about our team

Elena is a licensed psychotherapist with 20+ years of experience working with adults, children, teens, and families. In addition to running her own practice, she has worked with outpatient mental health clinics, consulted at local schools, coordinated clinical programs, and supervised interns. Elena believes in ‘giving it to you straight’, yet always wrapped in warmth and love. She understands that human connection is raw and messy, and has dedicated her career to helping her clients embrace and find peace within that chaos. Using a blend of eastern and western philosophies, she takes an instinctual and intuitive approach to therapy. Elena infuses her approach with trauma informed, resiliency and attachment focused principles. She incorporates various culturally-defined healing practices as well as psychotherapy techniques and somatic therapies, such as Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM), Dynamic Attachment Repatterning experience (DARE), and Brainspotting. She encourages her clients to ‘go with the flow’ and develop a deep, aligned understanding of what they need at any given moment, co-creating skills and tools they need to handle anything life throws their way.

Jill enjoys helping the helpers, like you. She believes we all have the tools we need, already inside us, we just need a little nudge to access it. Are you getting tightness and tension in your body, restlessness, or pain in your body but your primary care doctor says there is nothing wrong with your physical health? Don’t wait until things get too heavy and unmanageable to seek out help. Learning about how stress affects the brain-body connection, developing new coping strategies, and specialized short term modalities, can help reduce this suffering and get you feeling better, sooner rather than later. Jill uses both EMDR and TRM to help you process both the traumas from your work and the old traumas that have hung around too long, that have been holding you back. Jill works through a resiliency-informed lens with first responders, physicians, therapists, & teachers who need to start caring for themselves by tapping into their own resilience, so they can feel the relief they so often provide to others.

After growing up in a small town in Indiana, Caitlin relocated to California for the sunshine and work opportunities. Her background is in television production, and she has worked for PBS, Nickelodeon, and Showtime. She pivoted from the entertainment industry to pursue holistic medicine and gain a deeper knowledge of different wellness modalities. Caitlin likes to practice Tai Chi, Yoga, and Qigong in addition to martial arts training to enrich her studies and share these practices with others. When she’s not at work, she loves to see comedy shows and perform improv. She is the backbone of the administrative team for Healista Holistic Psychotherapy.

Anisa Kassim is Public Health Educator and Licensed Acupuncturist and has worked in the field of health for over 20 years. She started her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the field of International Public Health. She worked worldwide, assisting practitioners in the development of their health programs and training health workers on effective, cost-effective and minimally invasive techniques for the care of individuals in their community and villages. She chose to further her education in Chinese and Ayurvedic Medicine because of its proven efficacy in preventing diseases and helping improve the quality of life of both adults and children. She is a part-time professor in the area of integrative health and herbs. Anisa is an Acupuncturist who specializes in Pre/Postnatal wellness, Pediatric Acupuncture and Facial Rejuvenation. She has helped clients of all ages improve their digestion, decrease pain, improve sleep, mental health, trauma and manage symptoms associated with chronic diseases, She closely works with women during their pregnancy and postnatal years and assists families in maintaining their health and well-being. Anisa creates customized and holistic health strategies based on the clients needs utilizing Chinese and Ayurvedic modalities including cupping, acupuncture, non-needling techniques for children, Reiki and is a trained and certified herbalist in both Western and Eastern herbology.

Cleandra believes that a person is more than the sum of their parts. She received her Master of Science Degree in Counseling Psychology from California State University Long Beach. Cleandra immediately began working with clients in community mental health, focusing on couples with a history of trauma. She feels it is vital to support the Mind/Body connection to heal the “whole person.” Cleandra maintains that our bodies are like time-machines, propelling us forward into the future or back to the past with a single thought, sensory experience, or physical movement. Cleandra believes that the body is an integral part of facilitating the cellular change that is necessary to achieve personal transformation. Besides her experience, Cleandra looks to the work of Sue Johnson, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Gabor Mate, and her clients for continued growth and inspiration.