You Found Your Way Here for a Reason
Maybe you’ve been carrying something for a long time and you’re ready for it to actually shift.
Maybe you’ve tried other approaches and something still hasn’t moved.
Maybe you just have a quiet sense that there’s more to what you’re feeling than what’s been explained to you so far.
Whatever brought you here, you’re not starting from scratch.
Everything you need to heal is already inside you.
This work simply helps you access it.
A Little About Maureen
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in the Flatbush neighborhood, a place rich with diversity and every kind of human experience. I think that’s where my deep curiosity about people began, and my instinct that every person’s experience and intersecting identities shape them and deserve to be honored. .
I am also a survivor of developmental trauma. My own profound healing is not separate from this work. It is the foundation of my passion for it and where I found my purpose. I know from the inside what it takes to get to the root, and I know what becomes possible when you do. That deep knowing is what drives everything I do in our space together..
I’ve spent 34 years working with trauma. Not just in private practice, but across schools, adolescent treatment programs, group homes, family support agencies, and over two decades in public child welfare in Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego, where I held many direct service and leadership roles. I found creating new community and inter-agency collaborations, approaches and programs to support children and families that were replicated in other states and countries to be deeply meaningful work. I I witnessed the enormously improved outcomes that resulted from the paradigm shift from cycling generations of families through the child welfare system to to honoring and supporting the needs of these families. This significantly reduced the systemic harm to children and their families. But it did not heal any of the underlying generational trauma, much of which is rooted in oppression, that brought them into the child welfare system.
Overseeing several mental health related programs that served the most vulnerable children, I was aware that the services to which they had access, were limited to the talk therapies and psychotropic medication. These interventions only addressed the surface, but never reached what was beneath that needed and deserved healing..
I was awarded the coveted National Association of Counties (NACO) award for developing the Parents in Partnership program, a peer mentorship program that created ripples of change through families and communities across Los Angeles. That ripple impact is what I had always believed healing could do. And ultimately it’s what led me to leave the macro world of systems behind and devote myself fully to private practice, where I could sit with one person at a time and do the work that actually heals at the root.
I received my BA in Psychology, magna cum laude, from San Diego State University in 1992, where I was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa. I completed my Master of Social Work (MSW) from SDSU in 1996, for which I was awarded a CALSWEC stipend.
I’m a long-time student of Buddhism and a member of a weekly sangha with whom I enjoy regular silent meditation retreats. I find deep connection in nature, and especially with the ocean. I am the mother of three adult daughters. I am neurodiverse myself, and I bring that lived understanding into the room with every person with whom I work..
"Everything you need is already inside you. It's my life's purpose to help you access it."
How I See This Work
Most approaches to mental health start by asking what’s wrong with you. Mine starts somewhere different.
The anxiety, the depression, the chronic pain, the patterns that keep showing up no matter how hard you work on them, these are not disorders. They are the brilliance of your brain/body/ nervous system that learned to protect you. Every adaptation your brain/body system created made sense at the time. It was doing exactly what it needed for you to survive your experiences. Your brain / body system is wise.
The problem isn’t that something is broken in you. It’s that those protective adaptations are still running the show, long after the original threat has passed, and you are still re-experiencing them.
We are wounded in relationship, and we heal in relationship. In our work together, we take a very gentle approach to connecting with the wounded parts of ourselves, accessing the neural networks connected to them, and processing the trauma somatically, in the body. When we fully process the trauma, it will not be there to be activated by current events in your life anymore.
Understanding the brilliance of the brain’s capacity to adapt is why I don’t pathologize. I don’t label. I approach your nervous system as something to be understood, honored, and curious about, not fixed. Real healing happens in the deep brain, beneath language and conscious awareness. It holds the key to unlocking the repeating patterns in the nervous system. The brain is a self-organizing system. It knows exactly where to go and what to do, and it will reorganize itself. Everything ascends in the brain to conscious awareness. There, the narrative changes. That’s exactly where this work goes, and it can only happen at the pace your nervous system sets..
How I Work
I draw from an integrative blend of the most cutting-edge neuroscience-based healing modalities, as well as ancient and spiritual, each chosen for its ability to reach the deeper layers of the nervous system where healing actually happens.
Brainspotting (Certified & Consultant)
A powerful brain-body based approach that accesses the deep brain through the visual field. Where you look affects how you feel, and Brainspotting uses that connection to locate and process trauma stored in the subcortical brain, the part that exists below thought and language. Subcortical processing through Brainspotting is up to 10 to 60 times faster than working at the cortical level.
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR)
A powerful brain-body based approach that accesses the deep brain through the visual field. Where you look affects how you feel, and Brainspotting uses that connection to locate and process trauma stored in the subcortical brain, the part that exists below thought and language. Subcortical processing through Brainspotting is up to 10 to 60 times faster than working at the cortical level.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR Certified)
A well-researched approach that helps the brain reprocess distressing memories so they lose their charge and no longer drive present-day responses.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) — Parts Work
A compassionate framework for understanding the different parts of ourselves, including the protective parts that developed in response to pain. IFS helps create an inner relationship built on curiosity rather than self-criticism.
