About Janell

I’ve known that I was a healer/helper since I was a young girl. I work from an empathic, intuitive, somatic and soul-centered approach. I pay attention. I love being alive and learning. I use my whole self to work with others and do so from a place of deep love in my heart. I am a seriously relational and funny, tender, strong and ridiculous human facilitator and promise working with me won’t be boring. It will be fun, deep, irreverent, light, sacred, honest, profound, mundane and embodied. I consider myself a seasoned but humble therapist. Your truth trumps mine. All I ask is for you to be curious, show up, and be open for growth.

I grew up in Northwest Indiana, in a very white, middle-class, Republican, Catholic bubble doing theatre, singing, dancing, and playing with Barbies. I started therapy at age 15 for anorexia. My parents divorced when I was 18. I received my BA in theatre arts from Indiana University Bloomington where I experienced diversity and other cultures, danced in gay bars and sang in a gospel choir and funk band while my true progressive liberated self emerged. I lived in Chicago, did theater and found my way to sketch comedy, voiceovers and yoga. I managed Moksha Yoga Center and studied with the best and brightest yoga teachers in my twenties.

At age 30, I moved to Los Angeles to be in the frontier of the new age and worked for yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn while trying to get on Saturday Night Live. At age 40, I went on to get my masters degree in clinical psychology. I was supervised under Jennifer Walters from 2018-2020 and am now a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, with a strong mind-body-spirit and psychodynamic lens. I’ve been a yoga teacher for 11 years and I’m also trained in the art of applied esoteric astrology through Debra Silverman. I’ve also been highly influenced by my past therapist, the late, brilliant Mona Miller.

My current teachers are Michaela Boehm and Duey Freeman (among others). My passion is intimacy, sexuality, attachment, the men’s movement and spirituality. I identify as mostly straight, cisgendered and have been married, divorced, single and coupled – all the fun variations. I chose not to have children, and my animals are particularly special to me. Pictured is my special spirit animal, my female German Shepherd Jordan. I am a Leo sun, Leo rising, Aquarius Moon.