Trauma and Grief Recovery Therapist, Vicki Van Winkle, MFA, MFT has enjoyed working as a psychotherapist for since 1996. She specializes in helping people to heal from confusion and pain generated from the trauma and losses one can encounter in life. Her focus is on helping people in the midst of or after such crises find new tools in their relationship with themselves. With a strong and understanding self relationship one can face the challenges and solve the problems of living. In a poor self relationship we add the burden of self judgement, self denial, self hatred and self condemnation on top of whatever other problems life has given. In working with Vicki you can find help, skills resilience and understanding, internally and externally. When we work together we will build skills and resources through actual psychoeducational teaching, and help you connect with your innate capability and capacity to make more use of those inner resources, through assessing and reducing the obstacles to learning new patterns with EMDR. People are naturally resilient and adaptable, able to learn, develop and grown new inner strengths at each changing season of life. In therapy with Vicki you will learn to use integrated methods which focus on empowering you to grow inner strength as you walk through life.
In 1981 Vicki began her journey of finding ways to share what she was learning through her persistent studies of Consciousness and Humanity. Through a multifaceted and multilayered lifelong journey of leaning and teaching many subject matters she has developed a storehouse of inner and outer research in helping people to heal. Later she came to California from Pennsylvania for graduate school, but also to continue leaning about her interests in healing, training in stress reduction and trauma recovery, qi gong, yoga, meditation and art.
Vicki is grateful for the many years of intensive guidance and training in meditation, inner work and Jungian dreamwork and Sufi teachings from Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee. It was at these meetings of the “Silent Sufis’ that Vicki first encountered the trainings of deep peace of transcendent meditation, and how to take on deeper levels of personal integrity authenticity, ethics and responsibility.
The Sufis, being great teachers of personal integrity, responsibility and freedom, never restricted in any way the ongoing exploration of meditation and consciousness they inspired. Since 2005 Vicki has continued consciousness studies through training with, sitting in satsang with and visiting those who would be able to reveal the meanings and discourse about Vedic Slokas and Sutras, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Being very fortunate when seeking to learn advanced methods of Yoga, such as Kriya Yoga, she Himalayan Yoga Master Yogiraj Siddhanath. From Siddhanath she received extensive training in Hamsa Yoga, Surya Yoga and Kriya Yoga Meditation in the US as well as in India. In 2007 Siddhanath authorized Vicki to teach healing meditation practices. Vicki has extensively visited and studied with other lineages of healing, especially meditation. Some of these great influences on her work acquired from visiting and studying the work of Swami Vivekananda, Swami Nityananda, Swami Muktananda, Swami Vidyashananda and Swami Chidvilasanda, and Swami Paramahamsa Nithyananda in Yoga Philosophy (Gnana Yoga), Breathing (Pranayama) and Meditation Techniques (Raja Yoga). Vicki finally found satisfaction and contentment among the many Upanishads and Vedas where so many of the deepest tap roots of human philosophy, psychology, literature, arts, meditation, medicine , and spirituality were found. At the time of this writing she considers her Guru to be Sanskrit from the Ancient of Days, which is still existing to aid humanity today.
Resume of Professional Qualifications
Vicki is trained and licensed as a psychotherapist by the State of California. In the early 1990’s she was trained as a therapist at Willow Creek Treatment Center, Novato Youth Center and in the private practice of Landry Wildwind, LCSW, one of the earliest and most creative therapists teaching EMDR at that time. (Eye Movement De-sensitization and Reprocessing). These and other short internships in Marin and Sonoma County were completed after graduating from John F. Kennedy University (MA, Clinical Psychology) in 1994.
Prior to becoming interested in being a therapist Vicki had been exploring consciousness through art. As a teen, she graduated from York Vocational Technical School from a Commercial Art Program and went on to study commercial art at Antonelli Institute of Art, before completing her BFA at Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1987. Vicki completed her MFA at Calfornia College of Art, graduating with High Distinction in 1989. Art is still a big part of Vicki’s personal life. Due to the deeply personal nature of her artwork and the highly commercialized environment of successful Fine Arts venues, a decision was made to keep art personal and authentic, and pursue instead a career in psychotherapy and trauma recovery work. The Bay Area proved to be an excellent training ground where after the completion of graduate training, she went on to complete training in hypnotherapy, meditation, EMDR, Adult Attentional, Anxiety, Trauma and Dissociative Disorders.
Later in life, after many years of practice, Vicki sustained a huge crisis when in one year a sheer multitude of stressors occurred near the same time, in her personal life. It was a collision of a mid life crisis, where many losses were sustained at one time. In addition to employing all of her known skills for personal survival, she, at this time she turned to an emerging Grief Tending movement for support. This turned out to be life changing when in 2020 when the pandemic struck us with a world full of loss, trauma and grief. She began form a team and offer grief tending sessions online, to the community struggling with so many losses. Learning to grieve with community has added layers of relief and joy, brightness, depth and aliveness back into life. This work is always available in addition to the regular counseling work, just ask! Grief tending sessions generally run in a cycle of monthly sessions from Fall to Spring each year, with some all day and weekend retreats in the late spring and early summer. Please use the link below to sign up to be invited to our future events :
https://mailchi.mp/10543c700b3a/grief-tending-s
“I have greatly learned and grown through serving the community with my psychotherapy practice over the years! It has been one of my greatest joys to continue to be her in, with, and for the community over the decades when troubles arise with relationships, family life, occupational issues, with health, trauma, loss and grief, or with the deep internal journey itself. I am glad to be there for you, so that you do not have to be always alone with yourself in the deepest darkest places that scare you! I often begin a session with asking you to bring in what it is you do not want to continue to be alone with.
Thank you again, for recognizing my work, for coming in, for sending your loved ones and for being who you are! “
~ Vicki Van Winkle