a, I was pretty deep into it, about 2 1/2 years and it was organic. It was the combination of organic chemistry which is the worst class ever and I’m actually starting to have internships in the field where I’ve realized that oh, psychiatry isn’t doing therapy with people anymore. It’s actually mostly just prescribing meds these days. I don’t want to do that, and if Med school is like organic chemistry, I don’t want to do that either. So, I changed course and realized OK, I could do a PhD in psychology and that was my plan. And then after college I was going to take a year off. I needed a break. Some friends of mine’s parents got a house in Vail, CO. They say we’re going to go there for the winter, you can stay for free in a house in Vail on the mountain. I’m like, of course I’ll be there, but that choice was a very fateful choice because it really changed the course of my life. Umm, I ended up actually staying in Colorado five years and became really, really ill in that time. And they didn’t, the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. Uhm, and so I got really depressed. I got really sick and uhm, decided to go to massage therapy school in Boulder, CO because I just had this intuitive knowing that I needed to find out what else was going on with my body and to understand better understand bodies I was kind of like always in my head. I didn’t even realize like I had a body neck down and that’s what really opened me up to the holistic and alternative kinds of approaches. It turns out I found out 13 years into this thing I found out that what I actually had was Lyme disease with chronic fatigue syndrome, and so really my it was my journey towards health and Wellness that put me on this track, uhm, of the alternative therapies and, and spirituality because it was definitely a dark night of the soul for me to go through all that and very much like a crisis. I would call it a spiritual crisis and. And where life had become sort of empty and meaningless and I was trying to find my purpose. So going through all that myself is what exposed me to all the different therapies that I’ve used today in my practice.
00:05:24 Bradley	Well, there you have it. That was a nice summary and overview of what we’re going to talk about today. I thank, I thank you for that. Well, it sounds like, even though it was unfortunate that you had to go through those ahh, that time period, it actually pushed you in the right direction where it helped you realize, hey, what else can I do for myself and for others, and how you’re integrating that into your business today as well.
00:05:51 Adriana	Yes, all the techniques I use on my, with my clients are the ones I’ve used on myself that I have found most powerful and effective in clearing just about anything physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. There’s no real disconnect. You can’t, those things are separate, right? They’re all connected, so if you’re dealing with a condition like depression, anxiety, trauma, PTSD, addiction, you have to look at it from all four angles and really address all of that. And in our fragmented healthcare system we don’t do that. You go to the doctor for this. You go to the councilor, the pastor, or priest for that, you know, and the fact that now we have these techniques we can use as it’s like, you know psychologists, I can use those in my practice, and I can do energy work with people and stuff is really amazing and much more powerful.
00:06:45 Bradley	Yeah, and as we were talking about before we started the podcast here, we are seeing that trend change a little bit instead of just the traditional client approach and just looking at the patient client, we’re going outside of that and bringing in more of the Eastern, you know, methods and that holistic approach, and I’m glad that we’re doing that. I wish the system would catch up in terms of insurance and and talking to each other in the in the system and the billing system to be able to allow us to actually truly take that holistic approach ’cause you know as well as I do, some of that is covered by insurance, others isn’t, you know, isn’t and then it would be nice if everybody could take that holistic approach. It almost seems like the United States is far, far behind compared to some other countries when it comes to you know that that view of that holistic approach, wouldn’t you say?
00:07:39 Adriana	Yes, and I would also say that I have been pretty successful at being able to do what I want to do with my clients, uhm, in a more of a private pay private practice kind of setting. Uhm, you tend to run into that stuff a little bit more of a challenge, maybe in like ahh, like the rehab program where I work, you know, insurance companies are very deep in you know what you’re doing. But nowadays there’s also a huge body of research supporting energy psychology methods, in particular, there’s over 250 published studies at this point, and it has been approved as an evidence-based practice, so that’s always a good thing you know for insurance reimbursement is if it has that stamp of approval as an evidence-based practice, you can use it and bill it. And for me, in my private practice, I don’t take insurance, but clients do, I will give clients a superbill for you know out of network and as long as they have that diagnosis code and the proper procedure code, they can. You know I get reimbursed for treating their mental health diagnosis. And I don’t get asked questions. Knock on wood, I haven’t been audited yet by an insurance company asking questions about what I’m doing so.
00:08:55 Bradley	Yeah, well, that’s good to know I, I know that it takes some time for certain approaches and certain services to be, you know, greenlighted so to speak or, or approved. Before we start talking about some of those approaches that you mentioned, I kind of want to, for our audience understand a little bit more about your education. You mentioned that you went to Dartmouth College, was that for your bachelors?
00:09:21 Adriana	Yeah, I got a BA in psychology, very traditional, you know education. I mean it was useful. I you know definitely learned a lot, but it definitely didn’t…an undergraduate degree in psychology doesn’t teach you like how to be a therapist, you know. It’s just, uh, it’s just an overview to get you started.
00:09:41 Bradley	Right, right? And then, as you mentioned, you went to Colorado, went through a series of events that altered your plans, and when you originally went to Colorado, what were those original plans and how were they altered? I mean, I know why they were altered because of your experiences, but what was the original plan when you went to Colorado?
00:09:59 Adriana	Well, I was going to take a year off and then apply to grad schools and I would even, was looking at, you know, traditional the types of Ph.D. programs that are kind of researcher, clinician, ’cause I and part of the reason I wanted a Ph.D. is ’cause I knew I wanted to do different things. I didn’t just want to see clients in private practice, that was actually never my aim. I wanted to be able to teach. I wanted to do research. I wanted to be able to do clinical work. I just wanted more possibilities, but I was looking at like state schools or universities where you know the, your education is paid for and you, you know maybe work with a professor and you do research and that kind of thing. So, it was pretty still, I was still in the traditional mindset and then getting sick and then going to massage school, opened up a whole another world and synchronistically I ended up, up seeing an ad somewhere in some, like new-agey kind of journal, or something magazine for a school in California called ITP, The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and that, just like lit my world up. I mean, it was sort of one of those moments where you just know. And I had friends in California. So, I took a trip out here and, and had an interview at the school and I mean we sat cross legged in a room, you know. And I was like wow, this is pretty cool. And I thought California is not bad. I had considered coming out here for college anyways, like why not? And so, I ended up applying and getting into the PhD in transpersonal psychology, where you get a master’s along the way. The master’s was in counseling psychology.
