Pathways for Healing, a Cleveland-based learning center created by psychologist Jim Kepner PhD and social worker Carol DeSanto, MSW, trains mental health and health practitioners in Nervous System Energy Work (NSEW), a sophisticated synthesis of Gestalt Therapy, Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing and the work of noted energy healer, Rosalyn Bruyere.  Their ingenious methods lean heavily on the theory of neurologist Robert Scaer, and are particularly good for targeting posttraumatic stress and releasing its debilitating patterns from mind, body and spirit. This is work that’s been described in Invisible Heroes, in the section on imagery-based therapies that work especially well for trauma survivors.

Pathways for Healing offers a variety of introductory courses  and intensive, certificate training programs, drawing people from all around the United States and beyond.  Practitioners at all levels can grow and learn through physical exercises, theory and demonstration, hands-on healing practice and experiential exercises.

Jim and Carol make this otherwise esoteric realm clear, practical, professional and duplicable. If you’re a clinician who’s been discouraged from learning energy work by an excess of “woo-woo” factor, this is the place for you; and likewise, if you’re a hands-on healer who is looking for a structured, grounded system to hang your hat on, this is the place for you.

Jim and Carol have been teaching together since 1985 and make a great team, creating a respectful, supportive, focused learning environment, sprinkled with humor and a vast mutual backlog of clinical wisdom.  Jim is a psychologist in private practice, author of Body Process: A Gestalt Approach to Working with the Body in Therapy and Healing Tasks: Psychotherapy with Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse and teaches on the faculty of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland.  Carol is also psychotherapist in private practice, with special experience in recovery issues, energy healing and working with people challenged by cancer and chronic illness.
 

Grand Ideas from Within is a special guided imagery program for troubled kids at the West Feliciana Middle School in Francisville, Louisiana. The brainchild of 2 inventive, caring educator-social workers, Janice McDermott, M.Ed, LCSW and Joan Stewart LCSW, the program uses weekly