I’m Alexis Lowenstein, a soul-centered & attachment-based somatic psychotherapist.
I've always been curious about what helps people heal.
Long before I became a therapist, I was asking questions about suffering, connection, and what allows us to feel fully alive.
I wanted to understand why we struggle, why we lose ourselves in relationships, and what helps us find our way back.
That curiosity eventually became my life's work.
For nearly twenty-five years, I've supported individuals, couples, and families through some of life's most tender and challenging moments. Along the way, I've discovered that healing isn't about fixing ourselves.
It's about creating enough safety to finally meet ourselves with honesty, compassion, and care.
Experience Matters
When you're ready to do meaningful therapeutic work, experience matters.
Over the past two decades, I've pursued extensive post-graduate training in:
Attachment-Based Therapy and Interpersonal Neurobiology
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Trauma Healing
Mindfulness-Based Approaches
Attachment-Focused EMDR
I've had the privilege of learning from leaders including Dick Schwartz, Pat Ogden, Janina Fischer, Laurel Parnell and many respected EFT trainers and consultants.
But credentials alone aren't enough.
The most important thing I bring to therapy is my ability to be fully present with you.
My mission is nothing short of peace on earth!
As we do the important work of healing ourselves, we become unburdened and less in need of the protective strategies that we once depended on to get us through. We are more centered, loving, capable of holding complexity and emanating compassion.
What more valuable use of myself is there?
To create a safe space with another human so that “limbic revision” is possible - the rewiring of the neural networks in the brain and the revision of the unconscious stories we hold around what is possible for us in this life - that’s my jam. Our individual and collective liberations are one and the same.
My core values speak of justice, love and the truth that our interconnectedness make us interdependent with all of life.
I practice as a psychotherapist through a lens of decolonization and anti-racism, with a desire for all beings to know wholeness and happiness. Examining my own unconsciously internalized racism, classism, ableism, homophobia etc and seeking to deconstruct that within myself - to be curious about what I don’t know - is crucial to that end.
I bring all of who I am to my work with my clients, supporting them to bring all of who they are to themselves and to the world.
“When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”
— Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize-winning chemist
More About Me
I am a mother and a partner and am endlessly and gratefully humbled by both of these pursuits. I love nature and animals and find peace in feeling connected to the greater web of life. Yoga, Capoeira Angola, Afro-Cuban folkloric dance and music bring me joy and have all influenced my work as a therapist. I have a background in community organizing and social justice work which is an important aspect of who I am and my commitment to healing not just on a personal level but on a community and global level as well. I'm fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and have conducted therapy in both of these languages.
Originally from New Jersey, I moved to California in 1996 and lived and practiced both in the Bay Area and Santa Barbara. In 2022 I moved back to the East Coast (I surprised even myself!) and relocated to the peace and wildness of the Champlain Valley of Vermont. The jungle of Belize is a second home where I spend part of the year with family and community and offer retreat-style intensives for couples and individuals. Getting to walk alongside people into some of the more tender and previously scary places is the honor of a lifetime. We are all just walking each other home.
Frequently Asked Questions
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I have worked as a psychotherapist since 2002, supporting individuals, couples, and families through a wide range of life experiences and challenges.
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Clients often describe me as warm, grounded, authentic, and deeply present. I strive to create a space where people feel safe enough to explore difficult emotions while also feeling supported, challenged, and understood. I am definitely not a therapist who just listens and reflects. I take a very active role in the process, guiding and supporting clients to linger and expand at their leading edge. I also try not to take myself and life too seriously. I like to joke and use humor - I’m from New Jersey after all.
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I work with adult individuals and couples of all ages. That includes high school graduates and college students in the exciting and scary phase of young adulthood, folks with young children navigating the intensity and demands of family life, and older adults dealing with the changes that come with menopause, aging and reckoning with losses of all kinds. I work with people who identify in many different ways culturally and with regards to gender, sexual orientation and neurodiversity.
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I've always been drawn to understanding suffering, healing, and what allows people to experience more love, connection, and freedom in their lives. Becoming a therapist has been both a professional calling and a deeply personal journey.
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I got my BA in Community Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2001, focusing on community-based activism and dismantling the structural racism of the Prison Industrial Complex. I completed my MA in Clinical Psychology at Antioch University, Los Angeles in 2004. I received advanced clinical training at Family Services of Santa Monica in Santa Monica, CA and Pathways Counseling Center in San Leandro, CA before becoming a staff clinician at Jewish Family and Children's Services of the East Bay in 2008 where I worked with children and their families until 2020. I have maintained my private practice since 2011.
I completed four years of post-graduate training at the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI) and graduated from the Level III Advanced Skills Training. In addition, I have trained in attachment-focused EMDR with Laurel Parnell and incorporate these modalities into my work with people. I have completed Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Core Skills training and continue to learn and develop my couples work skills with regular advanced trainings, such as Beyond Core Skills 1 & 2, and ongoing consultation. For the past 15+ years I have deepened my own commitment to indigenous healing ways and have studied with North and South American teachers of traditional healing.