Dr. Nicole LePera

For a very long time, psychology traditionally has focused solely on the mind, so much so that most traditional clinical psychology programs, one of which I went to, though mine was a little bit more expanded than the CBT model.

This idea that our brain is so powerful, which it is to some extent, that if we think differently, the model is built on we think different thoughts, we produce different feelings, and then ultimately different actions.

And again, while I learned that model, I also learned a relational model.

I dabbled a bit in psychoanalysis.

But again, all very mind-based modalities.

I started my practice.

I thought I was being very integrated by bridging all of these, by teaching a little bit of mindfulness here and there, because I really wanted to help people change.

Yet I wasn't yet talking about the body because it was never taught to me in school.

I was not, I did not have any awareness of this new research that was coming to the field about the nervous system and how much our body is playing a role in even producing nervousness.

our thoughts.

I met all of that from that very disempowered place, as I shared with you, where I was like, I'm not really helping people and I don't really feel great myself.

What's going on here?

And being a lifelong learner, as my dad always teases me to be, I went online.

I was like, let me start to research and read and explore what I'm missing.

And

I was missing the body.

So holistic psychology is kind of what I've adapted as the model of, I think, the way we need to shift the field into, which doesn't just overemphasize the mind.

It understands the body, our nervous system, again, our earliest environments and how that actually neurobiologically created patterns wired into us, all of which are changeable.

Science now shows that it blows my mind that there was a time in the field where we thought once our brain was developed, that that was it.

that there was no changing.