Psychology & Mental Health

Transpersonal psychology explores the full spectrum of human consciousness — spiritual, mystical, and transformative experience included — with empirical rigor, cultural humility, and a commitment to what actually helps people.

Associate Professor Helena Vissing describes a program where students don't just study somatic psychology — they practice it from day one.

Dane Cervine '84 has spent four decades weaving together clinical psychology, contemplative practice, and poetry — a life he traces back to CIIS.

Award winning poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong’s work weaves together personal stories, historical context, and cultural criticism to ultimately create an emotional and impactful exploration of Asian American personhood. Her widely praised book of essays Minor Feelings explores her experiences as an Asian American woman and is an essential text for reframing our understanding of race in America.    

In this episode Cathy and CIIS Chair of Clinical Psychology, Stephanie Chen discuss what it means to be a racialized other, and ways that depth-oriented therapy offers a space for exploring and understanding how these structural dynamics impact individuals and communities. 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 7th, 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

What is creative leadership? It could mean leadership that’s distributed and collaborative, rather than top-down and authoritarian. It could mean leadership that’s flexible enough to continually reinvent its structures and approaches to meet emerging circumstances. It could mean leadership that views diversity and difference as opportunities for learning, growth, and creative synergy rather than as problems to be managed. It could be leadership that actively works toward envisioning and manifesting more positive futures. Ideally, creative leadership is all of these things.  

In this episode CIIS faculty Dr. Alfonso Montuori and Dr. Nick Walker explore how somatic practices can help us to cultivate the psychological capacities associated with effective creative leadership. 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 29th, 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

School-based therapy can be a space for both healing and advocacy. Dr. David Cushman explores why.

Professor Jun Wang shares how CIIS’ East-West Psychology Department teaches students to unite scholarly understanding with embodied practice through Eastern, Western, and indigenous wisdom traditions.

For centuries, Filipino lifeways were presented to outsiders through the distorted lens of colonization—and the oppression, exploitation, and denigration suffered by Filipino ancestors are well-documented. In his work, psychologist and author Carl Lorenz Cervantes draws from Filipino folklore, language, and culture to reorient toward an Indigenous worldview: one that rejects being seen as a passive object in history.  

In this episode Carl and CIIS faculty Niralli D’Costa explore Indigenous Filipino worldviews for embodied well-being. Drawing from his latest book, Sikodiwa, Carl shares how to uplift Indigenized Filipino ways of knowing and offers a timely and inspired path toward collective consciousness, cultural authenticity, and embodied well-being.   

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 2nd, 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Around the world, practitioners are rediscovering what artists, cultural workers, and community healers have long understood: that creativity and human connection are powerful forces for wellbeing.  

In this episode CIIS faculty Dr. Christine Brooks and Dr. Elizabeth Markle discuss how arts-based practices, dynamic community experiences, and connection-centered programming are reshaping the landscape of health. Together they examine emerging innovations such as social prescribing, a model that reimagines healthcare by formally “prescribing” experiences like movement, art, social connection, and service—elevating these everyday resources as legitimate pathways to wellbeing alongside medical care.  

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 25th 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Why do we love who we love? Why do we stay in unfulfilling relationships, and stray from rewarding ones? Is it ever a good idea to open a relationship? And why do some long-time couples crash and burn while others stay madly in love? Evolutionary biologist, author, and Executive Director of the world-renowned Kinsey Institute, Dr. Justin Garcia examines these questions and more in this conversation on modern mating.   

In this episode Dr. Garcia is joined by Dr. Christopher Walling, chair the Research Psychology program at CIIS, for an illuminating conversation on the science of love and sex. They discuss Dr. Garcia’s book The Intimate Animal, and the lifecycle of a romantic relationship, from the thrill of first attraction to the devotion that can last decades. Dr. Garcia reveals that the need for intimacy, even more than sex drive, is key to our species’ survival and flourishing. But therein lies the challenge. We evolved for social monogamy but not for sexual monogamy, yet these impulses are often at odds. Understanding this tension is the key to aligning our romantic choices with our true desires.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 12th 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

What happens when art, therapy, and justice meet in one program? Explore how CIIS is shaping the next generation of expressive arts therapists.

