“Hydropaths use contact, touch, attention, listening, faith and trust as a part of the healing process. These curative aspects of the healer-patient relationship arouse hope and expectancy of cure and reinforce ties with the social group, minimizing the sense of isolation that so often accompanies sickness.” The Chico Spa story
This website will give you a sense of how I work as a psychotherapist and teacher and introduce you Chico Spa’s elemental healing and water therapies designed to evoke the body’s aliveness and nurture a calm, clear mind.
I have practiced as a naturopathic physician in the Northwest since 1979, specializing in psychotherapy since 1982. In 2000 I fulfilled a dream by creating Chico Spa in a vibrant, tranquil environment of hospitality — my childhood home on Dye’s Inlet of Puget Sound. Sheltered by old growth fir and cedar in view of majestic Mt. Rainier, Chico is a therapeutic day spa where guests have direct experiences of well-being through water therapies, bodywork, time in Nature, food-based cleansing, and by restoring natural rhythms of body and mind through somatic psychotherapy.
Enliven bodymind. Change habits.
I love guiding people to experience life-giving changes in the body. An attended water therapy treatment can transform stress into sensations of calm and vitality in a few hours. My cleanse groups eat fresh, whole foods and follow simple cleansing practices to feel well in four weeks. Participants reliably recover their energy, reduce common symptoms and modify responses to stress. Cindy Pennachi, Healthy Habits participant:
“This class has changed my life. I’m happier; I feel great; and I love eating new foods.”
I offer self-care support groups at Chico for women who want to remove obstacles to making healthful, meaningful changes in their lives. At Harmony Hill Cancer Retreat Center at Union, WA, I regularly facilitate retreats for people with cancer, their companions and caregivers to help them cope with and thrive after the cancer experience. www.harmonyhill.org
Body-Based Therapeutic Approaches
Acute and chronic stress and early developmental trauma can cause changes in the brain and autonomic nervous system that create disturbed physical, emotional, and cognitive health. Innovative body-based approaches toward regulating emotional states and reducing stress, grounded in neurobiological research, offer new possibilities for clients to manage anxiety, depression, physical symptoms, and habituated behaviors.
Within an attuned therapeutic relationship, I use gentle interventions to regulate clients’ intense feelings and guide the autonomic nervous system to restore natural rhythms and expand resilience of the emotional and physiological systems.
I offer trainings for practitioners who want to learn these approaches – body-based attunement and emotional regulation within a therapeutic relationship -- to assist and empower clients to feel balanced and become and express more of who they are.
Professional trainings
For many years I have been teaching at naturopathic colleges and professional conferences about the healing power of the therapeutic relationship. I love teaching subjects that emerge from my “intuitive knowing;” and then are strengthened by book learning, study and consultation with colleagues and mentors, and validated by my clinical experience.
In the current environment of exciting research about the interpersonal nature of brain-body connections and neural regulation, doors have opened to new understandings and applications of body-based transformative processes within the therapeutic encounter.
In 2010 I offer physicians and advanced medical students several training formats.
- Individual consultation in person or by phone
- The Therapeutic Relationship: Connecting, Shifting States, and Effecting Change
Forty-hour training over four weekends in 2010:
March 20-21, May 15-16, July 17-18, and September 18-19
Request an application by emailing cathy@chicospa.com - Introduction to The Therapeutic Relationship training, one-day overview
January 30, 2010, 10 am – 6 pm at Chico Water Cure Spa, Bremerton
The intention of these trainings is to explore neurobiological principles that underlie skillfulness in creating a therapeutic alliance. You learn to apply intuitive, empathic, body-based processes to enhance your patient’s adherence to your treatment regime, foster therapeutic change, and enhance well-being.
My educational and professional background
I earned a doctorate in naturopathic medicine (NCNM, 1976) and hold a degree from the University of Washington where I studied psychology and health-behavior change. In 2008 I completed a two-year training in Somatic Transformation®: An Art and Science of Healing Trauma with Sharon Stanley, PhD, and facilitated Dr. Stanley’s ST trainings for two years.
In the 1980s and 90s as Dean at Bastyr University, and Founding Director and second President of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, I was a leader in the development of the modern naturopathic profession.