The Hollow Path Experiential Therapy
• Clinical Social Work • Recreational Therapy • Adventure-Based Therapy
• Pet Loss and Animal Assisted Therapy • Expressive Arts • Reorienteering
Emotional First Aid:
If the stress of national disasters these days is getting to you please reach out.
Modern technology with some Creativity can offer some relief in ways that might surprise you.
You don't have to be alone
Trauma-Informed Therapy
Recreational Therapy
Therapy designed through activities of personal value for discovery of Mastery, Belonging, Generosity and Independence. Adapted to include. Designed to access what makes you feel alive and connected.
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Pet Loss & Animal
Assisted Therapy
Exploring the animal human bond and the many and deep ways that animals give us access to our hearts, our goodness, our grief and our healing.
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Clinical Social Work
Respecting that you are you within the environment where you live, love and grow; exploring the interconnections with a perspective of strengths and systems.
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Expressive Arts Therapy
A way to express the experiences of the body, mind and spirit in a language that more directly captures the language of our inner experience and gives it a bridge to our outer world.
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Reorienting While Orienteering
An exploratory look into the importance and process of Orienting – while taking to the path with a map and finding your way. Cultivating awareness and skills that are essential to orienteering and using them to navigate the stresses of everyday life. Trauma narrows our focus and this activity provides a fun way to bring back flexibility to the way you see what's in front of you.
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English Therapy & Diagnostic Counseling
Exploring what happens when learning differences, anxiety, avoidance, and traumas get in the way of learning English. Then clearing the barriers and building the skills so you can go on with your education and your life dreams.
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Healing Trauma and Taking Social Action
We are a tough, dynamic and hurting culture here in Israel. Life here comes with intense adjustments and there is a price we all pay for living under existential threat in one of the most fascinating places on earth. Between the vitality and the falafel, there is so much unresolved trauma. A trauma is anything that overwhelms your nervous system and leaves you feeling like something is left in you unfinished.
I believe we have to heal our traumas so we can begin to heal our individual and collective sense of trust and hope.
Then we can have the capacity to build a kinder and more connected existence here.
Experiential Therapy: A Genuine Offer to Explore
This is a sincere offer to come explore the adventure of the therapeutic process.
For you, your kids, and for your loved ones. A good therapeutic experience is for all ages.
I like to think of therapy as a really good opportunity to practice being you. I think of things like depression and anxiety as the distance we are from our true selves. Life offers all kinds of tests and challenges that throw us around and batter and bruise and distract us; staying on a true path takes a whole lot of courage and support and determination. Returning to who we are is a constant, nudging presence - for kids and adults alike. I say Life is an Adventure and So is Therapy because we are always, always, choosing which path to take and who to be in each moment and in each intersection; and this offers a whole variety of adventures. Life offers one adventure after another; some enticing some unwanted. It doesn’t always offer the true and helpful support and guidance we need to be our better selves or to see the challenges as adventure. I like to think of therapy as a kind of hidden, safe chance to try different creative, experiential ways to return and practice staying on your own true path.
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The therapies I offer are true to my Social Work nature and are focused on exploring you in the context of your life and your strengths; and exploring ways to re-balance and regain an internal well being. Your difficulties and diagnosis are welcome here. They are important and informed and will be integrated into our work together; they are not the way I define the work I offer. We'll use the creative space, animals, expressive arts, and nature and the activities you love as therapeutic pathways to access the internal resources that you have, pair them with your pains and struggles, and help you release and strengthen. So you can live your life as only you can - as you wish - or as wish for you, your children or your loved ones.
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Trauma and hardship affect us all. Traumas big and small can narrow and overwhelm us and restrict our senses. Don't let life narrow your path.
Sincerely,
Susan
My Practice
Susan Belitsky, MEd, MSW, CAGS, Israeli Teaching License
MSW is a Masters in Clinical Social Work, MEd in Recreational Therapy,
Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Expressive Arts
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I call my practice The Hollow Path as a way to express the way I walk and work in the world. I provide the place; and together we find the path. I am a Clinical Social Worker and Recreational Therapist with a sincere determination to help bring relief from trauma and to inspire Social Action. I love the natural world and what it has to teach us. I love neuroscience and the ways in which the theories can help us figure out that kindness and social engagement come with a calm nervous system. I'm fascinated with the ways the body reflects our experiences and waits for healing. My practice is creatively based on trauma-informed therapy.
