MindFit Counseling, which celebrated its fifth anniversary in January, is different from most therapy practices because the team concentrates on somatic-type therapy practices that incorporate body awareness, especially regarding how the body holds trauma.
“Somatic experiencing is a body-focused modality,” says Jessica Cannon, clinical director and owner of MindFit Counseling LLC. “It’s about tapping into the body’s sensations, impulses and behavior to renegotiate trauma experiences for the purpose of healing.”
While everyone may have their own ideas about what trauma is, trauma could be anything that interrupts your inner sense of peace. Even common, everyday occurrences can be traumatic, such as having a baby or relocating, because these experiences completely interrupt life.
“We all experience some level of trauma in our lives,” Cannon says. “That’s what makes us human.”
The team of 21 seasoned therapists and one nurse practitioner provides collaborative care through advanced and progressive modalities that treat the whole person.
In October 2024, MindFit Counseling in Carmel, which is located next to Pickle on Penn, expanded to incorporate a wellness center, to offer wellness services such as trauma-informed yoga, craniosacral therapy (CST), reiki, and HeartMath. These services work in conjunction with therapy to help people dive into their body. Trauma-informed yoga classes, which are taught by a licensed therapist, center around safety, feeling into your body, tolerance for certain positions, breathwork, and grounding. Reiki is a form of energy healing that incorporates the body, mind and spirit.
“Science says that we are all made up of moving particles,” Cannon says. “That energy cannot be created or destroyed, but through intention, can be moved here or there. Reiki is about tuning into your energy health. Doing a session can be insightful in terms of what you need or what’s missing in your life, to help you heal from past traumas.”
CST is a gentle, hands-on massaging technique that uses a light touch on the crown of the head to release tension around your body’s connective tissue network.
“We don’t really realize how much trauma we hold in our fascia or muscle tissue,” Cannon says.
CST works to ignite the parasympathetic nervous system, which acts as the brakes of the nervous system. It’s helpful for those suffering body injuries following trauma such as a car accident, but there are a lot of reasons people might benefit from CST.
“In our day-to-day lives we are all operating at a high speed – very anxious and stressed,” Cannon says. “CST is good for leveling that out.”
HeartMath, an evidence-based practice, is a system of self-regulation techniques that synchronizes the heart, brain, emotions and nervous system.
“It’s developing a set of specific breathing techniques to help create coherence in the body so that it functions as one whole,” Cannon says. “HeartMath is good for those in high-stress jobs like corporate leaders, engineers or doctors.”
The services offered on the wellness side could be sufficient for helping to mitigate stress and bring some relief, but in other instances, MindFit Counseling has a whole team of therapists available to help. They even have therapists who do “play therapy” to help children feel into their emotions, give words to feelings, and help them complete the process of whatever is going on in their life.
“Have you ever watched your child play the same scenario or theme over and over again?” Cannon says. “As adults we experience the same process when we ruminate or fixate on things. In the somatic world we have the saying, ‘What repeats doesn’t complete,’ and, ‘What completes doesn’t repeat.’ In therapy, whether we are working with a child doing play therapy or working with an adult doing somatic work, essentially we’re helping their nervous system get out of that freeze/repeat loop to achieve a stage of completion.”
On the therapy side, they offer evidence-based services like eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and Brainspotting. EMDR is a psychotherapy treatment designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. Similarly, Brainspotting is a psychotherapy technique that uses eye movement to help people process psychological trauma and other issues.
They also use Internal Family Systems (IFS), a form of psychotherapy that views the mind as a system of parts interacting with each other.
“You know how when you’re talking to someone and you say, ‘A part of me feels this way and another part of me feels that way?’” Cannon says. “IFS is about separating those parts and observing them to dig deeper. It also has a somatic component to it, where we identify where in our body we notice these parts of ourselves. It’s a different approach that a lot of people jive with.”
Many of the somatic practices offered at MindFit Counseling have been around for centuries and have been common in the Eastern world.
“Our goal is to provide accurate and scientific information about these healing practices to help people find their healing flow,” Cannon says. “We want to help people heal from mental-health-related discord, and at a much more accelerated rate than talk therapy. Research shows that talk therapy is the least effective form of treating trauma. Treating trauma just happens to be a specialty.”
Cannon maintains that these therapy services are incredibly effective.
“I think we’re ahead of our time in treating energy health and the whole person,” Cannon says. “I’m excited to offer these types of things to our clients and the community, and to integrate the two to help people find coherence and alignment.”
Download the MindFit booking app to book a wellness service.
MindFit Counseling is located at 11495 Pennsylvania Street, Suite 100 in Carmel. For more information, call 317-804-3696.
