I am a cis-gender woman living in an urban city in south India. I am savarna and speak English as my first language. I identify as queer. These social locations influence how I have been taught to experience the world, and my commitment to unlearning toxic social conditioning as I navigate the work of mental health care.
I am a Queer Affirmative Feminist-Gestalt-Existential therapist.
I feel strongly about non-pathologizing, non-prescriptive approaches to therapy, and honoring one’s lived experience as a source of true wisdom. I bring my voice into the therapy room based on a multitude of experiences and identities that I live with.
I am constantly impacted and influenced by movements of resistance against systemic oppression throughout the world, and strive to take responsibility for co-creating therapeutic spaces that can hold a personal and collective revolution. In the past, I have worked with families, couples and individuals in distress at a community mental health clinic in San Francisco, and have done collaborative Restorative Justice work with a group of incarcerated men in a California state prison. In my practice in Bengaluru, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I worked with adolescent and adult individuals, couples, students, activists and performance artists in multiple locations across the city. Currently I work with all my clients on online platforms for video based therapy.
My Clinical Orientation:
In a world where we are increasingly coerced into functioning without the space for consent, self-care, dialogue & introspection, Feminist-Existential-Gestalt Therapy helps me support clients in my psychotherapy practice. In therapy, we focus on a growing sense of connection within ourselves, and in relation to the world. The intention of carefully, gently cultivating awareness is to explore and discover options that can allow us to make choices that are true to our authentic being. These awareness practices can be very helpful in beginning a process of healing from acute as well as chronic trauma.
I take a politically feminist stance as I prioritize ‘relationality’ and dialogue as a clinical intervention. I invite a spirit of collaboration with the people who seek therapy. In our work together, we often explore sensory awareness, breathing techniques, art-work, music and poetry.