00:11:46 Bradley	And how long ago did you finish up with your PhD over at the ITP, which I believe is now called Sofia University?
00:11:53 Adriana	Yes, yes, after I left, they went through the whole thing and you know the ownership changed and a lot of upheaval but, at the time I graduated, my degrees from ITP and it was in 2006. So, it took me, they said, you know the program is 5 years, but it took 8 1/2 years for me for a few different reasons. One I was not financially able like I had some money going into it that I inherited from my dad when he died. That managed to cover my expenses, so I didn’t have to work the first three years and then the money ran out and I had to start working full time. So that was part of it. Another thing was I got in a really bad car accident that kind of messed up my neck and shoulders, so typing was hard. Then there was a a problem with my dissertation chair, and he got let go from the, you know, from the school. So, I had to start all over with a new person. So, there were like things along the way that made that process a lot longer. So, the one piece of advice I would have for people considering a Ph.D. program in anything, but especially psychology, is, one, it’s way more intense and time consuming than you ever imagined. Like I thought it would be easier to get a Ph.D. than go to Med school. I wouldn’t say that now and I would really urge people to consider if that’s the route you want to take. Like what do you really want to do with a Ph.D. because if you just want to like do therapy with people you can easily do that at the master’s, and it’s a lot less work. Writing a dissertation, which is for me, was like a 200-page paper, it’s a book, it’s this thick, was such an ordeal and so many people drop out and don’t finish their dissertations. And uhm, in my class of 31 people I don’t even know how many actually graduated with a Ph.D. but I’m gonna guess it’s 10 or less and in the five years only three people were able to get their degree in five years because they were financially supported by someone else. They knew what topic they wanted to write their dissertation on from the beginning and they got a really early head start, but for me it took 8 1/2 years so I finished in 2006.
00:14:02 Bradley	OK, and you started to say some recommendations and advice for those who want to finish their Ph.D. or go for their Ph.D., another thing that I’d add is depending on where you want to practice or what you want to do, find a program that is APA accredited as well, any other bits of advice or thoughts on that.
00:14:22 Adriana	Well, mine wasn’t, UM, so actually I would I, I might disagree with that. I actually don’t think APA approval is necessary. But again, depends on where you are. Because it depends. Look up the licensure laws first. California does not require APA approved schools or internships in order to get licensed here. Our school was WASC approved which is Western Association accreditation, whatever and that was sufficient, so I’ve never had a problem not coming from a school that was APA approved. However, it would be a problem if I wanted to work for somewhere like the VA, UM, and some placement, some organizations only hire people who have that APA approval, but I’ll tell you something else that I didn’t expect either that I was surprised. Uhm, I remember when I was looking at jobs coming out of grad school that actually having a Ph.D. may be overqualified for a lot of agency jobs, especially nonprofits who can’t afford to pay a PhD to do therapy with clients so they can afford a master’s level clinician, a social worker or MFT, or now we have the LPC, you know, credential but I actually was surprised like the county that I was in, Santa Clara County, I went to a job fair there and like Oh yeah, we hardly ever hire psychiatrists or psychologists ’cause they’re too expensive.
00:15:43 Bradley	Right?
00:15:44 Adriana	So, another thing to be aware.
00:15:47 Bradley	No, very good points I, I you know after talking with so many different people, each state has their own licensure procedures and requirements. So that’s a good point that depending on what field and what you want to do with it, and then where you want to practice really comes into play regarding that. So, I, I read throughout your website. And, and some of your online social media that you were trained in a, a variety of things and you kind of alluded to that during that time period. You know massage therapy you already mentioned, meditation, chiropractic, muscle testing and then of course nutritional supplements and some other approaches which we’re going to talk about a little later on. Tell me more about how and why you kind of got into more of the Eastern philosophy, the shamanic traditions you mentioned somatic psychology. And then you even took classes in Aikido and yoga, so it really, it sounds to me like you were just on a search for any kind of way to help improve yourself and then therefore apply these techniques to your clients in the future.
00:16:55 Adriana	Well, it was all offered as part of my grad program, see, so like the, the, the degree was in a PhD in transpersonal psychology, and I completed the clinical requirements to become licensed as a clinical psychologist for the state, but what really appealed to me about ITP was not all those classes, it was the Eastern. It was the fact that we were required to do a year of Aikido and a year of yoga. Creative expression, shamanic journeying was, was a class we took. We had group process for two years, I mean. That was where we were all, you know, working with each other, it was very experiential, especially the first two years were super experiential. I learned, yeah, meditation altered states of consciousness. I had a class in past life regression. I mean the, they were so influenced there, the founders of that school were so influenced by Eastern approaches and, well, they were, one guy was a Sufi and the other guy has been big in the psychedelic, you know, movement so. Oh, and a lot of those professors were around in the 60s and 70s for all of that, you know, Esalen and, and, and the, all of that consciousness expansion that was happening back then. So, I was drawn to that I, that’s where my interests and curiosity was, and so I wanted to be taught by people who had like discovered those things and done really interesting research and I learned about like psychic phenomenon, which really isn’t all that unusual. Uhm, there’s and there’s a ton of research on that I didn’t know that either until I took a class in it, in parapsychology, I mean it was super interesting to me and much more, ahh, much more interesting than some of the traditional psychology classes.
00:18:49 Bradley	Well, it sounds like it. I’m actually interested in a lot of that stuff as well. In retrospect, when you look at your education, and especially when you went into the graduate program, what were the most important factors that you were thinking of back then when you selected ITP?
00:19:09 Adriana	Well, it was that it was what I was interested in. I mean I didn’t, I didn’t need a big-name school. Look, I graduated from an Ivy League school that’s opened a lot of doors for me. Let’s be real. I mean it does. I don’t need to prove myself any longer though. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t need a PhD from Stanford. Uhm, I have my Dartmouth speaks for itself and so I knew I could do something different and I wanted to, I was also wondering what could I do ’cause I really liked massage school and I liked working with bodies and I liked doing healing with bodies and a hands on energy work and I kept wondering how could I integrate that with what I’m learning in like more traditional, you know, mental health talk therapy. How can those come together? So, I kind of had I probably had that in the back of my mind as well, but it was really, there wasn’t a lot of debating about. It was honestly like I, I found that after ITP I just kind of was so synchronistic I kind of just knew and once I got to know the school and everything and got in. It was just a yes. I don’t even think I applied anywhere else.
