Barbara Andrea Vielma, MA

Whole Body Health is the practical assessment, understanding, and recognition that the mind, body, and spirit work in unison to promote a sense of overall health and wellbeing. As a whole-body health practitioner, intake sessions gather information on all aspects of clients’ physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing. Therapeutic and skill-building assignments may engage any or all of these dimensions to provide the quickest, most comprehensive form of relief.

Eastern Philosophies: A thorough understanding of certain eastern philosophies allow for various ways that we can understand the makings and limitations of the mind. With some philosophies dating back as early as 2,000 BC, integration of these old-world viewpoints can help expand our own awareness when we start to feel it limited by the particular viewpoints of our own time and culture.

Existential Concepts: As a scholar of Existentialism, I am profoundly moved by the plight of the human experience. The quandary of free will and the great desire to find meaning amidst a life of seemingly chaotic forces are themes that often arise during the depths of great despair. A thorough understanding of existential doubt has proven fruitful in helping clients meet these times with courage, wisdom, and even a little bit of laughter.

Positive Psychology: Positive psychology expands beyond the original ‘defect’ model of psychotherapy. It asserts that everyone has access to certain strengths that when consciously cultivated, lead to greater success, satisfaction, and personal happiness.

Solution Focused Therapy is a specific short-term therapy technique that shifts the focus away from what is ‘wrong’ with the client and instead, focuses the attention on what is working or has worked before. In this brief, strength-based technique, clients receive directive coaching, clarification, and encouragement to re-discover and implement the assets already at their fingertips. 

Narrative Therapy: Narrative therapy is based on the premise that we are all the authors of our own story. Most simply stated, when our story becomes troublesome or overwhelming, we could work to consciously re-create the plot of our own book. This therapeutic technique works best with those seeking to rediscover their own personal power and responsibility in writing the story line of their lives.

Gestalt Therapy seeks to promote awareness and authenticity. It strives to help clients get in touch with the true reality of their experiences so that in this, they can finally seek to find resolve. Gestalt therapy is highly experiential and expands beyond traditional ‘talk therapy’. Rather than talk about an experience, a gestalt technique might include acting out that experience as if it were occurring in the present time. Activities like these are best tailored to persons who are emotionally blocked, inhibited, or disconnected from their feelings.   

Cognitive Therapies: Cognitive, Cognitive-Behavioral, and Rational-Emotional Behavioral Therapy have enjoyed a long-standing success in the treatment of many. These theories reveal how the largely changeable mind can be adapted to see things in a new light. Through uncovering problematic thought patterns and the conscious shifting of perspectives to create the way for new less problematic thoughts, these therapies work to re-program brain patterns at the most basic cognitive level.

Art Therapy: Art therapy has a few major functions. First, the simple act of creating art is therapeutic in and of itself. Secondly, art therapists with my particular background and training, can use art as a tool to increase insight and help clients communicate things of which they may not have the words to express. As a psychoanalytically trained art therapist, I may employ certain simple diagnostic art assessments that help reveal to me and to the client, various mental or emotional influences impacting the clients life. Thirdly, Art Therapy supplies the client with a tangible record of therapeutic progress. As sessions progress, a client can see though these activities, the visual representation of their growth and development. 

Spiritual Techniques: Many eastern thinkers posit that most of life’s difficulties come from a disconnection with the spirit. A non-denominational approach to spiritual-based therapy helps clients to re-discover a world beyond the material.  It is not necessarily about God or Religion, as much as it is a process of re-discovering a wellspring of universal understanding and the limitless power of potential.