Kimberly Koljat ’11 transformed personal loss into groundbreaking research on grief, embodiment, and connection in an increasingly digital world.

Many of us feel disconnected from our family stories and traditions, which can create a sense of loss of home and belonging. Pacha philosopher and ecopsychologist Lorena Saavedra Smith believes reconciling with our ancestors’ traditions and weaving ourselves back into our history is a therapeutic endeavor that deserves to be embarked upon with respect and authenticity.  

In this episode, Lorena is joined by Susana Bustos, faculty at CIIS’ Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research for a conversation on her book, Awaken Your Roots, which explores belonging through the medicine of nature, cultural connection, and ancestral wisdom. Lorena shares how to access tools to interweave your dreams with your deep roots. With a focus on ancestral wisdom and our relationship with nature, she offers a pathway to move through anxiety to rediscover your inner wisdom.  

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 19th, 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Groundbreaking clinic delivers affordable, clinically supervised psychedelic therapy while training the next generation of practitioners

CIIS professor Willow Pearson Trimbach and co-author Eva Tuschman Leonard explore how dreams reveal emotional truths that transform psychotherapeutic and spiritual practice.

In his latest book, How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories, psychologist Jonathan Lassiter pulls back the curtain on the mental health system and reveals the hurdles that Black psychologists and students are forced to endure in the field.

In this episode, Dr. Lassiter is joined by CIIS Expressive Arts Therapy core faculty Chevon Stewart, for a thought-provoking conversation exploring his experience as a Black gay man working as a psychologist under culturally insensitive supervisors and colleagues in America. They discuss how white ideology has harmed Black patients and how it dominates America’s mental health practices. Drawing from his research, and his own therapy, Dr. Lassiter shares the benefits we can all find when we center culture in our healing practices.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on December 4th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

After a decade in early childhood education and twenty years away from school, Heather Miller found renewed purpose through CIIS' Bachelor of Science in Psychology.

What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

In her critically acclaimed novels and immensely popular works of nonfiction including Eat Pray Love and Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert expands our understanding of creativity, spirituality, and love. This episode features a powerful conversation between Elizabeth and psychotherapist and CIIS professor Emily Marinelli on love, loss, and breaking free.

This episode was recorded at the beautiful Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco on October 24th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In her work, sex therapist and author Dr. Lucie Fielding seeks to move trans sexualities from the margins of gender-affirmative clinical practice to centering pleasure and sparking creativity and empathic attunement within the client-provider relationship. In the latest expanded second edition of her groundbreaking book, Trans Sex, she offers new concepts such as gender-pleasure and solidarity to bring theory to practice and features contributing trans and gender expansive authors working at the intersections of sexuality and gender.

In this episode, CIIS Human Sexuality faculty and Trans Sex contributor Dr. Roger Kuhn has a conversation with Dr. Fielding exploring tools and strategies for trans and gender expansive folks and allies for circumventing limiting understandings of the erotic and opening a potential universe of pleasure that celebrates our polymorphous bodies.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and livestreamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on October 9th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Professor Phil Weglarz leads CIIS' Expressive Arts Therapy program, preparing students to integrate creative modalities into mental health services and community transformation.

Life is perpetually, endlessly filled with change: new jobs and new loves, unfamiliar places and faces. And entwined in that change is loss: loss of what was or is, or what could have been. Amid this shifting landscape, author Ann Tashi Slater has found power in embracing impermanence through the Tibetan Buddhist belief in the intermediate state of bardo.

In this episode, Ann is joined in an illuminating conversation with CIIS Professor in Transformative Inquiry Fernando Ona. Ann shares insights from her latest book, Traveling in Bardo, and examines bardo in relation to marriage, friendships, parents, children, work and creativity along with stories of her Tibetan ancestors and the Buddhist teachings on the fleeting nature of existence.