00:20:11 Bradley	OK, everybody’s journey is a little different so I, I thank you for sharing that. I did notice that you mentioned that you discovered the benefits of energy psychology back in 1999. So, for our audience, give us a high-level overview of what energy psychology is and, and how you can apply it in today’s kind of therapy sessions. And while you’re doing that, I’m going to bring up your website on that energy psychology techniques.
00:20:38 Adriana	Yeah, so energy psychology is kind of a broad umbrella of different techniques that are working with the energy fields of the body, so that includes the Meridian systems from traditional Chinese medicine. You have a picture there of the chacras which comes from India, traditional Indian medicine and uhm also the biofields. So, the, the aura and there’s a variety of different modalities. Some more hands on some are not that are working to basically clear the energetic blockages and imbalances that are creating the state of disease or discomfort because if you go by traditional principles, you know Chinese, traditional Chinese medicine has been around for 5000 years. The basic premise is that energy or chi flows through our body along these certain pathways and when it gets disrupted, when it gets imbalanced, disease occurs and the way to restore balance is to rebound, is to, you know, correct those energetic imbalances and then the body can heal itself. So, if you went to a traditional Chinese medicine with anxiety or depression, it wouldn’t be talking to you about their, about your problems, they’d be looking to see how the energy is flowing in your body. They might look at your tongue and your pulse and some other things and they would be using acupuncture or herbs or something like that, right to balance the, the energy that’s out of whack and that would, that would then alleviate the discomfort that’s coming from the anxiety or depression or whatever it is. So, a lot of it is based in that principle and what I liked about that is that you know it’s like the body has the capacity to heal itself. For where I was at, you know, with my, my conditions like Western medicine had so little for me, all they really could have had to offer me was, well, we could put a pick line in you and put you on IV antibiotics for the next year and maybe that will help and that was so not what I was interested in and I knew inside that I could heal myself of this thing if I could find the right methods. And so again synchronistically at the student lounge one day I found a flyer for an energy psychology conference in San Diego, and again, just knew I had to be there and drove down and uhm blew open my whole universe with what I learned there.
00:23:03 Bradley	Yeah, it sounds like it and then you you’ve been applying it ever since and you actually started it, started applying it to your doctoral dissertation. I think it was entitled “Be Set Free Fast: The Use of an Innovative Psychotherapeutic Technique to Improve Self-Esteem in a Dually-Diagnosed Population.” So, I’m going to put you on the spot and ask you if you can remember back then the highlights of your study and what you found.
00:23:29 Adriana	Yeah, you never forget your dissertation, it, it haunts you. No, no, it was actually a really cool study, so I had started my internship working at a place called Catholic Charities in San Jose, CA and they had, I don’t know, again, I was sort of intuitively drawn to chemical dependency. I knew there were a lot of jobs in that area, and I knew a lot of people who had addiction issues so it hit close to home and so I specifically sought out an internship that had that, and while I was there when I realized I had to start working full time, I eventually got a job there and, you know, moved up to management over the years and all that, I realized I needed to do a dissertation that included my clients at work. You know, because there was no way I was gonna be able to do recruit people outside of it or have the time or bandwidth. So, how could I create a study based on what I’m already doing and Be Set Free Fast was a technique that I had learned at that first conference with Dr. Larry Nims, who’s amazing, and he agreed to be on my committee and helped me construct this study working with this clientele. I was already working with, dually diagnosed means with an addictive disorder as well as a mental health condition. And so, what I found in the study, it was a small, I mean we would call it a pilot study, but basically the Be Set Free Fast group got that technique in the individual therapy sessions of which they had ten across, you know, like a 3-month span versus a group that had regular talk, supportive talk therapy. And then we looked at various measures of the severity of their addiction, their mental health symptomology, and their level of self-esteem and I got statistically significant results that showed that the Be Set Free Fast group did get better results that were maintained at follow up, which was like 3 months later, more so than the control group and it happened to be that the Be Set Free Fast group actually was a more severely mentally health impaired group like had more schizophrenic type diagnoses and bipolar. You know more severe conditions than I did in the control group, so I think that makes it even more powerful. You know, fast forward now however many years it’s been, 15 years, and that’s the population I’m still working with and the clinical director of the women’s dual Diagnosis Treatment program, where now, you know everyone, the staff, the clients, they all learn Be Set Free Fast. They learn EFT tapping. We do some access consciousness stuff. They, we have Reiki there. I mean I got to design a program based on like all these tools that I love and use, and I found so helpful and was able to create that, you know, in a clinic which is cool.
00:26:20 Bradley	Well, you summarized it very nicely. Uhm, I know that uhm you had mentioned elsewhere on your website that you believe that self-esteem is one of the underlying issues that you are seeing and that commonality between, and among, all of your clients. Can you talk a little bit more about, you know, you thinking and believing that self-esteem is at the core of some of the, I wouldn’t say necessarily problems, but issues that people come to you about?
00:26:53 Adriana	Yeah, actually I would distill it down even further and say it’s about the subconscious beliefs you hold about yourself, and most of us are functioning from core false beliefs and judgment itself. Self-judgment, or judgment in general, is the greatest source of human suffering. And so, people are judging themselves, usually with this, like a core false belief of I’m not enough. Uh, I don’t deserve to be happy. You know something along those lines that’s driving everything they’re creating in their life because your point of view creates your reality. So, if you believe those things to be true, even if in your like conscious or cognitive mind, you’re saying no, I really do want to be successful. I really do want to get off drugs and alcohol. If you’ve got a subconscious program that’s saying otherwise, you’re not going to be able to be successful. You will continuously sabotage yourself. Uhm, and the problem with traditional talk therapy is it’s like a dog chasing its tail. You’re, you may get the awareness that you have those beliefs, but you’re not actually able to change the energy of them with just this part of your mind, because usually there’s all these emotions and traumas associated with it. Why those key beliefs came into play in the first place that’s the more primitive parts of your brain. You know that’s your mammalian brain and your lizard brain, or reptilian brain. Now we know with brain science we know so much more about how all that works. We actually understand better how energy psychology works with some of the techniques I’m using you’re addressing the amygdala. You’re addressing the emotional center of the brain. You’re also addressing where trauma and emotions are stuck in the body, that’s what’s required to shift the energy of those beliefs is doing these other approaches, and that really has been a theme throughout my work and I even have a book coming out, hopefully this fall, called “What if you’re not as effed up as you think you are?” Which is all about that, right? Like how our beliefs come to, come into play and how we can change that.