My approach is relational and experiential and offers ways to approach the hollow spaces within us and our lives that hold the treasures of once again becoming of whole, integrated and true. These foundations enable us to approach these places with a sense of adventure. With the help of animals, expressive art and adventure and choice, along with the offerings of nature, I intend to create opportunities to build trust, claim some mastery, foster connections and help the body and mind to integrate the experiences life has given us.
English Speaker~Conversational Hebrew~First Aid Certified
Hollow is a word that "conjures". It is also the name of my old companion husky. She's the gorgeous dogwolf on the photo above and she taught me how to be in the world and how to become a better therapist and a kinder human. Hollow is an empty space. A space between. It’s the space between notes; the pause in a poem. It’s the place where wolves sleep and bears look for honey inside the hollow of an old tree. The hollow space is where critters live and which many of us fear. It is also an open space. Or dark space…where the answers lie or the bear sleeps. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer and there is nothing to hold onto. Hollow is also a long tunnel of a wood-carved flute and it is the path I most cherish as the therapeutic place into which we must peak and enter to find answers and return to our true selves. Trauma and hardship can narrow us, and overwhelming experiences can cause us to restrict and avoid the empty spaces of not knowing or being in between. I believe the hollow spaces are wholeheartedly worth entering; slowly, with support, one toe or one moment at a tolerable time. Each of us has our own way of accessing those precious, lost and guarded places within us. Experiential therapy provides the gift of reflection to come as we use activities to access what we need.
Life is an Adventure. So is Therapy.
Read more about Health, Therapy and Social Action in my Blog
EVENTS & HAPPENINGS
This Saturday!
Past Events: Kiryat Tivon
cancelled for rain, rain, rain, then Corona
REORIENTEERING
Reorienteering is a concept I created based on various parts of my professional life. It is an exploratory look into the importance and process of orienting – while orienteering. Cultivating awareness and skills that are essential to orienteering and using them to navigate the stresses of everyday life. We live in a traumatized nation and it affects us all. Trauma narrows our focus and this is a fun way to bring back flexibility to the way you see what's in front of you. You might be surprised at how your life experiences affect your sense of orienting. It is a part of my vision to use Therapeutic Adventure to reduce the effects of our stressful existence while simultaneously creating a bit of meaningful fun.
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I’m offering a nivut/orienteering activity for Tu B'Shvat as a new way to relate to the trees and the trails. You'll get a groovy orienteering map of a section of Kiryat Tivon as well as a guided adventure from the map to the trails.
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This event is an introductory experience and reflection in Reorienteering.
We will meet in Kiryat Tivon near the center.
Many more events and workshops to come.
To read more about Reorienteering, click here.
To register, please call 052-4866046 or email thehollowpath@gmail.com
and more information for the site will be provided.
All questions and curiosities are welcome.
Saturday, February 12th
The Majestic Aloney Abba Forest
10:00-1:00
New Groups at Studio Phistukio
Also for Private 1:1
Authentic Movement: The exquisite opportunity to explore both mover and witness. A movement process designed to cultivate the purity of being a witness to another as they move purely from the impulse within.
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The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Truly. An old-time 12-week course to find, recover, and unblock your creative self amazingly now justified with all the current neuroscience.
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Cross-Cultural Group for Women 70 and Over to sit, talk, and craft.
See the Forest Through the Trees: A weekly therapeutic walk in the forest among the mighty sculpted oaks listening and reflecting.
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ReOrienteering: Cultivating awareness and skills that are essential to orienteering and using them to navigate the stresses of everyday life.
Be with the Animals: Because they can teach us everything about ourselves.
Each of these will also be offered in day workshops
Special Events: Outdoor Safe
Saturday, January 29 ReOrienteering
Sunday, January 30 Tu B’Shvat Seder in Magical Aloney Abba Forest
To be continued at a totally unknown time hopefully in the near future...
