I'm Amanda, and I know what it's like to suffer from chronic symptoms.
I spent more than a decade dealing with health conditions. In my 20s, I fought debilitating IBS and was later incapacitated by adult-onset asthma, a supposed lifelong condition with no cure.
In my early 30s, I suffered from excruciating feminine pain, insurmountable fatigue, and trauma symptoms that disrupted my life.
Today, I'm 42, and I have been free from all of those symptoms for years. Not because of medical treatment or expensive wellness protocols. But because I learned that changes in my brain and nervous system were at the origin of my symptoms.
When I began my healing journey, the mainstream medical community was still doing everything it could to disregard the science that mapped psychological distress to physical symptoms and health conditions. Now, the medical community has a label for symptoms known to arise from changes in the brain and nervous system: neuroplastic conditions.
Today, I am a Clinical Mind-Body Therapy Practitioner specializing in supporting persons with trauma and neuroplastic conditions. I help people who were previously discouraged in years of unsuccessful treatment finally find liberation from symptoms.
I know what it's like to suffer, and I am committed to helping you create new chapters of your life in which your symptoms do not define you.
Helping people who've been discouraged
in years of unsuccessful treatment finally find liberation
from trauma and neuroplastic health conditions.
All I want is to create new chapters of my life,
where my symptoms do not control me ...
All I want to is be free.
“I never would have thought that transforming my perceptions and processing hidden emotions would be the thing that healed me. But now I know. I had struggled with severe digestive dysfunction for 30 years. From Western med to Chinese Medicine to intense herbal protocols and strict nutritional routines, my symptoms did not budge. After consistent sessions with Amanda, I have been able to maintain medically healthy standards for digestion for the past 6 months straight. I no longer need to focus on trying to heal. Instead, I can focus on enjoying my life. I have never felt this good - both mentally and physically.”
-Jackie in Oregon
Say goodbye to the wellness industrial complex...
As you strive to put more space between your symptoms, you may find that what heals you is not something you extract from the world, but perceptions you shift in your mind.
Meanwhile, the wellness industrial complex is working hard to occupy your consciousness, moving you through sales funnels, and dissociating you from the fact that your healing journey is really a pilgrimage towards psychic sovereignty.
Healing, a sacred metamorphosis from one version of yourself into another, has been commodified into a near $7 trillion dollar wellness industry – whose practitioners, protocols, and nutrients are only accessible to a privileged class.
And yet, the consumers who feed these wellness empires are none the healthier. I know, because I meet with people striving to heal every week, and I listen to their stories of spending tens of thousands of dollars, and literal decades, tracking and treating mind-body conditions for which they still haven’t found the panacea.
You’ve probably lived this experience yourself. Chronic conditions persist, symptoms flare out of seemingly nowhere, years of lab tests, herbal protocols that rule your life, specialized diets, nervous system regulation, and body work have not freed you. Your practitioners are experts at revealing another unexplored corner of the labyrinth called your “health picture,” but you’re losing faith.
Let’s not dismiss the value of the education and skills you’ve learned while striving for wellness. There is power in knowledge. And yet, knowledge can also distract you from the deeper, illogical terrain of your inner world, where the origins of symptoms often hide – this is the shadow side of information, where more data obscures the doorway between your self who’s battling symptoms and your self who’s finally come home from the war.
Beneath your thinking mind, reside perceptions that govern the way you feel about yourself in relationship to the world. These perceptions are always playing in the background of your life, but they usually go unnoticed by your conscious mind. That’s why these perceptions are called, “un-conscious” or “subconscious.”
These perceptions give instructions to your brain and body, informing them to respond chemically and physiologically to what you perceive.
Chronic perceptions of threat, dread, and self-minimization are often found at the origins of persistent mind-body symptoms.
These perceptions persist despite medical treatment, holistic modalities, or specialized diets, and so too, do neuroplastic symptoms.
In fact, placing such interventions over symptoms without addressing the perceptions that trigger them is like sticking a band-aid over a wound that needs stitches. This is usually what’s happening when people have “tried all the approaches – from conventional to alternative medicine, but nothing is working.”
I know what that’s like, and I want to help every person I can break free from that losing battle.
“I’d been in talk therapy and traditional psychotherapy for 28 years, and it just hadn't helped. With Amanda, I've been able to calm panic attacks and release trauma from my body. It has been life-changing. Like I was living in a dark forest of perpetual night and the sun is just rising for the first time."
-Alex in Oregon
How I support your breakthrough...
In our sessions, we track your symptoms to identify core, unconscious perceptions that are impacting your brain and nervous system.
We take a look at how perceptions of threat, dread, and self-minimization are playing a role in your experience of symptoms.