00:28:49 Bradley	Right, I, I like the title of the book and the first thing that came to mind when you were describing that was it’s more than just self-talk because if you don’t thoroughly believe and truly believe what you’re saying, that’s all it is, it’s just talk. It’s not going to make any changes in your mind as well, so it’s, it’s interesting that you brought that up, and it’s a different viewpoint. Instead of positive, you know self-reinforcement or positive self-talk, you have to get at the root of it first before you start talking about that.
00:29:21 Adriana	Well, I believe his name is Nathaniel Branden. I still have his book over there somewhere, yeah? Uh, where a book called “Self Esteem” that I actually studied, you know, for my dissertation and wrote about and he ended up speaking at an energy psychology conference and I remember he distinctively said like self-esteem will not change until you address the negative beliefs. Like all the affirmations in the world aren’t going to do anything when that negative belief is still in there holding the energetic or emotional charge. So, it’s almost like you have to get to self-acceptance first before self-esteem can arise, right?
00:29:55 Bradley	Right and a lot of people are missing that step. They just skip it. So, I, I know that you mentioned Catholic Charities that, I believe you were there for almost 12 years or a little over 12 years, and you did a lot of work there. You, you actually used the patients there and for your dissertation you mentioned what other things were the most impactful during your experience with Catholic Charities? I think it was in San Jose, CA.
00:30:24 Adriana	Well, I had the choice when you when it’s time to do an internship or practicum, a lot of people will say try all different things. Uhm and early on at Catholic Charities I was in like 3 different programs ’cause I wanted to do that. I was working with kids. I was working with adults. It was like a really diverse and, and the chemical dependency, dual diagnosis program. And then I narrowed it down to dual diagnosis because that’s one I liked and then I got hired to work there full time. You know, and then it went from there, but so I rather than taking a broad approach, I actually took a deep dive and really specialized in addiction and dual diagnosis treatment which primed me well for leadership positions, not just at Catholic Charities, but beyond that right? So, I have the expertise to then be hired at like other rehab programs in these, like at a pretty young stage in my career, like kind of just straight out of grad school, UM. So, I thought that that deep dive was useful and, in like, when I train interns now you know ’cause I’ve obviously done a lot of that in my career is supervised interns, is I, I ask them to make a conscious choice around that. Like if you already know what you want to specialize in, go for it and take that deep dive. But if you’re not sure what kind of population, then by all means take a broad approach and try different settings, like working at school, work in a clinic. There’s a huge difference between nonprofit and for profit. I made that jump at one point, and that was like dramatically different. Try the different, sample it all, it’s like a buffet, sample it all until you get clarity around who and what you like working with. But for me it was clear early on, so I appreciate that I got to stay with one place for a long time. Get the expertise kind of go up the ladder, so to speak. Get into a management position and then, really what happened is they couldn’t afford to pay me anymore once I was a licensed psychologist and I wanted out of the peninsula, you know, down I, I wanted to move up to the city anyways, and so that was a good time for me to really go try something different.
00:32:26 Bradley	Well, I applaud you for almost reading my mind because my next question was what advice would you have for those who want to enter and move up within these types of jobs you already mentioned? Yeah, take that conscious approach and think well, do you know what you want to specialize in? If not, then do that broad approach because based on your Vita or your work experience, I see that you worked your way up from intern as you said, to program manager to director of outpatient services at Marin Services for Women in, is it Greenbrae, CA? Yeah and, and so that’s very good advice. Anything else comes to mind for graduate students who want to move up in different positions?
00:33:02 Adriana	Ahh, I think you need to be real with yourself about whether or not you have like the administrative skill set and interest, because there’s a lot of great clinicians out there that are horrible administrators and that’s notorious in our field. Very few people actually have the business sense uhm and, or who like it, like doing the business side of things. I was somebody who’s really good at both. And I also have some natural leadership skills, so it came really easily for me. But if you don’t like managing people, or if you’re not super organized and like doing the paperwork, I mean ’cause you know when you’re an administrator you’re deep in audits. You’re like dealing with budgets. I mean, a lot of it is not fun for folks, and it wasn’t always fun for me, but I was good at it, so I think you need to be honest with yourself around, like, do you lean more towards just wanting to do clinical work? The other thing I realized along the way was, you know, I said I liked, you know I, I thought early on I would want to do more research. Research is an ordeal too. I’m like not interested in that. I just recently published a paper actually at someone’s request for the Energy Psychology Journal about our work at the rehab with energy psychology, and it was bringing me flashbacks of writing my dissertation. I’m back in the APA manual like does the comma go here? And if I have more than five authors, it’s too much form and structure for where I’m at and like at this stage of my career, it’s too confining and it’s not interesting to me. So, like research is great, but it’s not my wheelhouse anymore.
00:34:47 Bradley	Well, everybody has their own niche and I’m glad that you realized that, but you know it, it, it, it speaks to your experience and your coaching ability, where somebody pleaded for you to go ahead and, and get that published and get that out there for everybody else to benefit from. I know in 2012 you, you kind of mentioned this a little bit, you decided to leave and then go into practice full time. What led you to make that decision and that change?
00:35:17 Adriana	I was burnt out I, I mean look addiction work, dual diagnosis work is like not easy, and I had what 12 years of it at that point. I was burnt out. It’s very intense. It’s a huge amount of trauma. You have to really be mindful of vicarious, traumatization, compassion, fatigue, all that kind of stuff. I’m, I realized along the way, I’m an empath, I’m a highly sensitive person. I was taking…that was part of why I was so sick, actually, ’cause I was constantly taking on the pain and suffering of others. So that was going on and there was some toxic work environments, bad leadership, I was tired of that. I don’t want to be part of that anymore. So yeah, I said I it’s time for me to be my own boss. My income almost doubled, I think in that first year when I did that, ’cause I’d also hit a ceiling with kind of like, you know, once you get to like a clinical director position, or you know, director position. There’s no really where else for you to go and still have any kind of clinical. You could be an executive director, but then you’re really not doing any clinical work and I didn’t want that either going to be a straight administrator. So, practice game work week. It increased my income and it let me do what I wanted. At that point I was like I’m sick of doing what everyone else wants me to do. Whether it was the agency itself, in the leadership or whether it was like third party documentation, you know it’s insurance companies. It was medical. I was sick of all of it, and I just wanted to be my own boss. So, for five years, I kind of hid out in my office and just did what I wanted one on one with clients and that was great. And I didn’t ever think that would happen because I liked being, I always liked working collaboratively on a team. I like working with other people and I like the diversity of an, of an agency job because I do admin, I do training and supervision of interns. I did get to do some clinical work myself. I run groups. It’s like it keeps it interesting for me, right? ’cause I get bored otherwise if I’m just doing one thing up and then you know somebody had taken some workshops with me had told me she’s starting her own rehab and she would love me to teach an energy psychology group there. And that sort of morphed into oh, and until we get a clinical director hired full time, can you just be our interim clinical director as we get launched and that was four years ago and I’m still the clinical director because I like what I’m able to do there. I was able to create a whole program around, you know, some of the best techniques. And creating curricula and hiring people and training them to do this work. And we just get such amazing results because, you know, and I’d always had a vision somewhere in the back of my mind that I was going to have my own center someday and, and I’m working on that too. There’s in the works around that.
