By Courtney Shackelford
The brain is special and magnificent, strange and mysterious. It is powerful enough to send messages to assist in regulating our bodies, but is also a vulnerable 3 pound organ encased in bone and liquid to keep it safe from the various hazards of the world. A millennium later, humans still do…
Continue reading
By Awbrey Michelle Willett
Ann Filmyer, Ph. D is an educator, poet, teacher, and mentor. A traditional healer she trained with the late Keewaydinoquay Paschal in the Midewiwin tradition of the northern Great Lakes and is an Ojibwe herbal medicine woman. Dr. Filemyr has a rich history as a teacher and was Professor of…
Continue reading
By Awbrey Michelle Willett
For Jason Holley, MA, LPCC self-care is the beginning of all good therapy. Jason is a psychotherapist in private practice in Santa Fe, prior to this he worked for the Life Healing Center of Santa Fe, where he helped to found its internationally-recognized sexual addiction treatment program. Jason has a…
Continue reading
By Awbrey Michelle Willett
Katherine Ninos, MA, LPCC, is Executive Vice President of Southwestern College and Director of the New Earth Institute. She received her BA in Psychology from Alfred University, New York, and her MA in Transformational Counseling and Education from Quimby College in its first graduating class. (Quimby College later became Southwestern College.)…
Continue reading
By Awbrey Michelle Willett
I set out using each of my classes here at Southwestern to grow as a person, and to study self-care, and the various occupational hazards of caring, in order to understand how counselors and those of service, including myself, can sustain our work and live optimally well, balanced, and joyful lives.…
Continue reading
Communicating Creatively: Art, Music, and Alternative Addiction Treatment Therapies
--by Michelle Peterson
recoverypride.org
Millions of people who suffer the ravages of drug and alcohol addiction benefit from traditional, 12-step treatment therapies. Nevertheless, there are some recovering addicts for whom such methods are not effective, and who need the help of alternative approaches that a decade…
Continue reading
I have been honored to serve the Nambé Pueblo community since October 2013. The reasons for my arrival to the little reservation nestled in a corner of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and hidden behind the winding backroads between Pojoaque and Chimayo, continue to be veiled in a mystery that deepens each day. I began…
Continue reading
Inipi
Into the Inipi,
the pulsing womb,
the comfort of darkness,
the heat of intention,
the heartbeat of drums taught with flesh,
the suffocating smoke of the sacred,
the ashes,
the silence,
the humanity.
I crawl.
I am blind,
…
Continue reading
I have worked at Solace Crisis Treatment Center in Santa Fe, treating trauma and crisis situations for the last two and a half years. I previously worked at the Attachment Healing Center in Albuquerque. I currently work at Solace part-time and have been building my private practice. I provide art therapy and counseling services to…
Continue reading
Within the Hallowed Bones
I awake,
at this unearthly hour.
So, I rise,
on this desert morn’.
This unearthly warm,
desert morn’.
A cup of chamomile tea and honey.
I sit by the fire.
As the silvery blue light of the moon dozes on the window sill.
A…
Continue reading
“Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it – not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but conscious- ness arranging itself.” - Sri Aurobindo
Is My Therapist “The…
Continue reading
Community-Based Ecotherapy
by Rene Tricou
I am a Master’s degree student at Southwestern College working toward the Ecotherapy certificate.
During my first year, many of the courses I took assisted me going deeper within myself to bring out the future counselor and process facilitator in me. In the Ecotherapy program I had the opportunity…
Continue reading
Adjusting to Southwestern College and New Mexico
It’s challenging to express what my experience adjusting to Southwestern College and Santa Fe has been like. Finding ways to describe how magical, fulfilling, and painful it has been almost seems impossible. I arrived in Santa Fe from Oregon in August and I had almost two months…
Continue reading
A Penny Makes Change
Mark Speight, graduate of Southwestern College's MA Counseling program
Written in the Southwestern College weekly writing group facilitated by Dr. Ann Filemyr.
A penny makes change.
A cog fits into the machine and squeaks, occasionally.
A box of pastels mugged me on the way,
yearning to be…
Continue reading
Voices in America chose Southwestern College/New Earth Institute as a unique, unsung, yet storied institution, to feature in television slots between full PBS broadcast shows.…
Continue reading
A simple question. What is astrology?
I would say astrology is a way to live in connection with natural cycles of time. It is also the correlation, “as above, so below.” We are a part of a connected universe and it’s cycles. For thousands of years, people have been making correlations to the happenings…
Continue reading
It’s been approximately 60 days since I packed up Lotus, my 2003 Honda Pilot, with all of my belongings that I could fit into it so I could relocate to Santa Fe to pursue my MA degree in Art Therapy & Counseling at SWC! Yes, I left the “Charm City” (Baltimore, MD), leaving my beloved,…
Continue reading
Being a Counselor Activist
I was outraged from an early age. They say if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention, so I guess I was paying attention. In 8th grade I protested my Spanish teacher who insisted that even the Mexican and Guatemalan kids in our class speak Spanish with a Castilian lisp, asserting…
Continue reading
Liberating Loan Lessons for Life
You finally figured out a career path and maybe even the college you want to attend, but now you are faced with the daunting task of figuring out how to pay tuition and it seems that your only option is to take out student loans. You do the math and…
Continue reading
Early on in my graduate internship at a family counseling agency, a supervisor told me, "We have the best jobs in the world, for we get to witness, hold and create change." I remember being pulled by those words, but I do not think I truly understood what they meant, and I am still unraveling…
Continue reading
Poem in Third person about your wildest love
A Boy & His Sketchbook
There once was a introverted boy, most people associated him with being shy, living in the projects. The boy didn’t have many friends; to be honest he didn’t like his fellow classmates. They were into sports, smoking/selling weed, and joining gangs. All…
Continue reading
Council of All Beings
The Ecotherapy Certificate Program under the leadership of Dr. Ann Filemyr, Director of the Ecotherapy certificate program and President of Southwestern College, hosted a ceremonial weekend, October 28-30, 2016 to honor and celebrate our kinship with all beings. We became the Council of All Beings. Below are a few of…
Continue reading
What the Writing Group has Meant to Me – Jaylek Ahn
While difficult to put into just a few words, I am so grateful for the depth of emotion, opening, closing, re-opening, awe and reverence that I’ve experienced in the presence of fellow writers that have come to mean so much to me, as has…
Continue reading
I’m the chairperson of the Art Therapy/Counseling program. I moved to Santa Fe to teach at Southwestern College in 2002, and continue to be delighted by the insightful art therapy provided by our students during Practicum and Internship. It’s been an honor to witness our students as they blossom into therapists. And actually, I also…
Continue reading
Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM