Liat Klein Yaari

What I offer

You can come to me with:

• An emotional or spiritual crisis
• Relationships, divorce and finding a partner
• Self-fulfilment
• Low self-esteem
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Loss and bereavement
• Difficulties around relocation
• Transitions and changes in life

A little about me

The first thing I want to share is that I love what I do and I am grateful for the privilege of accompanying people. I see the therapy room as a sacred space, where a person can truly be themselves, without judgment and without criticism, with only understanding and honesty. My role is to get to know your story, understand your point of view, and guide you with your best interest in mind. I come to therapy with optimism and hope.

I began my professional path as a therapist more than a decade ago, in my master's studies in art therapy at Seminar Hakibbutzim College. After finishing a bachelor's degree in art at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, I came to understand that art holds another meaningful power of healing. During my studies I worked with youth on the spectrum, and afterwards I spent two years in mental health, working with adults with dual diagnosis (mental illness and addiction). Later I worked with youth in special education and led groups for adults with mental illness in the art therapy unit at the Ashdod Museum and in the day hospitalization ward at Hillel Yaffe Hospital. After gaining experience in systemic work, I began to meet young adults (18 and over) and adults in a private clinic in Tel Aviv.

Over the years I found myself drawn to the path of Buddhism, and I started to study and practise meditation. I trained in an MBSR course (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) at the Moda'a Institute in Herzliya, and afterwards began my psychotherapy studies at the Hakomi Institute in Hod HaSharon. During those studies I felt I had found the right and most effective way for me to do therapy, and today I work mainly with this method. After completing my studies I continued with further training from the institute. Out of a connection to and trust in wisdom traditions, and a deep interest in substances that alter consciousness, I also trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, a training meant for the future field of legal treatment.

In 2022 I moved with my family to New York, where I joined a group practice in a private setting and continued to meet and accompany young adults and adults around life crises, divorce, relationship difficulties and finding a partner, anxiety, depression, loss and bereavement, difficulties around relocation, and coping with transitions and changes in life.

I recently moved with my family to southern Portugal, and I continue to accompany people online, and in time also in a physical clinic.

The Hakomi method

• Loving presence - A quality of awareness marked by warmth, attention and acceptance of a person as they are, with all their complexity and parts. Loving presence is the basis for a healthy and supportive relationship and is central to the healing process. It creates a safe therapeutic container that allows unconscious material to surface and invites a transformative process.

• Mindfulness - Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment, marked by openness, curiosity, acceptance and a lack of judgment. In a psychotherapeutic process, exploring in mindfulness allows a deep revealing of inner experience in all its components. The strength of working in mindfulness lies in the connection it allows with the features of reality, and in the deep information it gives about what is happening in the inner world.

• Body, mind and spirit as a whole - Hakomi, as a long-established psychotherapy based on mindfulness and a focus on the body, looks at the way a person's body takes part in the experience of life, with an emphasis on sharp and precise awareness.

• The principle of unity - It assumes that as human beings we are living, organic systems that keep an integral wholeness and are made of sub-systems and parts of body and mind, while also taking part in larger systems of families, groups and cultures. These parts are in a constant process of mutual influence and co-arising.

• Organicity - The intelligent force inherent in every living system, which drives and creates a process of natural healing and growth. This force shows itself not only in the physical world (a wound that heals, a seed that grows into a tree) but also in the psychological world. Given a safe container and work in mindfulness, organicity drives the process of psychological healing.

• Non-violence - This principle supports the creation of a safe space, cooperation and respect for the psychological and behavioural processes people developed in order to cope with life. This approach lets us be exposed to the wisdom hidden in defences, and also to let them go when they no longer serve us.

• Truth - The principle of truth reflects loyalty to the nature of things as they are. In addition, it stresses the importance of honesty within the psychotherapeutic process.

Questions and answers