Expanding the Work: Pursuing a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling

For many years, my work as an acupuncturist and somatic therapist has centered on the intelligence of the body—how it holds, communicates, and transforms experience. Through that lens, I’ve witnessed how physical symptoms often echo emotional histories, and how healing unfolds most fully when body, mind, and spirit are allowed to speak the same language.

Pursuing a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling is a natural extension of that understanding. It deepens my ability to support clients whose healing involves not only physiology and energy but also the layered terrain of trauma, identity, relationship, and meaning.

Chinese medicine and somatic work have long guided my approach to wellness—both view the person as an integrated whole, capable of self-regulation and transformation. Counseling expands this foundation by offering additional frameworks for understanding the psyche, attachment, and the social systems that shape our sense of belonging and safety.

In practice, this means being able to meet clients at the intersection of body and narrative—where sensations, memories, and emotions converge. My goal is to hold space for the full spectrum of human experience: to honor the body’s wisdom while bringing in the tools of psychotherapy that help integrate insight, emotion, and action.

This next step also reflects a commitment to ethics and scope clarity. As the fields of mental health and somatics continue to evolve, I believe that practitioners must bridge disciplines responsibly—ensuring that clients receive care that is both safe and deeply attuned.

Ultimately, my pursuit of this degree is about continuity. The body’s story doesn’t end at the edge of the skin; the mind’s healing doesn’t happen apart from the body. I intend to keep weaving these worlds together—so that healing can remain what it has always been: an act of wholeness.

While I am currently pursuing this advanced degree, I am not practicing as a counselor or providing psychotherapy services. All client care continues to be offered within my existing licensure and scope of practice as a licensed acupuncturist and somatic practitioner. Counseling perspectives inform my approach, but my professional services remain grounded in Chinese medicine/acupuncture and somatic-based care.

With Heart—

Elissa Solari