Faculty
To reach our administration and faculty by phone, please call 310-479-7996, and select item 1. The message will list each faculty. By pressing their respective number you will be connected directly to them.
Michael Shiffman, PhD, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #122513) in private practice in Los Angeles. Michael is a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), a certified Neuroaffective Relational Model Therapist (NARM), a Level 2 PACT Couple Therapist, and is trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Michael is uniquely trained in the use of touch for trauma resolution and attachment repair.
Michael sees individuals and couples, and runs groups. His clinical work is mindfulness based, somatically grounded and asset oriented. He has a substantial background working with anxiety, panic, traumatic stress, substance abuse and recovery, relapse prevention, and somatic oriented therapeutic practices. He teaches mindfulness meditation, neuroaffective regulation and somatic psychotherapy
Michael received his PhD from the UCLA department of sociology. His academic training includes conversation analysis, social movements, labor union history, gender studies, and social psychology. His doctoral dissertation was on family trauma and posttraumatic stress among adult children of alcoholics. He has worked in program evaluation, health care research, grant writing and has provided technical services at UCLA and through several private computer companies.
Michael began meditating in 1994 under the guidance of Shinzen Young. He founded LA Dharma in 1999 through which he hosted a meditation group and coordinated 20 daylong retreats and two large conferences with teachers from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the Insight Meditation Center. In 2002 he began teaching mindfulness meditation and has since taught beginning, intermediate and advanced meditation practices. He studied with Shinzen Young and Jason Siff, and continues to practice with Rev. Hye Wol Sunim since 2002. Michael loves to cook and is frequently happy at home in Encino California. For more details visit his website at https://michaelshiffman.com.
Juliet Soopikian, LMFT, is a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist (LMFT #38746) in private practice in West Los Angeles. She is the co-founder of the Insight Center, and teaches mindfulness meditation and its application to personal and professional lives.
Prior to private practice, Juliet worked as a therapist in both in-patient and outpatient settings, including the Department of Health and Human Services for the City of Long Beach. She was Program Director of an acute outpatient program for Glendale Memorial Hospital, Social Services Coordinator and Counselor for a group home in San Gabriel Valley, Group and Family Therapist for a community clinic, Kaiser outpatient services, and a discharge Planning Coordinator for Kaiser’s inpatient psychiatric hospital.
Juliet is a near-death-experience survivor and lives with a chronic medical condition. These experiences enable her to have a more intuitive and a deeper sense of others’ challenges, and a profound compassion for each person seeking her help. She uses her psychotherapeutic skills and meditative practices to manage her chronic physical illness and pain and has developed a step-by-step approach to help others do the same. Her motto in life: “Helping one heart at a time.”
Debi Jenkins Frankle LMFT is an expert in the field of grief. Debi has been working with clients suffering from lifetimes of loss for over 25 years. She and husband, Mark Frankle LMFT, are the co-founders of the Calabasas Counseling and Grief Recovery Center.
Debi is also the founder of Private Practice Grief Workshops and Trainings for Mental Health Professionals as well as the FB group for clinicians: Private Practice Grief. She is an adjunct professor at The Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University.
Debi’s areas of expertise are grief, trauma, medical family therapy, and emotional effects of chronic illness. Debi has led trainings for grief counseling professionals throughout the United States and Canada, in addition to presenting for CAMFT (California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists), SFV CAMFT and various organizations throughout Los Angeles. Debi is a past president of San Fernando Valley chapter of CAMFT, past committee co-chair of the Crisis Response Network for SFV CAMFT and a member of the Association for Death Education (ADEC). You can join her Facebook Group Private Practice Grief at http://bit.ly/PrivatePracticeGrief and find more information at https://www.privatepracticegrief.com
Joni Lavick, LMFT, SEP (LMFT 31244) maintains a private practice in Santa Monica. She is a clinical supervisor at Counseling West, and Antioch University, and works with families coping with addiction at The Canyon Recovery Center.
She is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles with a Master’s in Counseling Psychology and has a Bachelors degree in Social Work from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Joni’s philosophy and clinical practice is asset-based, integrates body and mind, and holds that it is the therapeutic relationship that heals. Her Universal Treatment Plan is the distillation of 25 years of training and experience to help clients grow through identifying strengths and enhancing resources.
Joni has been working with HIV positive individuals since 1988. In 2005 she received a National HIV Leadership Award from thebody.com. The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapists Association’s honored her expertise and advocacy in 2000, with their Annual Community Service Award. She is a former Director of Mental Health Services at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. She has over 20 years of experience treating individuals with sexual compulsivity, methamphetamine addiction, alcoholism and other substances, depression and anxiety. Currently she serves on the board of The Women’s Association for Addiction Treatment.