This episode was recorded during an live online event at California Institute of Integral Studies on September 18th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, CIIS Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Professor Sean Kelly has a deep and fortifying conversation with psychotherapist and author Francis Weller.

Together they explore ways of moving together through the anxieties, difficulties, and sacred transitions of 21st-century life. Featuring insights from Francis’s latest book, In the Absence of the Ordinary, this conversation frames our current era as a rough initiation—an upending experience of profound trauma and transformation that demands us to reorient our ways of thinking, being, and relating.

This episode was recorded during an live online event at California Institute of Integral Studies on September 10th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Senior Lecturer Cosmin Gheorghe shares how CIIS' Bachelor of Science in Psychology helps students connect disciplines and find meaning in a fragmented world.

Parts Work, also known as Internal Family Systems, developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, is a transformative tool that conceives of every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self. Parts Work allows you an all-access pass to wholeness by understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself.

In this episode, CIIS Somatic Psychology Professor Christine Gindi talks with psychotherapist and author Britt Frank about using Parts Work to meet our inner critics, inner children, and inner shadows to help tame anxiety, heal trauma, and overcome self-doubt.

This episode was recorded during an live online event at California Institute of Integral Studies on August 14th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Your roadmap to becoming a licensed clinical psychologist through CIIS' integral, holistic approach to doctoral training and professional practice.

Discover your fit among CIIS' five counseling psychology concentrations, each offering a unique path to becoming a transformative healer.

Why do we assume romantic relationships are more important than friendships? 

In this episode, clinical psychologist Margaret Boucher — Assistant Professor in the Clinical Psychology Psy.D. program —has an illuminating conversation with NPR journalist Rhaina Cohen on the power of platonic partnerships and how the thrill, intimacy, and commitment we seek is often found through meaningful friendship. Sharing insights from her years of original reporting and social science research, Rhaina argues that we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them and diminish friendships by expecting too little of them. At a time when many Americans are spending large stretches of their lives single, widowed, divorced, or feeling the effects of the "loneliness epidemic," Rhaina challenges us to ask what we want from our relationships—not just what we’re supposed to want—and helps us to examine how we define a fulfilling life.

This episode was recorded during an live online event at California Institute of Integral Studies on July 31st, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In Dr. John J. Prendergast’s decades of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher, the area of the body that’s most difficult for people to connect with—given our survival fear and trauma—is our physical and energetic ground. In his work, he finds this area in the lower belly and at the base of the spine remains largely unconscious and deeply defended by most individuals, while most spiritual traditions tend to avoid or undervalue the opening of the ground.

However, with the correct understanding and quality of attention, we can consciously open our multidimensional ground and, as a result, experience a felt-sense of inner safety and stability that supports the full flowering of inner peace, freedom, and loving awareness—a truly embodied spirituality.

In this episode, Dr. Prendergast is joined in a conversation with CIIS core faculty in the graduate department of East-West Psychology Dr. Sara Max Granovetter that dives deep into our personal, archetypal, and universal ground. Sharing insights from his years working in sensing and inquiry practices as well as his latest book, Your Deepest Ground, Dr. Prendergast explains how we can begin to see through the false ground of our early conditioning and limited identity.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on May 29th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

We are living in a world where the depths of division, violence, and destruction can no longer be ignored. Escalated forms of harm require an equally escalated response. Yet social movements often use tactics that tend to escalate an “us vs. them,” “right vs. wrong” worldview not conducive to healing. Activist, trainer, and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice Kazu Haga argues this binary worldview is at the heart of what is destroying both our relationships and our planet. If healing is our goal, we need social movements that center relationships.

In this episode, Kazu is joined by Assistant Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies in the Somatic Psychology program Deanna Jimenez for an inspiring conversation exploring insights from his decades of work in restorative justice and from his latest book Fierce Vulnerability. Kazu invites you to mobilize the power to stop harm by cultivating love to heal it.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 8th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Inside CIIS’ bold approach to community mental health and healing-centered education.

A graduate’s journey integrating Eastern contemplative wisdom with Western depth psychological frameworks.