00:38:05 Bradley	Yeah, well, you mentioned something earlier that I want to get back on because, or touch base back on, the business aspect of running a business and what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced when you did go into private practice full time and then had to wear multiple hats. You had to be a psychologist. You had to be an administrator. You had to be clinical director, PR manager. What were some of the biggest challenges for you when you went through that experience?
00:38:35 Adriana	Well, they don’t teach you in grad school how to run a business, unfortunately, and they should. Luckily in massage school I actually had a business class where we had to do a business plan and we, I, so I got, I had had some education around that, but I think that’s really important in missing in most programs and again, most, most people don’t like marketing themselves. I didn’t like it either, but I was lucky in that when I left it was a very calculated move to leave my last rehab job. I had enough clientele that I knew would come with me so that I knew I could make it financially in the beginning, but it’s nerve-wracking. I mean, it’s ebb and flow. There’s sometimes cycles and sometimes not you, you can’t really predict in one month what your income is going to be, and one of the worst parts of it, honestly, is you lose the benefits. You no longer get paid vacations. So now, even now, all these years later, like somebody just said to me the other day like you’re so busy, why don’t we take a day off, right? Because a day off is gonna cost me X amount of dollars. I know exactly how much money I’m gonna lose if I take a day off. Uhm so not. And when you go on vacation, not only are you, is it the cost of your vacation, but you’re losing all that income that you’re not making, and so that’s a hook that can hook you a little bit, you know? Uhm, and I think a lot of our, a lot of us sometimes find ourselves, you know, hustling a bit. And that can feel uncomfortable. Or now since COVID. It’s like the weird opposite problem where the practice is full, and I have a wait list and I have to say no to people and that’s been strange so it’s. Feast or famine? You know it’s it can be inconsistent until you really, I mean, I’ve been doing private practice now for 11, 11 yearsish probably. Or maybe I don’t know 9-10 years, something somewhere in there I lost track, but it’s definitely been an ebb and flow. Now it’s in. I’m in a stronger position and I think it’s because I’ve also gone outside the box a little bit and so, and I have like hired people. Now I have, I pay people a lot of money to do like PR marketing type things. My social media. I mean, I’m doing something beyond what I think most therapists in private practice are doing.
00:40:57 Bradley	So, in retrospect, if you had to do it again, what kind of advice would you give yourself or other people if they wanted to start their own business? Obviously learn more about how to run a business, anything else.
00:41:10 Adriana	Hire people to do it for you. Hire people to do the parts that you’re not good at and that you don’t like doing it. And if you do take like if you dig insurance and you don’t like dealing with the billing process, hire somebody to do it for you. If you’re bad at promoting yourself, then hire somebody to do it for you and a lot of things. I, I, I thought the people who started in grad school with like a private practice. Uhm, I forget what they call it. Like being a psych assistant or whatever. Uhm, I thought those people had a harder time. I mean, yeah, they learned how to develop a practice, but they never made the connections. Like so much of my success comes from like word of mouth like my referrals come word of mouth ’cause I’m known in my community ’cause I’ve worked at agencies and I know the rehab community and the addiction therapists and stuff like that. When you are only in private practice from the beginning, you kind of miss out on that. I also felt like those people missed out on their time in the trenches like working in a psych hospital, working in Group homes with adolescents, working in Group homes with severely mentally ill people showed me like that work was really hard, but it also showed me how severe like mental illness can be and I’m, I think if you’re doing like a private practice with, with like the worried well or, you know, a higher functioning population, you kind of miss out on that training and experience. That’s just my interesting point of view about it. Uhm, so I don’t know. Just like ask people if you’re not sure, seek out mentorship. Seek out guidance from people in the field and try different things until you get clarity on what it is that’s, you know, going to work for you.
00:42:53 Bradley	Very good advice. Thank you. We talked about energy psychology earlier. Now I’d like to switch and talk about access consciousness. And while you’re talking about that, I’ll bring up the website with your page on, on this topic.
00:43:08 Adriana	Access consciousness is a modality that’s been around maybe 30-35 years now, 30 years now. Uhm, not a psych…not really developed by psychologists or mental health practitioners. Although there are a number of them who use these tools but developed by like a regular guy and, later on, a chiropractor who were looking to empower people and who had tried a whole bunch of techniques under the sun and discovered that this combination of hands-on energy work and verbal facilitation was creating a lot of change for people and I just loved like the tagline, you know, empowering people to know that they know that’s on alignment. You know with how I see things. I’m not here to fix you or heal you. I’m just a catalyst to your own healing and my, you know, I have a lot of tools and questions to offer you that many of which come from access ’cause they’re really simple, basic tools that I’ve found super helpful in working with clients. So yeah, I love doing that work. It kind of like infiltrates everything that I’m doing in the book that’s coming out has a lot of access tools in it.
00:44:24 Bradley	I know that I actually, when I went to a chiropractor, he would actually use, you know, touch points on my body and not only my head, but certain parts of my body during the therapy. And at first I wasn’t, I said what are you doing, you know? And other than you know, correcting my spine and everything else, he was doing other things to test to see. And now that I see this, it kind of makes a little bit more sense that, that’s probably what he was doing even back then. It’s an interesting area. I really found it fascinating to look at each of your different websites, you know, web pages on your website. The other thing that kind of stood out, since I’m on the website right now, is you know your services and your modalities, and of course you have the traditional psychology and then the energy and access and then let’s move over to the talk to entities and tell me a little bit more about that because that is something a little bit different that many people may not even be aware of or even heard of yet.
