Private Counseling with Melinda Ribner, CSW



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Come for the Meditation, Stay for the Community

		Counseling, Spiritual Transformation & Healing: Individual sessions in person and by telephone Melinda Ribner, L. C.S.W. Founder and Director of Beit Miriam, is a New York State licensed social worker in private practice for more than 15 years. She is available for individual, marital or family counseling and psychotherapy, mentoring, individual meditation instruction, and spiritual guidance on the telephone or in person. Additionally, she also offers supervision to therapists and rabbis seeking toincorporate meditation and Jewish spirituality into their work. What distinguishes her work from that of a traditional psychotherapist is that meditation, prayer, spiritual and kabbalistic teachings along with transpersonal psycho-spiritual processes are part of treatment. In integrating Judaism with modern day transpersonal psycho-spiritual techniques, she has carved out a unique and powerful way to access the innate spiritual intelligence, the soul within a person. In so doing a person may more easily let go of negative limiting patterns of thinking and behavior, increase self-esteem and the capacity to make choices in life. Individual sessions are generally more experiential than traditional talk therapy with emphasis on transformation, rather than insight. Though each person is unique and is worked with differently through a variety of meditation processes, people are guided to use meditation to focus on the sensations in the body, access, release and transform the depth of their feelings buried in the body and soul, re-parent the inner child when needed, re-claim their power and open to the awesome spiritual potential within. Melinda's own words about being a therapist Being a therapist is a great honor and an awesome privilege. It is an extension of my work as a spiritual teacher. When I was in graduate school for a Masters degree in social work, spirituality, and meditation were certainly not part of our curriculum. Professionalism required a therapist to be value free, neutral, and of course not advocate any belief in religion. Yet I knew from my own life, even then, that it was the opening to the experience of God that healed and transformed me. As this was the most powerful vehicle for healing and personal transformation, I knew that this was what I wanted to share with my clients. Many years later I began working in this way, helping people access and strengthen the God experience, especially when they could not access this soul dimension within themselves. My work as a therapist is part of my own spiritual practice and service. As a therapist, I feel that I am God’s representative, and I allow God’s light and love to shine through me. I pray and meditate before each session, during and even after each session. I am totally committed to loving the person who is coming to me for therapy, helping them to love themselves unconditionally and to receive God’s love of them as well. To me being a therapist is a little like being a priest of ancient times privileged to enter into the holy of Holies of the Holy Temple. In many ways, in our modern times, the therapy room is a place of revelation, one of the most holy and sacred places available to many people. It is here that people share their secrets—their deepest feelings, their fears, resistances, their hopes, their dreams, and their fantasies. It is here that they discover and experience aspects of themselves they did not or could not previously acknowledge. As a therapist, I symbolically and often literally hold the hand of the client as we enter into the deepest places, the most inner chambers, to experience the most holy, the most hidden, the most real, the most beautiful, and the most wounded and dark places within the human soul. Through the therapeutic process, we release the klippot, the shells of the wounded ego and redeem the hidden sparks of the holy soul. When we bring what was hidden to the light of awareness, it is released and transformed. In opening to the truth of our inner essence, we open to the Inner Essence of Reality, that is called God and we become vessels to receive greater love and joy than we previously allowed. Sliding scale rates from $80 (low income), $100 (mid income), $125 (high income). Contact Mindy

			"I have gone through some wrenching mid-life challenges in recent years in my marriage, career and synagogue. Mindy has helped me to use prayer, meditation and therapy to understand myself much more deeply, and to approach the world from a more mature and well-grounded place. I feel wonderful about the new directions I am taking in my life now, and I feel like her mix of compassion, empathy and insight have been enormously helpful in getting me to this new place." A 50 year-old male client "How you took away my sinus headache was nothing short of amazing", Nina Kestler "Mindy Ribner is a gifted spiritual teacher and healer who uses her connection to God, the Jewish (mystical) tradition and her practice of psychotherapy and meditation to help people get closer to themselves and to God. Being in her presence is always a gift." Susan Mitrany