Her Story
About Gisele
I have been working in somatic and transpersonal psychotherapy for 25 years, and my work has evolved through several meaningful chapters. For over a decade, I worked in community mental health, providing psychotherapy to families in their homes - people who wouldn't otherwise have access to pay for psychotherapy. These were services delivered by nonprofit organizations to difficult populations living through a lot of trauma, hardships around socioeconomics, and violence in the homes. It was beautiful and transformative work, but it was really hard work, and I stayed in it for a long time. That experience gave me a very solid foundation that I went into teaching with, and then later from teaching, I went into research. For the last 5 years, besides private practice, I have been working at the University of California in San Francisco as the director of psychedelic facilitation, where we work with altered states of consciousness and conduct studies using psilocybin with multiple vulnerable populations - people with depression, chronic pain, anorexia nervosa, and Parkinson's disease. I support them through preparation, dosing sessions, and integration. I also teach about this subject, mentoring at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco in their certificate program that trains people on how to do this work, and I teach for two certificate programs in Brazil as the field is developing there as well. I maintain a small private practice in Oakland where I do long-term, depth-oriented psychotherapy, and when clinically indicated, I engage in ketamine-assisted therapy.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Gisele
01What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I am very disciplined with my spiritual practice, which has a holistic element including meditation and engagement with the body through yoga. I also play music as part of an Afro-Brazilian music group, and we rehearse every week. Sometimes I'm tired at the beginning of the week, but I go, and it's 2 hours of rehearsal, and I come out enlivened by it because it's rhythm, it's soul beat. The rhythm of the drum is like a pulsation of life in itself, and I rejoice and reconnect with my own spirit through the practice of yoga and with music. I used to be more of a dancer, and these days my commitment is actually playing the music and the yoga, but through dance I also have access to that - this is how I deal with my own stress and how I find myself back home. In my work, I am committed to the mission and the expertise rather than selling myself or branding. There's something about selling oneself that's not very attractive to me, so I am more committed to the mission through the expertise and through the work in itself, as an expert.
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