00:45:28 Adriana	Right so uhm, yeah, talk to the entities. So, I’m the therapist that talks to dead people. Uhm, you know, it’s funny because, uh, so it’s a specialty. It’s actually a specialty of access conscious. Uhm where you’re applying the same basic tools they’ve been, you know, applied across a variety of areas and the stepdaughter of Gary Douglas, the guy who founded access, happens to be a psychic in a medium, and she struggled her whole life with her awareness of, of spirits and it kind of drove her nuts. She tried to numb it with drugs and alcohol as a young adult and she basically was on the track what she said toward like becoming schizophrenic because she was struggling so much with all the different things she was aware of and didn’t have any way to manage it until she went to her stepdad and he gave her, he taught her how to apply the tools to that specific area, and so really what it is is a set of tools and classes to teach people how to have more ease with their awareness of the spirit world, everybody has the capacity to talk to or communicate with spirits. Clear them, communicate, receive from them, collaborate with them. It’s a whole area. That’s, ironically, you know was sort of talked about in grad school and then I found myself getting involved with this organization called ACISTE, ACISTE, the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences, which includes things like after, they call it after death communication, right, with being people who have passed, or other types of beings, not just people who are human and, and things like near death experiences, out of body experiences, the whole psychedelic, uhm, profound, like, you know, experiences induced by psychedelic assisted therapies. All of that, which was all stuff that was we were talking about at ITP, and in fact like ACISTE’s President when I went and spoke with their conference a couple years ago was a graduate of ITP, and a lot of people in that organization ended up, you know, affiliated with that. So, I got involved with them, and there is an increasing, they, they have a certification program, so now I have a certification in assisting people with these spiritually transformative experiences which can turn into spiritual in, we call it also spiritual emergence, it can turn into spiritual emergency when people have these inexplicable experiences that there is no real context for in traditional mental health treatment and can be misdiagnosed as things like psychosis, depression, anxiety, a Kundalini Awakening, right, can create a lot of discomfort in the body. And so, we work with people around integrating those experiences. And you know, helping them with whatever their new, these new doors that are, have opened for them, which has been really cool. It’s kind of like come around full circle to my work at ITP, so all of that has been, yeah, definitely outside the box but way applicable to a lot of what I’m doing, even at rehab because so many people in who are using drugs and alcohol or trying to numb their awareness of a lot of things, they’re often empaths, highly sensitive people, and they’re not only picking up on the thoughts and feelings and even physical things with people in bodies, they’re picking it up with people without bodies. So, it’s really interesting stuff.
00:48:58 Bradley	It actually sounds like it when I read more about the I, I had never heard of Talk to the Entities before and so I actually read about it on your website and then other, other places as well. And you, you mentioned the ACISTE and I, I did find that, uhm, you actually…as you mentioned, I think you were certified as a mental health professional, working with the spiritually transformative experiences, STEs, yeah, so that was interesting to me as well. I guess the one question that comes to mind after hearing about all this and looking at all this is there are so many different approaches and therapies out there when working with clients, how do you know which ones to use, and which ones are going to be beneficial or impactful for your client?
00:49:47 Adriana	I ask a question and I follow my intuitive awareness and follow the energy.
00:49:53 Bradley	Ok.
00:49:57 Adriana	Sometimes it’s dictated by what the client is open to. I definitely have had clients who really came for this one modality, and they really just want to use that, and that’s fine, but mostly I get people that just want change and they’re open to whatever. And they’re into all this like. Woo, weirder stuff. So that’s really fun for me because I get to be, you know, like uhm, I get to be an artist with it, really. Or like I, I don’t know, the, the imagine it comes as a chef who’s like in the kitchen, playing with different ingredients and like creating this like you know, amazing meal. You know, like I have so many ingredients to choose from, like it never gets boring and I’m a lifelong student. I’m always learning new techniques and modalities, and brainspotting is a new one and only in the last couple years and I’m loving it. I love the results we’re getting with folks, especially with trauma with this brainspotting stuff. It’s super cool.
00:50:47 Bradley	So that leads me to my next question. Two things. Number one is, we’ll talk about what brainspotting is in a second but out of all these modalities that you have listed on your website and the other services. Out of those modalities, which one do you tend to use the most and why?
00:51:07 Adriana	I, I actually wouldn’t, I, I, I don’t even know if I can answer that ’cause I’m not sure there is one. Uhm, I think access is more of a foundation and sort of a philosophy if you will that sort of weaves its way through all of it, but it really varies. Like, like I mean this computer right now is propped on a massage table that lives in my office so, you know, pre COVID you know people would come in and I might do like hands on energy work with them while I’m doing verbal facilitation. At the rehab we do a lot of tapping, EFT, because those people nervous systems are stuck constantly in a state of fight flight freeze. There are different things I do in groups versus individual. It’s every session is different every day and that’s what I like about it. I would get really bored if I was primarily only using one technique.
00:52:00 Bradley	Right, no, that’s a good point. Yeah, you need to have that variety. Now let’s talk about brainspotting a little bit. It’s, it’s obviously newer than some of these other techniques that are out there, but you are a certified, or you’re a brain spotting practitioner. Tell me if I didn’t know anything about it. If we act like I didn’t really do the research, I’m just asking you what is brain spotting? It almost sounds like trainspotting. What, what, what is brainspotting?
