Ashley is a licensed clinical social worker and certified yoga therapist. She specializes in creating personalized therapy programs that treat the mind, body and spirit. Over the past 10 years Ashley has worked with adults, children (k-12), special needs, and celebrities in various settings including hospitals, intermittent services, schools, corporate organizations and hospitality throughout the Chicagoland area.

Using in-depth talk therapy, yoga practices and extensive experience with holistic health, she supports clients experiencing ADHD, anxiety related disorders, depression, PTSD and general life stress. Ashley aims to help people gain insight into the inner workings of their minds and bodies and empower them with skills to facilitate long-term growth to cope with life’s challenges. 

To learn more about what a session with Ashley looks like click here.

My Backstory…

From a very young age I knew I was different. I knew, felt, heard, and saw things that others couldn’t. For years I shut down my abilities and lived emotionally and physically numb. At 16 I started practicing yoga and immediately started noticing a difference in my mind and body. The differences in how certain poses made me feel, the way energy flowed in my body felt strong and very familiar. Within a few years of practice, my perception of the world and me in it shifted. Interests and desires directed me towards a more holistic, meditative and vegetarian lifestyle. My intuition reached a level I did not know was possible. It would be 15 years until I would have the confirmation that I was experiencing a sporadic kundalini awakening. 

Being more sensitive to energy and having a heightened intuition made life more vivid, but also more difficult. Having to learn how to manage my energy while not taking on others’ I decided to start taking classes on energy and spiritual healing such as Reiki, Angel Therapy, Health Kinesiology, Spiritual Response Therapy, among others. 

After undergrad I packed my bags and for two months lived at an ashram in the Bahamas. While there I took my first 200-hr yoga teacher training, yoga for children and yoga for people with learning difficulties. When I returned home, I started attending a Chinese healing arts school and taught a few yoga classes a week. 

Yoga and Chinese medical theory started to overlap. Naturally, I started teaching yoga from a combined perspective. Meridians, acupuncture points, marma points, chakras, the elements of the body; they all intersected providing me with a deeper understanding of human biology beyond the physical. From this framework I knew what each pose and practice was doing not only physically, but energetically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually too.

Within a year I went from teaching group yoga classes to holding private sessions for clients with physical challenges, mental health concerns and people wanting a higher spiritual connection to themselves.

Working 1:1 individually with clients I received positive feedback on how yoga was helping them dramatically reduce chronic pain, heal quicker from their injuries, release negative thought patterns, and gave them an overall increase in happiness because they felt more connected to themselves.

Some clients even started sharing personal stories to the point where I felt like I was becoming a talk therapist. Acting as a witness for my clients, I started to draw connections to how their thoughts were inflicting their bodies and vice versa.

Wanting more experience with talk therapy, I decided to go back to school for a master’s in social work and later a yoga therapy teacher training. Now using both of these modalities I’m able to help clients release what their minds aren’t willing to say and what their bodies are aching to let go of.