Why Choose The Gaia Center? Trusted Therapy Partner in Nashville
With so many options for therapy in Nashville, it can be hard to choose the right provider for your needs.
At The Gaia Center for Embodied Healing, we offer a unique approach to counseling that helps folks find true, lasting healing and change.
Here are ten reasons why you should choose us to guide you in your therapy journey:
We take a holistic, trauma-informed approach that integrates mind and body.
While traditional talk therapy can be impactful, we’ve seen that with many clients, talk therapy alone just doesn’t cut it. We prioritize going beyond just the “thinking” part of the brain so that you can reconnect with your body as well. Clients have often told us that they’ve “talked about things a million times but still don’t feel better”, and by involving the body in therapy, we can more deeply connect with our struggles and find lasting change.
ALL of our therapists are truly trauma-informed, and whether a client has experienced trauma or not, we look at their world through this lens so as to provide the safest space for healing.
We embrace a definition of trauma that goes beyond the traditional, narrow “single incident” ideology, including more covert or complex forms of trauma.
We have a wide variety of areas of training, expertise, and therapy offerings that meet many therapeutic needs.
Our clinicians work with folks ages 12+ of all genders and specialize in a diverse array of struggles including trauma, eating disorders, body image, sex-related concerns, life transitions, grief, anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidality, emotional dysregulation, relational challenges, gender identity, LGBTQIA+ concerns, neurodivergence (including ADHD + autism), substance use/addiction, and existential concerns.
Several of our therapists have experience working with folks in the music, creative, and entertainment industries, dancers, artists, public figures, and entrepreneurs.
All of our therapists are actively anti-racist, LGBTQIA+ affirming and celebrating, poly/kink affirming, weight inclusive/anti-diet, and sex-positive.
We offer individual, couples, relational (including ENM/poly/non-traditional relationship structures), family, and group therapy.
We emphasize approaches that lead to long term, lasting change vs. just symptom management.
Some of the modalities we offer include EMDR, Brainspotting, sex therapy, somatic therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Radically Open DBT (RO-DBT), Gottman Method, expressive/experiential therapies (music, art, play, psychodrama), sound healing, tarot, Internal Family Systems/parts work, Safe and Sound Protocol, and narrative therapy.
Our therapists employ an approach that isn’t rigid and allows for creativity/flexibility, including often blending elements of different modalities based on each client’s needs vs. simply being beholden to manuals.
Three of our therapists are registered yoga teachers and can incorporate yoga/movement if it is clinically appropriate + desired by the client.
We honor the value of science and research-based approaches to mental health treatment, AND we acknowledge the limitations of research and also call on "practice-based evidence."
While it’s important to be guided by research, we also value newer, innovative modalities that often don’t have quite as much research yet or are challenging to research due to their nature.
We value both evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence because humans aren’t textbooks! In addition, research is often very white, cisgender, and heteronormative centric which leaves out a majority of clients seeking therapy.
We see our clients not just through the western, individualistic lens of traditional psychology, but through a systemic lens that honors interdependence and the impact of not just family, but also society, culture, and politics on their lives.
We believe that therapy is political. We actively engage in social justice practices and always want to look at all of the factors that impact our clients, not just their thoughts and behaviors.
Many of our clients experience varying degrees of marginalization + oppression and we work from a lens that takes these factors into account vs. viewing their struggles in a vacuum.
We believe community + connection are EVERYTHING and always strive to help our clients cultivate and maintain support networks so that they aren’t going it alone. Our own individual healing is important, but we need other humans to help us through this journey of life!
We are culturally-sensitive and know that family relationships look different for each client based on their own experiences. We are committed to supporting clients with their relational goals in the way that best suits both their individual desires and their cultural identity.
We are truly a GROUP practice.
We’re not just a group of therapists who share office space – we truly value teamwork, community, and collaboration. With our varying areas of expertise, we’re able to pull from collective wisdom to support our clients with a wide variety of concerns.
Our team is carefully curated and consists of folks who truly embody and are committed to our values. Our team culture prioritizes wellbeing so that each member feels supported both personally and professionally. We are committed to maintaining a team environment where each therapist genuinely loves their work, which supports not just them individually but their clients as well!
Some of the ways we actively grow as a team to better serve our clients are our monthly team meeting, our monthly optional clinical consultation group, and countless personal and professional development opportunities.
Our pre-licensed + intern therapists engage in weekly supervision where they consult with one of our licensed therapists + their fellow supervisees to best support their clients.
While you may only be seeing one therapist at The Gaia Center, there is a whole community of folks helping your therapist be the best they can be.
We walk the talk and do our own work.
Most of us are in/have been in the client seat taking the deep dive into our own therapeutic journey. In many cases, our clients don’t know this about us, but it’s important! While clinical training is extremely important, there are many things that can’t be learned from a textbook or college course.
We emphasize the necessity of our therapists continuing to do their own personal work so that they can best support their clients without their own stories and experiences getting in the way.
We value the wisdom of lived experience and the power of appropriately used self-disclosure. Our clinicians are always mindful to use self-disclosure sparingly and in a way that truly benefits the client, but we believe that being able to see glimmers of your therapist’s inner world can be extremely helpful. We know therapists are humans first, and we don’t buy into the traditional “blank slate” approach.
We are committed to equitable, accessible mental healthcare.
While we aren’t in-network providers on any insurance panels (more on that here), we have many ways that we work to make therapy financially equitable + accessible including:
Through our graduate internship program, therapy interns who are completing their graduate school training offer pay-what-you-can sessions ranging from $60 to pro bono ($0). Valerie Martin, LCSW and Colleen Werner, LPC-MHSP supervise all interns, including weekly consultation on their clients’ needs/progress.
Each of our post-masters clinicians reserves several reduced-fee therapy spots.
Valerie + Colleen are both members of Project HEAL’s HEALers Circle and donate one pro bono (no cost) therapy spot per year to marginalized individuals struggling to access eating disorder care.
We are able to provide superbills for potential out-of-network reimbursement.
We take a personalized, collaborative, feedback informed approach to therapy.
While our therapists of course lean on clinical wisdom and guidance, ultimately, we know that our clients are the experts on their own lives. We foster an environment where we look at each client as a unique individual and tailor their care to that vs. just looking at symptoms and deciding a particular approach is most appropriate.
We value and encourage direct feedback from our clients both in session and through our optional post-session feedback surveys. We want clients to feel like therapy is something that truly works for them, not that it’s something where their therapist is just “telling them what to do.” We always want our clients to feel like they can be honest, even and especially when things don’t quite land right!
Our office is a welcoming, serene space for healing.
We’ve intentionally curated our office to be a calming, comfortable space, and our clients often tell us how peaceful and aesthetically pleasing they find it!
We have water and plentiful tea options in our waiting room and plenty of blankets and fidgets in our therapy rooms. In addition, each of our rooms has a different nature theme (such as The River and The Forest) that helps provide a sense of grounding.