Dr. Karim Dajani, M.A. '95, Integral Counseling Psychology, joined Clinical Psychology’s annual spring conference to explore the social unconscious in the work of Wilfred Bion.

When a film touches us, makes us laugh, and has that feel-good spirit, we want more of it. We want a sequel! In this episode, psychotherapist and CIIS Assistant Professor in the Integral Counseling Psychology program Emily Marinelli is joined by therapist and activist DDS Dobson-Smith for a conversation exploring the psychology of movie sequels from the 1980s and 1990s.

Sharing personal stories and insights from their latest book Comfort Sequels, Emily dives deep into the psychology behind what makes certain movie sequels memorable, safe, predictable, and comforting. These sequels are more of the universe we love—exploring something new while maintaining something familiar. Emily interprets characters, story arcs, and major themes while sharing fun and random behind-the-scenes facts about sequels including Grease 2, Gremlins 2, My Girl 2, Ghostbusters II, Batman Returns, and more.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on August 21st, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

For over 40 years somatic sex educator Dr. Betty Martin has explored the nuances of consent. In her framework and book, The Wheel of Consent, Dr. Martin traces the fundamental roots of consent back to our childhood conditioning. As children, many are taught that to be “good” we must ignore our body’s discomfort and be compliant. As adults, this conditioning remains with us until we unlearn it. The implications of this approach to consent education extends beyond touch and intimate relationships. When we forget how to notice what we really want, we lose our inner compass. When we continue to go along with things we don’t feel are right, we lose our ability to speak up against injustice.

In this episode, Dr. Martin is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigiqueer soma-cultural sex therapist, sexuality educator, writer, activist, and musician Dr. Roger Kuhn for an empowering conversation on the psychology of consent. Drawing upon her life’s work and The Wheel of Consent, Dr. Martin shares deeply nuanced ways to practice consent as an agreement that brings integrity, responsibility, and empowerment into human interaction—starting with touch and relationships—and further expanding our understanding of consent to social issues of equality and justice.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 30th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Generational silence is a term applied to families who have experienced suppressed thoughts or repressed emotions for at least two generations. Generational silence addresses both the cycle and impact of issues like substance abuse, religion, racism, education inequality, and parenting. In her latest book, Breaking Generational Silence, mental health expert Nicole Russell-Wharton speaks from her Black experience about how slavery left an intergenerational impact on her family and how understanding and healing the root of silence can finally break the cycle for generations to come.

In this episode, Nicole is joined by Assistant Professor of Somatic Psychology Deanna Jimenez for a transformative conversation exploring generational silence and healing from inherited trauma.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on February 13th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

CIIS Professor Emeritus and founding director of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Richard Tarnas returned for his beloved annual lecture exploring the deeper currents of our time.

Barbara Morrill, CIIS Professor Emerita, explores the life of Jewish writer Etty Hillesum, who decried the brutality of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during World War II.

Get access to the online workshop series on intergenerational trauma with Kini Chang, LMFT, Chair of the Community Mental Health program at CIIS

CIIS plans to expand its community health services with the launch of a new psychedelics clinic that will provide patients with ketamine-assisted treatments, the first of its kind to be associated with a university in the United States.

Associate Professor Christopher Walling receives the Gina Ogden Curatorial Scholarship for Integrative Approaches to Sex Research and Therapy from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University

Community Mental Health alumna Nichole Pettway on using her experiences to help others navigate uncharted waters 

A new essay, Heart-Knowing, Somatic Dreaming, and Trans-subjectivity: A Scholarly Personal Narrative, written by Daniel Deslauriers, Ph.D., explores the power of somatic dreams. 

Community Mental Health graduate Dr. Patsy Tito on bringing mental health support to the Samoan and Pacific Islander community

Exploring the 2023 TEDx Talk given by Dr. Elizabeth Markle, Associate Professor of the Community Mental Health Master's Program

New works from CIIS Professor of Clinical Psychology on the Psychological Potency of Dreams

Sasha Bainer, an East-West Psychology student, provides us with insights into their firsthand experience of Auroville.