We work with research-based, clinically effective approaches for remapping neural pathways so you can experience more agency, resilience, and freedom in your life.
Through holistic psychology, somatic awareness, lifestyle changes, and advanced trauma support, you will focus on putting more and more space between your symptoms.
You will become equipped with an understanding of how your perceptions impact the function of your brain and body, and what you can do to sustain freedom from symptoms.
My support is not a substitute for medical care and I do not diagnose or treat any illness. My support can be utilized alongside conventional medicine or other wellness protocols, although many clients find that they achieve medically healthy standards and are thereby less dependent on interventions after our work together.
"I began working with Amanda after being laid off from my job in the tech industry. I had been living with the constant pressure of perfectionism, adversarial work environments, and autoimmunity.
Working with Amanda, I immediately noticed some of my oldest patterns of imbalance unwind and healthier patterns emerge. Small, consistent strides resulted in significant shifts in my life. I learned how to use my body as a guide for decision making. I began saying NO … and setting boundaries to respect my needs. I started feeling into my decisions to see what felt right for me.
The other day, I felt joy inside of my body, like actually FELT it for the first time in years. It's strange and sad to realize it's been years since I felt that, but I’m just grateful to be able to feel it again, and it's in no small way because of my work with Amanda.”
-Laura in Utah
About Amanda
I'm a Clinical Mind-Body Therapy Practitioner specializing in supporting persons with trauma and neuroplastic symptoms. I help people who were previously discouraged in decades of unsuccessful treatment finally find liberation from chronic symptoms.
I began mapping the link between mind and body health seventeen years ago, while working in Chicago's mainstream healthcare system. As a Patient Care Specialist, I helped dialysis clinics implement depression management services to serve patients with complex and chronic illnesses. The clinics with which I worked reported reduced hospitalizations and overall improvements in patient outcomes - providing quantifiable evidence of the link between mental and physical health. I later worked as an Ambassador Constituent Team Lead advocate for the Cancer Action Network, a role that led me to meet with legislators in Washington D.C., where I had hoped to influence improvements in health care policy. In 2013, I became disillusioned by cultural norms that prioritized profit over impact, and so I accepted a nomination to serve in the Peace Corps in South Africa.
While working abroad, I met David Patient, who in 1983, became one of the first people in the world to be diagnosed with AIDS. Doctors told him he'd be dead in 6 months, and there were no medical treatments available to save him. But David pioneered his own health plans and lived another 34 years - an outcome that baffled medical experts around the world. He became an award winning United Nations consultant, an adviser to NIH and CDC who were trying to better understand HIV/AIDS, and he co-authored the book, The Healer Inside You, Using Mind Body Science to Help Heal Your Body. David was my mentor from 2013-2017. During this time, I also trained with his colleague and co-author, who is a research psychologist specializing in psycho-neuro-immunology.
After returning to the United States, I entered what would become a 10-year private mentorship with Thotme, a body-centered therapy practitioner (The Hakomi Method). During this time, I underwent a period of deep personal healing from my own trauma and mind-body health conditions. After healing, I continued to learn from and observe my mentors, and recognized that I, too, had a gift for guiding people through the sacred journey from sickness and trauma into liberation.
I have learned from some of the world's leading psych and trauma experts in Dr. Bessel van der Kolk's Traumatic Stress Studies Certificate program, through the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, in courses with Dr. Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy) and Dr. Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing). I also continue education through the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Conditions.
During my travels, I have lived and learned with families who grew up under political apartheid in South Africa and in the Middle East. They taught me truths about trauma and healing that cannot be learned in a class, but only witnessed in real life - realities about our human capacity for healing, adaptability, and perseverance.
From 2016-2020, I led a media project in which I interviewed military veterans about the psychological aftermath of service to promote healing and understanding about the human aspect of war. Many of those interviewed were combat vets who had served in the Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq conflicts, who opened up about experiences they had never spoken with anyone about since being discharged. Most reported feeling tremendous psychological relief from their participation in the project.
In my childhood, I endured multiple adverse events as the daughter of a teen mom. Overcoming trauma and stress-related chronic illness has been a survival necessity for me, which led to my now 17 years of professional experience and studies in mind-body science, advanced trauma support, and neuroplastic health conditions.
Today, I support people who previously struggled for decades in unsuccessful treatment to find liberation symptoms (you can read their testimonials here). It is an honor to help people create new chapters of their life in which their symptoms do not define them.
Today, I live in Guatemala, where I serve on the board of directors of an educational NGO. I also host private and group retreats on Lake Atitlán while meeting remotely to serve private clients from around
the world.
