About CHI

The Center for Healing and Imagery (CHI) was founded in 1984 on two related premises:

  • First, “talk therapy” is often not enough to access and transform the most important and most hidden unconscious experiences.
  • Second, “right-brain” oriented approaches can be extremely effective in breaking through therapeutic impasses and managing affective crises.


Somatic and Sensory Focus

Although CHI initially focused primarily on imagery techniques, our methods have always included close attention to the somatic and sensory components of the imagistic experience. Over the years we have integrated concepts and techniques from Gestalt, hypnosis, mindfulness, Somatic Experiencing, neuroscience and EMDR.

Experiential Training

All of our training is experiential. We believe that the most effective learning modality, like the most effective therapeutic modalities, is affective, experiential, and “right-brain” based.

Accessible and Integrative

We have designed our program to be both accessible and integrative. For access, we present many courses that can be taken without prerequisite. For integration, we sequence our trainings so that participants can build on fundamental concepts and techniques to apply these approaches in a variety of clinical situations.

Small personal classes

Each class is small (6-10 people), so that there is time for each person to share his/her experience. The variety of experiences is sufficiently diverse to illustrate the conceptual teaching points we want to make, allowing for a smooth integration of the experiential and didactic/cognitive dimensions of the training.

Clinically Practical

The blending of experiential/affective and clinical/cognitive processes facilitates the integration of the right-brain modalities of Somatic Imagery, Ego-State Psychotherapy and Mindfulness into the clinical practices of our course participants. Our classes offer methods that can be useful in challenging situations such as when the treatment is at an impasse or clients are flooded with unmanageable affect. They can also be helpful to deepen and enrich therapy that is going well. These approaches can be integrated into any model of psychotherapy

When our students complete our courses, they “know” how to do use these modalities, both because they have experienced it themselves and because they understand the underlying concepts. At the same time, virtually all of our students feel they learn something of value for their personal lives.