Sibling Directors on Drama, Therapy, and Drama Therapy

NOTE: This episode features guided participatory rest practices that include moments of silence at the beginning and end of the conversation.

Restoring your body, mind, and spirit amid change is an act of courage, empowerment, and hope. Drawing wisdom from yoga philosophy and her many years of teaching experience, yoga teacher and activist Octavia Raheem offers motivation and guidance to restore ourselves through various forms of change in our lives. Her practice comes to life in her latest book, Pause, Rest, Be, where she provides simple restorative yoga poses and offers short teachings and reflections to see us through times of ending and beginning as well as liminal or transitional space.

In this episode, somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez joins Octavia for a conversation on how slowing down, stillness, and deeper connection to our own transitions empowers us to move through personal and collective shifts with more grace as well as what it means to navigate change with presence and courage.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 13th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

An interview with Drama Therapy alumna Grace Walcott about her documentary, “River of Life LGBTQ+”

Read about CIIS Professor Leslie Davenport's critical work on climate distress and eco-anxiety in the July 10th issue of The New Yorker Magazine

CIIS Professor Jason Butler discusses his new book on the potential, pitfalls, and guidelines for psychedelic medicine and care in treating mental illness.

Alumna Jessica DiVento Dzuban, Global Head of Mental Health for YouTube, talks with CIIS about her mission and her passion to bring the highest quality mental health content to users worldwide, and to keep those users safe and emotionally supported.

There are few subjects in American life that prompt more discussion and controversy than immigration. Drawing on his own experience as an Indian-born teenager growing up in New York City, and on years of reporting around the world, author and journalist Suketu Mehta tackles this issue head-on.

In this conversation with multicultural counseling expert Jyoti Rao, Suketu talks about his latest book This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto and his belief that immigrants bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish.

This episode was recorded during an event on June 8, 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Healthy boundaries. We all know setting healthy boundaries can help us to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships. But what does “setting healthy boundaries” really mean? How can we successfully express our needs without offending others?

In this episode, licensed counselor and relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab is joined in conversation with licensed psychologist Elizabeth Markle. They discuss Nedra’s book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace in which she shares techniques to identify and express our needs clearly and without apology while unravelling the root problems behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 31, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

The divides we experience within us and between us are not only a threat to our physical and emotional health—they are also the weapons and the outcomes of structural oppression. Meditation teacher and author Kate Johnson believes that through wise relationships it is possible to transform the barriers created by societal injustice.

In this episode, licensed psychologist and CIIS faculty Elizabeth Markle has a conversation with Kate about her latest book, Radical Friendship, in which she illuminates seven strategies to help us embody our deepest values in our relationships and how to show up for each other’s liberation.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on September 15th, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Welcome, Britton Williams!

We live in a world where entitlement, incivility, and narcissism are incentivized. How do we learn to negotiate a world that often gaslights us and empowers the loudest and most toxic voices?

In this episode, CIIS Community Mental Health professor and psychologist Elizabeth Markle has a conversation with psychologist and narcissism expert Dr. Ramani Durvasula exploring the new normal of narcissism and incivility and how to stay sane in a narcissistic world.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 2, 2020. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Listen and watch as students and alumni talk about their experiences in the Drama Therapy program at CIIS

CIIS President Brock Blomberg addresses the situation of the war in Ukraine, and offers support for the community.

The powerful new volume was edited by East-West Psychology Professor, Debashish Banerji and Professor Emeritus, Robert McDermott.

Renowned certified Gottman therapist and author Elizabeth Earnshaw offers a culturally tuned-in, LGBTQIA+ friendly approach, and an accessible guide to healing relationships and creating enduring intimacy for unmarried and married couples in her work and writing.

