We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Benintendi. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.

Melissa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

One of the leaps I took that feels like a moment of intuitive brilliance was to start a podcast with someone I barely knew. My now business partner and I ended up on a 10 hour car ride to a conference together after everyone else bailed on the trip last minute. We discovered a shared passion around EMDR therapy and spent the entire drive discussing our experiences, challenges and passion. By the end of the trip we had decided that we should be recording what we were saying and the idea for Notice That – An EMDR Podcast was born. It has been the backbone of our company since the beginning and allowed us to reach an international audience that would have been impossible otherwise.

Melissa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an owner and the Director of Clinical Embodiment at Beyond Healing Institute in Springfield, MO. I began my career as a trauma therapist primarily practicing EMDR therapy which is a specific form of trauma processing therapy. I am now an international EMDR consultant and trainer and specifically focus on practicing EMDR with a somatic orientation.I am a coauthor and trainer of Somatic Integration and Processing, which is a case conceptualization model that teaches therapists to understand their work through the lenses of somatic psychology, interpersonal neurobiology and adaptive information processing models. I am also a cohost and creator of ‘Notice That – An EMDR Podcast’ which reaches an international audience of over 40,000 listeners monthly. I currently am pursuing my doctorate in Transpersonal and Somatic Psychology through the California Institute of Integral Studies.

The beginning of my career was spent as a therapy for a DWI Court program in our country where I working with men and women along side a probation officer and judge. It was an intense way to begin as a therapist because the needs of the clients were so great and the pressure for change was so high. It became clear to me early on that the root of my clients struggles had little to do with their substance use and so much to do with early life experience and the trauma’s they had survived. When I went to my supervisors with questions about how to address the struggles at a deeper level I was very dissatisfied with the answers I received. This led me to start researching treatment options that may work at a deeper level to heal trauma. This is how I found EMDR therapy and it became the primary focus of how I worked with all my clients.

At 33 years old I burnt out and had to leave my job. The pressures of the work load and the environment had resulted in high blood pressure and insomnia. I started my own practice because I knew I couldn’t go back to agency work. My passion for EMDR and working at the deepest layers of my clients struggles only grew and I eventually trained to be an EMDR consultant and trainer. I started an EMDR podcast with a colleague and together we offered EMDR Therapy Intensives that included a holistic healing approach with massage and yoga. Slowly but steadily the podcast grew and within a couple of years thousands of therapists were listening. We started connecting with people from all over the world and providing consultation and training.

The more I learned and grew as a therapist and teacher the more apparent it because that my real heart and passion lied in a somatic perspective to therapeutic work. The intricacies of the human nervous system, the beauty of our embodied communication with each other and the world drew my focus. I got trained in various body focused modalities and eventually decided to pursue my PhD in Somatic Psychology. My dissertation work is focused on pivotal moments of change that happen in a body to body encounter.

Besides working on my dissertation most of my teaching at this point focuses on helping therapists learn how to work with the body in mind in the therapeutic process.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

There are two things that I receive as consistent feedback regarding why people are drawn to our work. The first is passion. My colleagues and I are so genuinely excited by the things we get to teach about and it shows. We aren’t afraid to show our enthusiasm and eagerness when we teach because it is real for us. It’s taught me to choose projects that I am truly excited about and not just because something may be a good seller. If I’m not excited I don’t do it and it means our students and listeners feel the inspiration and passion behind the information.
The second bit of feedback we receive a lot is about our relationships as a team. We co-host the podcast and team teach our trainings. People love seeing our interactions and the way we interact. I think it creates a sense of belonging that many of us are longing for. To see a group of people who are very different in many ways, come together with a shared excitement is fun and it makes you want to be a part of what’s happening.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I believe our success has been built on our willingness to put out a lot of content for free. We don’t have sponsors on the podcast. We haven’t even had profit from the podcast but it has proven to be the foundation for all the ways we do make profit. We invested for two years with our time and energy before anything really came from it. The only way we could do that without it feeling terrible is because we were really enjoying ourselves. It was fun to plan the episodes and talk about things we were really interested in. It was a wonderful surprise when it became what it is today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.connectbeyondhealingc.om
• Instagram: the_body_in_mind
• Facebook: Notice That
• Youtube: Think Beyond

Image Credits

Jes Scott
Revel Advertising