Northwest Counseling and Wellness Center is a community mental health clinic providing psychotherapy, counseling, coaching, education, treatment and training to assist clients in making and maintaining healthy and functional changes.

We perform these therapeutic roles with individuals, couples, families and groups. We treat the whole person; that is, we acknowledge a powerful mind-body connection with people encompassing spiritual, mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical aspects of being. We know that integrating and balancing all aspects of self is essential in journeying towards lifelong happiness and fulfillment.

Many conventional sources of healing have lost its connection to soul and spirit. We are concerned that orthodox western medicine and psychology have become overly focused on diagnosis, dysfunction, pathology, and medication of symptoms. Sadly, this language permeates the health care profession, managed care, and the pharmaceutical industry. With this view, the clinician is the mechanic whose job it is to fix the broken human machine or regulate the brain chemistry. The message to the individual is that the agent of change lies outside of you (often in pill form). This is exactly the problem of addiction; the belief that I am not good enough, I must be defective and diseased, and I lack the capability to cope without a reliance on something outside of me.

The locus for change rests within the individual; change and recovery is an inside job. This is not to say we go it alone. Therapeutic change happens in the context of healthy relationships. We believe it is through healthy relationships that human spirit is cultivated, deeper concerns and habitual self defeating and familial patterns can be explored, changed and transformed. We promote and practice healthy relationship skills in our individual, family, and groups therapy sessions and in the larger community whenever possible.

As our name implies, we emphasize wellness in our approaches. This means we actively promote a focus on function, choice, capability, skill, creativity, self care, and balanced lifestyle in our therapeutic endeavors. Therapeutic changes occur when clients are helped to know what they already know and are encouraged to access their potential.

We approach change as a work in progress, the process of which belongs to the client and not the clinician. We will be patient with clients, pacing them and leading them as necessary. We will attempt to engage clients in their process of change wherever they wash up on the shore.

Body Centered Therapies

Acupuncture and Eastern Remedies
We firmly believe in the healing power of body centered therapies which promote the concept of recovery and wellness as an “inside job”. Our basic assumption is there is nothing wrong with you that what’s right with you couldn’t fix.  Acupuncture, Yoga, and Meditation build on the strengths we already have and help to mobilize these inner resources. We invite you to explore these ancient and alternative adjuncts to conventional treatment and counseling.

Acupuncture 
Today Acupuncture is considered a “new alternative” healing practice. In reality, acupuncture has been practiced for over 5000 years. Acupuncture is a powerful tool for people recovering from addictions and it is and integral component to our substance abuse programming. It’s application has been widely used to address problems of mood, stress, aches and pains, weight loss, headaches, sleep disorders, arthritis, chronic pain, and many more.

Meditation
We teach a variety of meditation skill to nourish the domain of being rather than doing, and to encourage moment to moment awareness. Meditation is a way to achieve inner calm, access insight, and learn to get out of your own way.

Yoga
The focus and discipline of Yoga promotes strength, balance and serenity. Hatha Yoga generally includes a series of postures combined with breathing exercises. Yoga embraces a wide range of disciplines whose ultimate goal is the joining of body, mind and spirit.

Oriental (Chinese) Medicine
Oriental Medicine is a complete medical system that has diagnosed, treated, and prevented illness for over twenty-three centuries. While it can remedy ailments and alter states of mind, Oriental Medicine can also enhance recuperative power, immunity, and the capacity for pleasure, work, and creativity.

A basic tenet of this view is the notion of Yin and Yang- the marriage and balance between these two polar principles present in all that is (winter and summer, day and night, cold and hot, wet and dry, inner and outer, mind and body…) Harmony of this union means good health and function, while disharmony leads to disease and turmoil. The strategy of Oriental Medicine is to restore harmony and balance. This is done though regulating the animating force, Qi (pronounced Chee). Treatment may incorporate acupuncture, herbal remedies, diet, exercise and message.

Masako Wada, L.Ac. is Northwest Counseling’s resident practitioner of Oriental Medicine. For more information about her services contact www.mypathtowellness.com or to schedule an initial consultation contact our business office.