Jonalyn Blaha
Associate Director of Clinical Training
Clinical Psychology
Counseling Psychology
School of Professional Psychology and Health
Email: jblaha@ciis.edu
Research Interests
My research interests focus on psychoanalytic and depth psychological approaches to understanding the psyche, with particular attention to embodiment, unconscious process, and symbolic experience. I am interested in how psychic material is organized and expressed through the body, and how altered states of consciousness—including psychedelic and transpersonal experiences—can support integration and transformation. My work also examines the intersections of relational psychodynamics, trauma, and somatic experience, with an emphasis on bridging psychoanalytic theory with contemporary approaches to consciousness and healing.
Biography
Dr. Jonalyn Blaha, PsyD, is Associate Director of Clinical Training in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program at California Institute of Integral Studies. Her work bridges psychoanalysis, somatic psychology, and consciousness studies, with a focus on how psychological experience is organized and expressed through the body.
Dr. Blaha has been teaching at the graduate level since 2018, with coursework spanning psychopharmacology, psychopathology and assessment, cognitive-affective foundations of behavior, and psychotherapy theory. Her teaching emphasizes the integration of clinical rigor with embodied and experiential forms of learning.
Her research and scholarship explore the intersections of psychedelics, movement, and embodied experience, particularly in relation to trauma, symbolic process, and transformation. She has presented this work at conferences in the United States and internationally.
Dr. Blaha is also a recognized institutional leader in professional licensure and regulatory alignment, working at both the master’s and doctoral levels to translate complex licensing frameworks into training structures, policy, and student guidance.
Education
Doctorate in Clinical Psychology
Publications
Blaha, J. R. (2017). Riding the Bliss Wave: A Thematic Analysis of Intuitive Entheogen Dance Experiences in Women. Doctoral dissertation, California Institute of Integral Studies.