In a world where we often find ourselves entangled in the complexities of dysfunctional systems—whether they be familial, societal, or institutional—it’s easy to lose touch with our inherent ability to heal, grow, and live authentically. Natasha Morisawa, a skilled Marriage and Family Therapist, specializes in helping individuals and families navigate these challenging dynamics. With a focus on treating individual and inter-generational trauma, Natasha employs mindfulness and somatic techniques to guide her clients on a journey of self-discovery and healing. Her collaborative approach places clients at the center of their own recovery, empowering them to reconnect with their innate strengths and live more authentically. In this insightful conversation with Mystic Mag, Natasha shares her approach to therapy, the impact of past relationships on present behaviors, and how we can all begin to unravel the complexities of the systems that shape our lives.
Your therapeutic approach integrates family systems, somatic practices, mindfulness, eco-psychotherapy, and attachment-based theories. Can you share how you blend these diverse methodologies in your practice and the unique benefits they offer to your clients?
Yes, thanks for asking. The foundation for the work I do comes back to relationships, relationships to ourselves, the world around us, those we live with and work with, and the systems that hold those relationships. These relationships can be damaging at times, and they also can help us thrive and heal.
Each of these theories works on some part of those connections. When there’s a rupture in those relationships, or they no longer work, we look at the parts that are no longer working for us and those that are helpful. Once we can identify what might need to change, having choices on how to make change, sometimes through thinking and talking (a top-down approach), or by working with the body and the nervous system (a bottom-up approach) allows us to support the changes we would like to see happen. We do this work individually, and we recognize we are always in a relationship. So change in one part will affect change to happen in many areas of life.
You have a background in education, non-profit management, disaster preparedness and response, public health, and aquatics. How have these varied experiences shaped your perspective as a Marriage and Family Therapist?
I’ve had the privilege of being and working with so many different people, all unique and complex, and in all states of life from celebrations, growing and thriving, to crisis, decline, and in death. I’ve worked with survivors and helpers, all of whom are impacted and changed through working with each other. And the biggest perspective I’ve gained is recognizing how interdependent we are and how we both impact and are impacted by what is going on around us.
When it comes to this field, the evidence supports my experience that it is the relationship that does the healing and supports the learning. Healthy, compassionate, reciprocal, safe, and connected relationships don’t prevent bad things from happening, but they can help us recover and mitigate the damage that happens. And we don’t need a lot of those kinds of relationships to have those positive effects. Our deeply connected relationship with a loved one, a chosen family, a trusted teacher, our animal companion, or our favorite tree or space in nature can offer a container for our mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional wellness.
What type of services do you offer?
My Associates and I offer psychotherapy for individuals and people in various relationship configurations, couples, families, friends, bandmates, roommates, parent-child, etc.
For professionals, I provide supervision and training for pre-licensed and licensed clinicians.
I also facilitate workshops, discussion groups, and labyrinth walks for groups and the public on trauma recovery, improving our relationship with other-than-human nature, creativity, ecotherapy, mindfulness, contemplative practice, and eco-spirituality.
In your work with individuals and families, how do you address the impact of generational trauma, and what strategies do you find most effective in helping clients navigate these challenges?
The first way I have of helping is that I have multiple theoretical lenses I can start to see a client through. And as we work together, I’ll bring in one or more lenses for the other person or people to try out. We start to look at the conscious and unconscious messages we’ve heard over our lives and see if they are true for who we are today. We add context to the content brought into the therapy. And then we get curious.
Together we start making sense of what is going on through that curiosity with questions like: What happened in your life and what happened prior to when you were born? Is what we are observing a symptom or problem? What is happening in your body that affects your thoughts or behaviors? What worked before but doesn’t anymore? What parts of us are ready to change in some small way? In this way we start to see the problem out in front of us and make sense of it together in ways that are compassionate, connecting, and allowing for change.
As a Certified Veriditas Labyrinth Facilitator, you incorporate labyrinth walking into your workshops. Can you explain the therapeutic benefits of labyrinth walking and how it can enhance one’s relationship with themselves and others?
There are many benefits of labyrinth walking, and the ones that I feel are most significant to the work I do are the ability to reduce stress and anxiety, to calm the body and mind, to increase self-awareness or introspection, and to increase creativity. Labyrinth walking is not new, it’s been around for a long time, so it’s an experience of being connected to a community of people who walk them presently and in the past. Labyrinths provide a kind of container to help hold the experience of allowing whatever thoughts, feelings, or images show up during the time we’re in it. And it can be a grounding contemplative practice to allow for metabolizing feelings that are often harder to be with on our own.
How do you encourage creativity in your clients, and what role does it play in their healing and personal growth?
We are all creative beings, yet some of us have beliefs which deny that. When we become rigid in our thinking or patterns of relationships, we’re going to run into problems that seem insurmountable. And yet if we want change, we can’t keep going on ‘business as usual.’ Creativity craves flexibility. It’s a process. With clients, I’ll often introduce imaginary work, or re-writing our story from a different perspective. We might work with symbols and metaphors to help make meaning out of a situation. Dreams, tarot, and oracle cards are great tools for that. A client may already have something that they do which they discount as creative, and we’ll lean into that a little more to see what happens. Cooking, gardening, raising children, organizing your living space, journaling, picking up that dusty guitar, hosting a brunch, and taking pictures on your portable device can be ways of intentionally leaning into creativity.