00:52:27 Adriana	Yeah, uh, brainspotting is derived from EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy at trauma, primarily trauma treatment it, you can work with other things as well. It’s been around for like I don’t know 30-40 years. And brainspotting is actually about 18 years old now. It was developed by psychologist named David Grant who was an EMDR therapist and if you know it has a lot to do, EMDR is a lot to do with left brain, right brain processing, and often like moving your finger across the client’s visual field. Uhm and instead of doing the movement he had with one of his clients, he noticed that when he had, there was one spot where her eyes started, like wobbling and she just had this like very visceral reaction, and he had her hang out on that one spot. And that’s how it he came up with the term. The brain spot because there’s something about, UM, your eye. Your ocular nerve connects back to your amygdala, which is the emotional fight flight free center of your brain, it activates that response and it also uhm, uh, you know, connects to the vagus nerve which, you know now we know is polyvagal theory, we know that that’s a big part of what’s like causing people to get activated with fight flight freeze. So, people had a lot of trauma, right? Like can’t think straight. They’re like driven by their emotions. They’re in this constant state of agitation, or they’re shut down in dissociation. And checked out there in the freeze response. And he found that when he had her fixed, and she was like, like an ice skater, you know, and couldn’t land a certain jump. And when she fixed her gaze on that one spot for like 45 minutes, this whole torrent of a material traumatic material came out about her mom and abuse and whatever. And after she processed all that, she felt better and the next day, after not being able to land some jump for, for years, she was able to do it and never had a problem again, so that’s kind of how. And then he’s a New Yorker and 911 happened and then he got to work with like hundreds, if not thousands, of people that were impacted by that. That’s how he kind of perfected his technique and now there’s, I don’t know, over 10,000 practitioners bringing brain, brain spotting practitioners worldwide and, and so I’ve just like in the last couple years really taken to it and I’m using it a lot at the rehab and a lot in my private practice and not just with trauma. You can use it for like, just like with taping you can use it for positive things too like performances, improving performance, expanding and strengthening spiritual experiences. You know, like accessing more of that, I mean there’s so many applications of it, it’s really interesting.
00:55:15 Bradley	I also noticed on your website that you have a products page so I, I want to share that with the audience because a wide variety of products on here you have as you have listed here Free Calls, Recorded Telecalls…tell me a little bit more about what those Telecalls are.
00:55:35 Adriana	They were just different. You know. Periodically I offer freebies you know on a topic that maybe I find interesting. Yeah, who or what is driving you crazy? And then I also do classes, right paid classes and often if I think the class turned out well, I will turn it into a product and then sell it on uhm the website, so people who missed the class can actually get, get that again after the fact. So that’s what, that’s what those are.
00:56:04 Bradley	OK, and then I see that you have some Talk to the Entities, uh, available here as well.
00:56:09 Adriana	Yeah, there’s some we do and talk to the entities we have intro and beginning classes and there’s these specialty classes like mental disorders and entities or entities and addiction. Yes, and I’ve started doing things in other languages of getting translation into other languages because the business is growing and growing worldwide, so that’s been fun. That’s, uh, looking into a whole another level to, you know, in terms of back-end stuff of offering translation in multiple languages.
00:56:37 Bradley	Right, right? No, I, I, that’s the first time I’ve seen some of this offered in in different languages as well. And then what you’re calling these Audio Clearing Loops are interesting because I know a lot of my friends love having that white noise in the background, when they try to focus or concentrate, or some of them have specifically, when they go to bed, they have something that they play as well. So, it looks like you’re offering. That here.
00:57:03 Adriana	Yeah, these are clearing access consciousness clearing, so uhm, asking a question bringing up a certain energy and then using a very specific clearing statement to clear those energies up. So yeah, one specific to anxiety and morning is kind of like in it, the sort of the vibe of it is like clearing all that yesterday was and like what do I want to create today and what would it take for today to turn out greater than I could imagine? And you know just body things and, and money things and just inviting more abundance. And you know things kind of like setting a positive tone for your day.
00:57:40 Bradley	Sure, and then for our audience and, and even some of your current or prospective clients, I’ll kind of switch over, you have your own podcast as well, and you have some of the recent ones. Now, this recent one that was actually on here, I started listening to that a little bit, and then you also have it listed on some of your social media right here as well and so tell me, I’m just curious for my own edification, the healing power of this Scalar Light. Tell me what, what that’s about?
00:58:06 Adriana	No, yeah that was cool. Uhm, so I interviewed this guy who is, uhm, has developed this technology based on really Nikola Tesla’s work, uhm, in the it’s very quantum. You know, a lot of these like modalities are very much at the forefront of like where science and spirituality meet in this quantum realm. Where they’re you know, like where energetically we’re all connected, and time and distance isn’t even an issue. It’s really fascinating stuff, and he’s developed this technology where they take photographs, like you send him a photograph of yourself. And it’s like the, the device is beaming this scalar energy just different than electromagnetic energy, and he explains all that in the podcast, and that it’s basically like the energy of healing. It’s what like we’re doing with Reiki or any kind of hands-on work, and he’s found a way to transmit it again in this quantum kind of way by beaming that energy at the photograph, this healing energy, it actually creates healing in the person body and field and all of that, much like the prayer to distant stuff. And there’s actually, people don’t realize, there’s a huge body of research on all these things. Uhm, it’s not just like woo woo stuff like there’s actually science behind it, and I would highly recommend if you’re interested IONS is a great organization, the Institute of Noetic Sciences. They’re a great organization that is doing a ton of really innovative, uhm, really, strongly, scientifically, like rigorously sound studies on PSY phenomenon. Uhm so, Dean Radin, you know, who’s written a number of books, really is at the forefront of that research and they’ve, they’ve got some cool stuff out there, including stuff about like channeling and mediumship and like after death communication like all that stuff as well. And there’s so many like thousands of documented cases of that stuff. So yeah, they’ve done some really interesting studies there.
01:00:05 Bradley	It sounds like it, uhm, you know, I’m just speaking from my personal experience, but if I hear something that sounds kind of out there voodoo type of thing or something like that you, you almost automatically dismiss it because it’s not in the mainstream. And you know, we have to remember that a lot of things weren’t in the mainstream, and it took time for them to become mainstream. So, a lot of these are becoming more mainstream. I remember when you putting the needles into…acupuncture was “Oh my gosh, what are you doing?” and, and now it’s actually more accepted and that’s been around for centuries in other cultures.
01:00:41 Adriana	Thousands, 5000 years. Yeah, and in yoga, right? Like yoga is like the so trendy now but it wasn’t when I was a kid.
01:00:51 Bradley	Right, right?
01:00:51 Adriana	You know, so it’s for hippy dippy people.
01:00:54 Bradley	Right?
01:00:55 Bradley	So, you you’ve discussed a lot of things. You’re keeping busy and like you mentioned a couple times you, you have to keep busy because otherwise you’re going to get bored and the variety of your jobs are, are what keeps you going every day. So, if you had to narrow it down, what do you love most about your job?
