Rachel Howard is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of California, Nationally Board- Certified Art Therapist, Registered Yoga Teacher, Clinical Supervisor & Consultant, as well as a Certified Focusing-Oriented Expressive Arts (FOAT®) Practitioner.
She has almost a decade of experience working with children, adults, couples, and families in a therapeutic capacity. She specializes in trauma and family work. She is an integrative psychotherapist – integrating art therapy, play therapy, sand tray, mindfulness, astrology, spirituality, and more into therapy.
Born with a big humanitarian heart – a deep love for all living things: a kind soul whose purpose in this life is to serve – from growing up on a farm as a child, she naturally connected, cared for, and showed deep concern for animals. In middle school, she studied at the local zoo in the summers and thought her purpose was to help protect and take care of animals.
Although she made art throughout her childhood, she only more heavily started making her own art in High School as a teen. During this time, Rachel had a very early calling to use art to help others and had her first job facilitating Art Therapy (intuitively and naturally!) at the age of 17 working with adults with developmental challenges. She developed art curriculums for them, thinking of creative ways to use art based on their unique needs. During High School, she was asked to help the Elementary School Speech Pathologist with the children: she used art to help them with their speech. Rachel fell in love with working with children. Around this time, her High School guidance counselor caught onto her natural interest and abilities to use art to help people and told her there was a whole career for what she was already doing as a teenager.
As a therapist, she has experience working mostly in homeless shelters, public schools, and non-profit clinics. She is very passionate about being a part of ending the cycle of homelessness and poverty worldwide and believes this is a big part of her life’s work.
Rachel fully identifies with being a family therapist – she discovered this early on in her internships, always blown away by the depth of work she was able to do therapeutically when including the whole family.
She describes her approach as holistic, compassionate, mindful, playful, creative, grounded, and prioritizes compassionate listening. While working with her clients, Rachel holds the deep knowing and belief that each of our minds, body, and spirit are naturally moving toward health and healing. That we are all born with an innate and inherent wholeness that can often get lost in our culture as we grow or due to traumas where help was not available at that time. Rachel holds a heartfelt and safe space for the natural healing of her clients.
