Brian Henderson
How I Work
Ecosystems of Change
We often feel like small islands, alone with our pain. And we feel like if we’re not “moving forward” toward certain milestones, we’re broken. But I take the view that life is a series of cycles in which we are offered opportunities to grapple with the same difficulties a little differently. After all, we live nested within big systems: families, communities, societies, and ecosystems.
Each of those systems go through cycles of creation, evolution, and destruction — and so do we. We’ll look at these systems to help us understand which messages or patterns we want to release, which transformations we want to undertake, and feel the grief that is an integral part of loving something and letting it go.
Trauma and the Body
Trauma takes many forms — it can be an accident, a loss, a violent act, a long pattern of mistreatment, a life lived within an oppressive system, or all of the above. It can be what happened to us and it can be what was never given to us. No matter the origin, trauma has the effect of disconnecting us from parts of ourselves and from each other. Very often, what we lose contact with first is our bodies. A vital part of the process of integrating trauma is finding a way home to the body.
We’ll work with a variety of tools — Hakomi, breathwork, and body-centered mindfulness, among others — that help us slowly expand our capacity to listen to what the body already knows.
Relationship and Community
We can’t do this alone. We are meant to heal in community. We’ll make use of our relationship to shed light on the way you see yourself in relation to others. The therapy room is a testing ground for learning to set boundaries, state needs, and nourish yourself.
We’ll also talk about what it is that community means to us. What is our racial and spiritual heritage? What rituals and ways of being from that tradition offers us peace and connection? What have we lost and what might we reclaim? What does the land we live on have to teach us?
Psychedelic Integration
Psychedelic medicine has been used for thousands of years by indigenous communities to guide and enhance the healing process. And while these substances can powerfully illuminate paths we might walk, they can also flood us with sensation, memory, and imagery.
As it becomes more common in the mainstream, psychedelic medicine is also being pitched as a silver bullet which can cure all our pains. With an eye to the emerging neuroscience of psychedelic therapy and keeping important cultural considerations in mind — we in the West are relative newcomers to the deep spiritual work with which indigenous communities have millennia of experience — I work with you to help you make sense of your experiences and find ways to integrate them with other practices.
I credit much of my approach to the wisdom generously offered to me by my community, colleagues and mentors. I owe particular thanks to Frank Ehrenfriend, Carla Detchon, Ron Carmel, Garen Karnikian, Dr. Sherri Taylor, Mel McCrea, Jason Butler, Molly Merson, and Jonathan Moss.
Contact: Brian Henderson
Phone: (415) 498-0069
Email: brianholtonhenderson@gmail.com
Employed by Jonathan Moss, LMFT
Supervised by Jonathan Moss, LMFT #89997