Alumni Profile: Courtney Mazzola (SOM '09)

Courtney Mazzola is a graduate of the Somatic Psychology program who is finishing her clinical internship while holding down a job as a server in a restaurant. She also volunteers with violent inmates at San Quentin Prison and with the terminally ill at the Zen Hospice. She loves to travel, snowboard, sail, ride horses, and do jiu-jitsu. That may seem like an extremely active life, but it’s even more remarkable when you consider that Mazzola is functionally blind. She sees the world like shadows through frosted glass, and is accompanied by a guide dog on the streets of San Francisco.

Mazzola heard about CIIS when she was studying psychology at California State University, Northridge. As an undergraduate, she also practiced massage therapy, which she became certified in while still in high school.
“I realized that psychology and body work were two ways of getting at the same problems. How much more effective to combine the two!” She heard about the Somatic Psychology program at CIIS from her aunt. “The thing that I’m most grateful for and that I respect about the program at CIIS is that there was so much emphasis on having us deal with our own issues before we tried to help other people. We were not just judgmental people telling others what’s wrong with them and how to fix themselves. For me, therapy is more about assisting people to figure out the right path for them.”
She also credits the Somatics program, and Professor Ian Grand in particular, with teaching her to write. “I had no idea I was interested in it or had a knack for it.” Now she has her own blog: 
http://www.sightlessinthecity.blogspot.com.

While at CIIS she began volunteering at San Quentin, working with maximum security inmates. “No one thought that was what I should be doing, from my family to my colleagues to the prison administration,” she recalls. She had to apply the Americans with Disabilities Act to insist on her right to volunteer there. It paid off. “Even though the inmates and I don’t share all the same experiences, we can relate. We have similar feelings of being the castoffs of society. I see some of their mentalities starting to shift. There’s one guy who was locked up for murder at nineteen. I get such a strong feeling of how he wants to do better, given the chance, and just has no real idea how to do it.” The inmates she currently works with are in a program called The Green Life, where they are preparing for jobs in green technology when they are released.

Mazzola also waits tables at a restaurant in San Francisco called Opaque, where diners eat in total darkness. “All of the servers are blind or visually impaired,” she explains. “I really enjoy working there. When you take the sight element out of dining, people slow down a lot and settle into a more multi-layered experience. They’re not distracted by looking around or checking their email on their Blackberry. And the food is excellent!” She particularly values that the roles are reversed at this restaurant. “My first day was surreal. It was the first time in my life that I was not only on an equal plane with everyone else, but I had the upper hand. It was the first time I could just be myself around sighted people.”

She got involved with jiu-jitsu by accident. She lived around the corner from the academy where she trains, and a friend called her from there and asked her to check it out. “They tried to talk me into taking classes, and I said, ‘Don’t even bother.’ The more I heard about it, though, the more I thought this would be really good for me.” She has earned a blue belt, advancing to the second level. “The workouts are intense. It’s 80 percent guys, and professional fighters train there. Fortunately, I have a great trainer who’s a natural teacher.”

Mazzola’s real passion is travel. She recently returned from a trip to Argentina and Brazil. “I got an amazing getting a sense of how people lived, and of the land.” She managed fine in Argentina, since she speaks some Spanish. “But when we got to Brazil I couldn’t communicate at first.” She shakes her head and laughs: “I felt like Helen Keller.” Despite that, she tried sandboarding when she was there.

She is looking for a professional job where she can practice somatic psychotherapy. “I want to use touch,” she says, “but not every place is open to that.” Mazzola, who has not yet turned thirty, continues to search for an internship that will support such an endeavor. Meanwhile, she is adding another credential to her résumé, the Marriage and Family Therapy license.