Obi Schlachter (He/Him)

A depression in the landscape of the natural world may look like a dip in the hillside, or a plunge from a cliffs edge, or a soft indent in the soil where water collects. Depression in the human landscape is similar, allowing for the experience of the depression to be made contact with in many ways. Depression than is not a single indefinable experience. If we are willing to be in contact with depression can we invite life to gather in that depression and inform and heal.

When working with addiction I rely on a seasonal understanding informed by stages of change that exist within the addiction cycle. Addiction is a cyclical and born out of a wounding force that feeds and sleeps just like you and me. Addiction will always lead back to the experience of being in relationship. What a person learns and experiences in their human relationships often holds deep mirroring for their behaviors and relationship with themselves.

Anxiety has become an ailment that is often referenced, but rarely captures what a person is experiencing or has experienced. Anxiety can manifest on a somatic level if our daily foundations of health are not supporting our bodies ability to find equilibrium and function. Anxiety can manifest in response to traumatic events, and anxiety can arise if we have not been given agency to be our authentic selves. Every person alive has some anxiety, as anxiety is also the basis for excitement.

Braiding from my experience working within mental health, working and training as a movement coach, and living the hardships of a life-changing injury, I have created a practice and offering to support clients collaboratively. I work with proactively moving the individual and the collective towards a practice that can create change and wholeness. Change and the traversing toward and away from wholeness require an acceptance of the change process and commitment to ones own growth.

I work with clients using mindfulness exercises, somatic narrative, somatic experiencing, breath work, and relationship-focused dialogue to bring balance and acceptance to what is while creating practice and rituals to create change. I practice with an understanding that a client's body and ability to make contact with what their body is communicating to them can have transformational and healing influence on the the rest of the client's experience.

Integration is a process one continuously undertakes to shift and sort the insights gained from an experience or life event and live from a place of healing, learning, insight, and understanding. Integration is a key process of health. I work with clients to assist in integrating past and present events, conflicts, adversities, and states of being. Working from a holistic framework that views each client as a whole being, and not separate from their mind, body, emotions, or soul.