01:01:14 Adriana	Empowering people. Empowering people to know, empowering people with these tools and techniques that allow them to change anything in their life that’s not working. Whether it’s a coaching client, a therapy client, whether you’re so effed up, you ended up in rehab, or whether you’re already like really successful and want to just hit the next level. Like the tools are the same, I use the same tools with all my clients, and they all create change, profound change. I think people sometimes don’t realize like they come to me for this like one issue and then here we are five years later like working on like everything in their life, everything in their life has, has changed. We’ve covered so many different areas. It isn’t always like that, but I definitely have long term clients who we’ve worked on every single thing in their life, and their life is completely different in like, really amazing, like magical, miraculous ways. And so empowering people to know they’re not effed up. Empowering them with these tools that can change anything. That, to me, is my greatest joy and it happens across a variety of formats and settings.
01:02:22 Bradley	What are some of your plans, future plans and goals? I know you mentioned that you wanted to have a clinic, or you wanted to have something else out there, but what are some of your future plans?
01:02:32 Adriana	Uhm, I’m working on, uh, developing my own trauma treatment center where we’re gonna do take the best of the best and bring them there. I would love, you know, to be able to travel the world more so it’s kind of put a spotlight on that. I have done that in the past and facilitating classes and workshops. I’d love to do like more retreats like going to beautiful places and creating a healing space where bring in all different modalities. And you know, like good food and just like nature, I mean there’s so much healing in nature, you know more of that. Uhm, love to grow the podcast and get these tools out there in the hands of more professionals. Training, I like training and working with professionals too, right? So that they also know that this stuff is out there and how they can use it with their clients. And just creating more consciousness in, in the world we live, we’re living in some pretty intense times. There’s a lot of crazy stuff, we’re in a revolutionary time. I really think things that are shifting in a massive way on this planet right now and it’s really uncomfortable for people. So, like supporting people through that process. It’s also very traumatic time. So, I think it’s a very apt for the center to come into existence. Uhm, at this, you know, in the in this near future and then the book you know like where? What will the book create and where will that go? So yeah.
01:03:52 Bradley	I have a few other kind of fun questions that I ask most of my guests here. One of them is going to be challenging for you based on talking with you for about an hour here now. First question is what is your favorite term, principle, or theory and why?
01:04:09 Adriana	I think what I said earlier about uhm like from traditional Chinese medicine that the body has the capacity to heal itself. We have the capacity to heal ourselves if we’re just given the right tools. It doesn’t come from an external thing. It doesn’t come from a pill or some other, you know, thing like that can be part of it but it, like it, the healing comes from within, you know that’s what and we have to just uhm…there’s a Rumi quote on one of my website pages. Your task is not to seek for love, but to seek the barriers to remove the barriers you’ve put up to it. You know, like and like another Rumi quote beyond all ideas of right doing and wrongdoing there’s a field, I’ll meet you there. That really speaks to the like judgment being the greatest source of human suffering. I think to me, those principles it’s not like cognitive behavioral therapy or psychodynamic blah blah blah. Like yes, I use all that and I think there’s some great theories out there, but it’s more that, that those nuggets of wisdom that really uhm speak to me the most. That especially the ones that are in an empowerment, you know, field.
01:05:17 Bradley	And speaking of wisdom, I usually ask what is something new that you have learned recently?
01:05:25 Adriana	I think the brainspotting and, and really a lot more about the science like the science of trauma, polyvagal theory like we didn’t really know all that we didn’t under, with taping in the beginning, it was much more about the CHI and the energy flow and now we know like the neurotransmitters are getting affected and this part of the brain’s impact, and we put people brains under MRIs, and we can see you know what’s happening and how these techniques are actually changing the brains function. We’re rewiring grades. I think the science part has been newer as we’ve developed the technology to be able to measure people’s brain waves and different things.
01:06:01 Bradley	You know what I’ve, I’ve learned on, from two different guests, previous guests is (1) the healing therapy of working with horses.
01:06:11 Adriana	Oh yeah.
01:06:12 Bradley	And, and the electrical pulses that radiate from the horse actually help heal us. That’s one interesting thing that I learned. The other one was being able to walk around on the ground without any shoes or socks and, and having that connection and that healing flowing through the earth up into your body that a lot of these things you almost take for granted. Everybody just always wears shoes. Take them off and and walk in the grass. That’s why a lot of people are saying that so, it’s interesting. Is it fair to say…I, I, I enjoyed talking to you…one thing that I’d like our audience to kind of recognize is that here is an example of somebody with a Ph.D. who did a lot of different things to help, help herself and then it shows that you don’t have to go that traditional route of just going that traditional client practice route. You can incorporate all these other things into your clinic or into your, you know, you’re working toward having a center to bring everything in as well. So, I think this is a very good example. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. Are there…is there anything else that you’d like to discuss or bring up in the podcast?
01:07:33 Adriana	No, I just think also, though being willing to go outside the bounds of the traditional model also increases your financial prospects, I make more money than the average therapist. Uhm, partially because I have branched out in the ways that I have, you hit a ceiling. You know with how much you can charge as a therapist and how many hours a week you have to provide individual therapy so creating things like workshops, products, books like there’s all these other venues that have like infinite content coaching where there’s no like the prices are so you know arbitrary, and anybody can set any kind of price that you can sell packages. I mean there’s like so many financial possibilities as well. That go way beyond the traditional, you know, fee for service models. So, to let people know that that’s also available as well that you could, you could make a lot of money at this if you’re willing to explore other avenues.
01:08:33 Bradley	Well, thank you for that summary. I have one final question. When are you going to take a day off?
01:08:42 Adriana	Yeah, I need to work on that. It’s been a few weeks without a day off, so uhm it will be not this coming weekend. ’cause I’m teaching a workshop with the following weekend I will get a day off and I actually just was in Mexico not long ago I did have ten, I was there for a workshop and then I was there for seven extra days and did a little bit of working, but it’s not so bad being on a zoom call with the ocean behind you. You know, in a shorts and a t-shirt, so I didn’t mind working a couple days from there, but yeah, so I am, I am doing that and I’m a work in progress.
01:09:23 Bradley	Alright, well good self-reflection and, and being true to yourself. I’m glad that you’re going to have some time off. I did see you’re doing a lot of workshops in, in October and into November as well and, and part of September. So, you’re obviously keeping busy. Again, I appreciate you taking the time, Adriana, speaking with us. It’s been a thrill for me to learn a little bit more about these techniques and how you’ve applied your PhD ahh into your business today, so I appreciate you taking the time. I wish you well and we’ll keep in touch.
01:09:54 Adriana	Thanks, Brad. It was a real pleasure. Thanks everyone for tuning in.
01:09:58 Bradley	Thank you, bye, bye now.