Somatic Embodiment & Regulation
The body holds the memory of every experience we’ve had. Somatic approaches bring attention to what lives in the body, sensations, tension, movement, and use that awareness as a direct pathway into healing. Somatic movements during and after processing support deep healing.
Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB)
A framework that integrates neuroscience, attachment theory, and mindfulness to understand how relationships shape the brain and how healing relationships can reshape it.
HeartMath (Certified)
A science-based approach that works with the heart-brain connection to regulate the nervous system and build resilience from the inside out.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
A structured mindfulness practice that supports the nervous system in moving from reactivity toward presence and regulation.
Flash Technique
A gentle, minimally intrusive approach to processing distressing memories that can be particularly effective for high-activation material.
Reiki Master Teacher
An energy-based healing practice that supports the nervous system in moving from activation into rest. Used as a complement to the deeper processing work.
Shamanic Healing Practices
Ancient healing wisdom that works with the energetic and spiritual dimensions of trauma, honoring the wholeness of the person across body, mind, and spirit.
Certified Medium & Intuitive Healer
An extension of Maureen’s deep attunement to the energetic field, used in service of her clients’ healing when appropriate and invited.
Trainings Attended
I draw from an integrative blend of the most cutting-edge neuroscience-based healing modalities, as well as ancient and spiritual, each chosen for its ability to reach the deeper layers of the nervous system where healing actually happens.
- Brainspotting Phase 1 — Pie Frey
- Brainspotting Phase 2 — Cherie Lindberg
- Brainspotting Phase 3 — David Grand
- Brainspotting Phase 4 — David Grand
- Brainspotting Phase 5 — David Grand
- Brainspotting Master Class — David Grand, PhD
- Brainspotting & Inner Blindspot Work — Connie Johnshoy-Currie
- Brainspotting & Parts Advanced Consultation Group — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Brainspotting and Parts — Cherie Lindberg & Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Posttraumatic Growth: Brainspotting & Parts Roadmap to Liberation — Cherie Lindberg
- Attachment Specialty Training of Brainspotting — Jennifer Delaney
- Brainspotting with Relationships — Jaegil Lee
- Brainspotting with Visual Figures for Relational Healing — Jaegil Lee
- Brainspotting for Children and Adolescents — Monika Baumann
- Dissociative Identity Phenomena (DIP) & Inner Parts Work Advanced BSP Specialty Workshop — Connie Johnshoy-Currie
- Dissociative Identity Phenomena (DIP) Consultation Group
- Dissociative Identity Phenomena and Inner Parts Work — Connie Johnshoy-Currie
- High Acuity Care Brainspotting — Steve Sawyer
- Clearing Limbic Countertransference — Cynthia Schwartzberg & Cherie Lindberg
- From Freeze to Thaw: Unlocking Trauma in the Body — Serene Calkins & Mary Jane O’Rourke
- From Freeze to Thaw: The Next Level — Serene Calkins & Mary Jane O’Rourke
- Shame: The Land Between Living & Dying — Steve Sawyer
- Digging Roots Foundations — Steve Sawyer
- Digging Roots: The Developmental Trauma Model of Brainspotting 1.0 — Steve Sawyer
- Digging Roots: The Developmental Trauma Model of Brainspotting 2.0 — Steve Sawyer
- Intensive Digging Roots Developmental Trauma Model of Brainspotting — Steve Sawyer
- Brain Science to Inform Your Brainspotting Practice — Deb Antinori
- Neurobiology of Trauma and Healing in Psychotherapy — Damir del Monte
- Brainspotting & Ketamine — Mariya Javed-Payne
- The Curious Voyage to Authenticity — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Brainspotting, Spirituality & Intuition
- Brainspotting, Spirituality, and Intuition — Cherie Lindberg & Heather Corbet
- Spirituality & Brainspotting Advanced Consultation Group — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Spirituality & Brainspotting Consultation Groups — Heather Corbet
- Your Soul & Brainspotting (9-month Consultation Group) — Heather Corbet
- Reiki & Brainspotting — Heather Corbet
- NeuroSoulmatic Alchemy — Nancy Tung
- Harmonic Brain Healing — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Harmonic Brain Healing 2.0 — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Brainspotting Embodied Learning Circles — Nancy Tung & Joy Myong
- Consultant-in-Training Program (1 year) — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Brainspotting Intensive — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- How to Do an Intensive — Lisa Larson
- Expansion Brainspotting — Lisa Larson
- Brainspotting Consultant — Cynthia Schwartzberg
- Phases 1–5
- Brainspotting and Parts
- Harmonic Brain Healing
- Brainspotting with Relationships
- Neurosoulmatic Alchemy (3 day)
- Digging Roots 1.0
- Digging Roots 2.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
“I am committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) principles and strive to foster an environment where all individuals are valued, respected, and supported.”
You Don’t Have to Keep Carrying This Alone.
Taking the first step is often the hardest part. A free consultation is low-pressure and completely confidential. Just a conversation between two people to see if working together feels right.