About...

Stepping away from the industry to focus on healing.

Like many people with a vocation for healing -and the privilege of having access to higher education- I believed that western medicine was the path for me. So, I went to Medical School. This was in 2001 in Santiago, Chile. 

Completing medical school, it started to dawn on me: how little healing actually happened in medicine. I was becoming a "doctor" at the time in history when our ability to revert and control disease processes was at its most technologically developed, why did this feel so removed from the actual need of those seeking care? 

After completing my specialization in Internal Medicine at a Columbia University associated hospital in New York City, I discovered in Palliative Care a sub-specialty within medicine that didn't address the patient like a set of malfunctioning organs, or a disease process, but rather as a full individual with biological, psychosocial, and spiritual dimensions. This was my career for over 12 years. However, framed within our revenue-oriented medical industry, even the work of palliative care becomes symptom-placation reductionist, drug-centered, and like all patient-clinician interactions: rushed for time. 

Medical research* has proven that early trauma exposure (regardless of the size of the trauma) is an undeniable factor behind the development of not only mental health issues, but also the chronic illnesses that make up the bulk of our healthcare challenges and expenditure. Yet, modern medicine has very little interest in trauma.

​Working as a specialist physician for the past years has further galvanized me in believing that we CAN heal. Trauma will never disappear, but the misalignment that trauma throws our internal systems into can be repaired; so that the hurt can finally have a soft place to land, and life can become less painful, while at the same time more enjoyable and fulfilling. 

To better understand the role and hopeful in the malleability of trauma, I have completed training in forms of psychotherapy that target the tender injuries of trauma, and the imbalances left by it in the mind and body. I have completed multiple trainings in Internal Family Systems Therapy, Grief and Transitions, Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy and Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy. I have launched a remote private practice where I hold 60 minutes sessions with each client, and I also perform home visits for patients in need for deeper medicine work (I use Ketamine). I am a licensed prescriber in New York State. I feel confident in my ability to help individuals both holding the biomedical and the psychospiritual pieces of their suffering.