Melissa is a Licensed Professional Counselor, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, and Dance/Movement Therapist. She holds a Masters Degree in Somatic Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Dance/Movement Therapy (2009) from Naropa University. She has trained in Pragmatic/Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C), Sex Therapy, Psychodrama, and Authentic Movement. She is also certified in Somatic Archaeology and is a SomaSource LifeCycle Practitioner. She specializes in embodied intimacy and relationship therapy and is a highly sought-after supervisor and educator for other therapists, counselors, and coaches.
Her journey to integrate Couples Therapy, Sex Therapy, and Dance/Movement Therapy yielded the Somatic-Concentric Sex Therapy (S-CST) model, which she has shared with other therapists over the last 12 years since her first presentation at the 2012 American Dance Therapy conference in Albuquerque, NM, titled “A Dance/Movement Sex Therapy Model: Cultivating the Erotic Journey Toward Full Sensual Self-Expression.”
Melissa is the author of Whole-Body Sex: Somatic Sex Therapy and the Lost Language of the Erotic Body, as well as a guest contributor to Dr. Christine Caldwell’s Conscious Moving: An Embodied Guide for Healing, Learning, Contemplating, and Creating.
She presents aspects of her inclusive S-CST model at annual professional conferences and, as an advocate for somatic sexuality education being included in psychology and counseling programs, Melissa has been consulted on educational guidelines, invited to speaking engagements at universities, and invited to present a pre-conference intensive at the annual ADTA conference for the last three years.
Melissa is also a former adjunct professor at Naropa University, where she taught Professional Orientation and Ethics for the Masters in Somatic Counseling Psychology department.
“In all my years of training, I searched for a model of couples therapy that would include emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy, and the somatic nature of the body. However, in training after training, I saw a reflection of our culture’s fractured socialization around sexuality and the body within relationships.
In my education, I learned incredible things about emotional connection, attachment, and how to support the nervous system from defensiveness to receptiveness in couples therapy training; I received accurate and insightful information about sexuality socialization, arousal anatomy, and sexual schemas in sex therapy training, and I learned how to support the somatic wisdom of the body to deepen internal connectivity and expand movement repertoires for deep healing and more effective and satisfying relationship interactions in my Dance/Movement Therapy education.
“In all my years of training, I searched for a model of couples therapy that would include emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy, and the somatic nature of the body. However, in training after training, I saw a reflection of our culture’s fractured socialization around sexuality and the body within relationships.
In my education, I learned incredible things about emotional connection, attachment, and how to support the nervous system from defensiveness to receptiveness in couples therapy training; I received accurate and insightful information about sexuality socialization, arousal anatomy, and sexual schemas in sex therapy training, and I learned how to support the somatic wisdom of the body to deepen internal connectivity and expand movement repertoires for deep healing and more effective and satisfying relationship interactions in my Dance/Movement Therapy education.
Yet none of these overlapped in a meaningful or fully integrated way. As I began integrating these different approaches into my work, that integrated vision began to emerge. This is the model that I call Somatic-Concentric Sex Therapy. S-CST offers an experiential-based map for developing a securely attached relationship with the body and sexuality to support the full expression of self in intimate relationships while honoring embodied consent.
My mission is to help people dismantle the unhelpful and inaccurate assumptions about sexuality within intimate relationships so that people can evolve their connection for deeply healing, personally meaningful, and joyfully consensual intimacy that honors the range of desire styles and body ability.
This is the origin point of broader social change related to healing the confusing and divisive sexuality that plagues our society.”