In her latest book, I Want This to Work, Elizabeth shares her expertise and presents for today’s generation the most effective and proven steps for relationship success. In this episode, CIIS professor and licensed psychologist Margaret Boucher joins Elizabeth for a conversation about how to navigate difficult relationship issues to create stronger and more resilient partnerships.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on December 9th, 2021. Access the transcript below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Counseling astrologer, writer, and CIIS alumna, Chani Nicholas talks about the path that lead her to CIIS and her social justice approach to astrology

CIIS students participate in collaborative research into school-based psychotherapy programs

Elizabeth Markle is a clinical psychologist turned radical community health innovator who brings decades of intentional community experience to her re-visioning of healthcare.

In this episode, health coach Susanna Merlo talks with Dr. Markle about her journey launching her community and “behavioral pharmacy”, Open Source Wellness, and her vision for the transformation of our nation’s clinical and social systems.

This episode was recorded during an event on February 27, 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Celebrating the Achievement and Contributions of African Americans to the Mental Health Field

 Consider Play, Improvisation, or Learning Something Entirely New

The newest faculty member of the Community Mental Health program comes with a background in radical health activism

A conversation with faculty Dr. Rene Dumetz of the School of Professional Psychology and Health

A beloved counseling center on Church Street gets an important upgrade.

How Intense Emotion Can Fuel Transformation

Alumna Dr. Shefali Tsabary shares how CIIS' Drama Therapy program sent her on a journey of self-awareness and introspection

Fernando Castrillón, M.A., Psy.D., core faculty in the Community Mental Health program, explores the origins of a recently published article series

Five CIIS Authors Contribute to the New Issue of the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

CIIS hosted a two-day workshop on Suicide Intervention Skills with aim of creating suicide safer communities in the Bay Area

An Integral Counseling Psychology alum and Bay Area transplant helps promote social justice as a therapist in a Kansas prison

Helping LGBTQ individuals and couples find culturally-competent and experienced therapists 

Integral Counseling Psychology alumna Karen Martin and her daughter Amanda both grew as students at CIIS, but their experiences reflect different facets of the Institute

New Book Explores Roles and Methodologies of Therapeutic Theatre

 Universities.com ranks CIIS high on list of top ten schools nationwide

Counseling Psychology students connect with 60+ agencies at the annual Practicum Fair

Stage Ai's Summer Blossom festival brought CIIS values to life in China through arts, healing, and cross-cultural connection.

Ian's utter unconventionality opens the door to creativity by its very presence

An interview with a Somatic Psychology graduate Chris Restivo

Somatic Psychology student Adrian Orozco Blair works at the Living Arts Counseling Center. He is now completing 1 semester of post practicum at this same site.

Warrior-Healers Rise

The American Psychological Association Honors CIIS' Chair of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology

Spotlighting on the 6 degree programs in CIIS' School of Professional Psychology and Health

For more than 30 years, CIIS' 6 Psychotherapy Counseling Centers have been providing low-fee services to the Bay Area

A visual, nonlinear timeline of nine critical psychological frameworks at CIIS

Holistic psychology, to us, is not only spiritual but also scientific. 

In the Bay Area, our need for increased and better quality mental health services is urgent

Expressive Arts Therapy alum Suraya Keating directed a production of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" starring male inmates at San Quentin State Prison

A newly-formed online degree with three focus areas that Hartelius proposed and built

Integral Counseling Psychology Alum Travis Mathews awarded $75K Filmmaking Grant

The Journal of Holistic Psychology and CIIS seeks to further enrich and extend integral-holistic perspectives in psychology through theme-based volumes.

The Integral Counseling Center at Church Street is now offering therapy in Arabic, Catalan, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, and Tagalog.

A social and emotional art-based research study will be supported

About his new book, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication

Theatre for Change pieces grow out of improvisation, methods of drama therapy, self-revelatory performance, educational theatre, and Theatre of the Oppressed

Experts from multiple backgrounds in the Symposium explored solutions to the rising tide of violence facing our country.

Alum Karin von Daler co-developed the Dialectical Behavior Therapy oriented method for working with people struggling with intense emotional dysregulation

While the term “existential” conjures up questions like “why am I here?” and issues about meaninglessness, death, and our limited lifespan, existential therapy is about much more

Drama Therapy student, Angelica Medina appeared in and helped write the collaborative theater production