Joni has special training in the scoring and administration of Mary Main’s Adult Attachment Interview, studied Intersubjective Systems Theory with Robert Stolorow, and is certified as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner by Peter Levine’s Foundation for Human Enrichment.
Her publications include “Trauma and HIV: Frozen Moments, Frozen Lives” BETA, Spring 2008 and “Conquering Anxiety; Living with HIV” BETA, Winter 2007. An experienced public speaker she has presented at many national conferences, university classrooms, and community based organizations.
Terry Marks-Tarlow, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist (PSY8853) in private practice in Santa Monica. She is a Visiting Professor at Italian Universita Niccolo Cusano London and a Research Associate at the Institute for Fractal Research in Kassel Germany. She is on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles County Psychological Association, where as Community Outreach Co-Chair, she co-created and curates an annual exhibition of visual and performance arts, “Mirrors of the Mind: The Psychotherapist as Artist.” Dr. Marks-Tarlow is a member of the Insight Center teaching faculty.
Dr. Marks-Tarlow has authored and co-edited numerous books, including Play and Creativity in Psychotherapy (2018, Norton), Truly Mindful Coloring (2016, PESI), Awakening Clinical Intuition (2014, Norton), and Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy (2012, Norton), andPsyche’s Veil (2008, Routledge), all of which she has illustrated herself. Dr. Marks-Tarlow has presented workshops and seminars internationally and nationally, including a 2012 a conference at the Tavistock Institute in London relating to her second book, Psyches Veil, on nonlinear dynamics, and the 2015 UCLA Interpersonal Neurobiology Conference.
Dr. Marks-Tarlow embodies the balance of life between play, imagination and creativity through her dance, art and yoga. Her creativity also has been expressed musically, through writing opera librettos with Juilliard teacher and composer Jonathan Dawe. Her first opera, “Cracked Orlando”, premiered in New York City in 2010 with a ballet. Her second opera, “Oroborium” is scheduled to premiere at Lincoln Center in April, 2018. For more information visit her website at http://markstarlow.com
Eileen Paris, LMFT, PhD, PsyD (LMFT 24594), is a training and supervising analyst and member of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. Dr. Paris has been working with children and families for 47 years. She began her career as a pre-school teacher, became a somatic therapist, then a psychoanalyst and infant mental health specialist.
She served on the faculty of the Reiss-Davis Child Study Center, as adjunct faculty at the 2001-2002 Infant Mental Health Specialist Training Program at Cedars/Sinai in Los Angeles, the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, and the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis Los Angeles.
Dr. Paris developed a psychoanalytically informed model of parent education called The Parenting Process and co-authored, I’LL NEVER DO TO MY KIDS WHAT MY PARENTS DID TO ME! A Guide to Conscious Parenting, (Warner Books, 1994). Her paper Interrupting Trauma and Advancing Development: Considering Parent Education in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Treatment was published in the 2013 Clinical Social Work Journal. Dr.
Paris is in private practice in Marina del Rey, California and offers workshops and trainings to parents and professionals that address developmental trauma in the US, Canada, and Europe.
Elaine Rosenson, LMFT, is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Encino, CA for over 30 years. She is a nationally recognized therapist and Voice Dialogue facilitator and teacher. She trained extensively with Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone, the originators of Voice Dialogue.
She has served as a staff member and has been endorsed by them to provide trainings to professionals and the general public. In 1991, she founded the Valley Voice Dialogue Center where she has trained therapists on how to use Voice Dialogue for their own deep personal work and in their own practice. Elaine is a member of the teaching faculty at the Insight Center in Los Angeles California.
She has presented classes at CSUN, at numerous intern training centers in Los Angeles as well as at CAMFT, SD-CAMFT, SFV-CAMFT, GPASC, and GPALA Conferences. Elaine is a Past-President of the San Fernando Valley Chapter of CAMFT and has been an active member for over 30 years.
Elaine became inspired by the embodied depth psychology work of Marion Woodman, PhD, a world-renowned Jungian analyst, who brought bodywork to the Jungian community. In 2010, Elaine graduated from Dr. Woodman’s prestigious three-year BodySoul Rhythms Leadership Training Program. The program incorporates Jungian therapy, dance movement, art, dream analysis, voice and bodywork. Elaine has incorporated this work into her psychotherapy practice and finds it reaches people deeply, enabling them to discover their authentic nature.
Rev. Hye Wol Sunim was first ordained in Sri Lanka in 1977 and took robes in the Korean Zen tradition in 1984. Rev Sunim studied with Buddhist masters in Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Australia, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. He arrived in the United States in 1991 where he translates Pali texts and teaches from the early discourses of the Buddha. Rev. Sunim founded the Meditation Center for Zen Communities (MCZC) and has created a Meditation Center in Pearblossom California. He is the guiding dhamma teacher for The Insight Center.