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

Alright, Nicole thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

My now dear friend and business partner, Juniper, and I met at a consultation group for therapists who used mindfulness in their practices. We immediately hit it off over our shared passion for incorporating holistic methods like movement and nutrition into our work with clients and as a means for managing our own mental health. At the time, in 2013/2014, even in larger more progressive cities, it was rare for therapists to utilize these methods and even rarer for a whole practice to be founded on providing opportunities for whole self care in-house at a private practice. I was a single mom who had only recently gotten off food stamps and government insurance. We both had very limited funds and were working second jobs, but we went for it anyway! We rented a studio space right next to our tiny private practice office and began offering free yoga and exercise classes to clients. In January of 2015, we incorporated as Bridge Counseling and Wellness. Some colleagues lovingly challenged our way of practicing, so we continued to educate ourselves on other holistic aspects of mental health like how the microbiome and inflammation contribute to mental health and how exercise, nutrition and supplementation could help set the body and mind up for greater since of emotional well being. We reviewed all of the research we could find on the mind-body connection in mental health and used that research to create a training program for mental health professionals approved by the licensing boards so other professionals would feel greater confidence in practicing outside of the box in this way when that felt aligned for their clients. That led to confounding a second company together, The Academy of Integrative Mental Health. Now, Bridge Counseling and Wellness has multiple locations and 60+ team members. We offer all sorts of non-traditional options for our clients. Many are body based approaches, but we also offer art therapy, walk and talk therapy, reiki and some clinicians even do private ritual practice with clients who are drawn to those kinds of modalities. We have become such a “well oiled machine” at this point, that we are able to continue to find new and creative ways to serve our community. Most recently we received a 100k grant to increase services to uninsured and underinsured people and immigrants. We are grateful for the opportunity to continue learning and growing with an emphasis on serving the greater good in a way that feels aligned and mutually empowering. If you are thinking of starting your own practice, remember to listen inward to your own intuition and acknowledge your own unique and authentic interests and gifts, to accept and learn from challenges and to above all do your best to operate from a place of integrity and mutual respect. It is okay to explore new ways of doing things. That is how we change the world!

Nicole, 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 became a “helping professional” at the age of 19 by working with kids who had been abused or neglected and removed from their homes by the state as a Residential Youth Counselor or “house parent” at a local children’s home. I fell in love with the kids I met and learned so much by witnessing their growth and resilience, the places they got stuck, and where the systems they were a part of failed them. It wasn’t until I gave birth to my oldest child, Nieem, at the age of 24 that I realized how much of my own childhood which had been wrought with violence and dysfunction had affected me and entered my own personal therapy. It was in my therapist’s office, that I decided I wanted to be a therapist. I was a single mom on food stamps and Medicaid, and in order to not leave my son more than necessary, I opened a small “Waldorf-style” daycare in my apartment during the day where we gardened and played with beeswax, wool and watercolor paints and stayed active with domestic violence and mental health related volunteering and activism as often as possible. Friends and family helped watch my son while I went to school in the evenings. It was a ton of work. My oldest didn’t sleep through the night until he was 6, and I was often up late doing homework and finishing projects. I went straight through undergraduate and graduate school but eventually made it through to the other side. During my first “real” therapy job, I came to realize that I cared a whole lot about this work and about being of real service to the people I had the privilege of accompanying through aspects of their healing journey. I also learned that I was exceptionally driven and had leadership tendencies. After a few years working in community mental health in various forms, I made the move to private practice. And a couple years later, merged forces with my beloved friend and business partner Juniper Owens to open Bridge Counseling and Wellness and The Academy of Integrative Mental Health. We wanted to utilize all the integrative/holistic resources available to us that weren’t commonly associated with therapy at the time. Since mental health is a female dominated field, and sometimes females are expected or conditioned to overgive, we wanted to create a place where folx drawn to this kind of work could do it in a way that also honored their own needs and felt mutually respectful and sustainable. Today, Bridge has several locations and over 60 team members. The Academy offers a full library of continuing education for mental health professionals and a podcast called “Conscious Mental Health” ran by our team. We were trailblazers in normalizing the use of mindfulness, movement and nutrition in mental health and in expanding the range of alternatives to traditional talk therapy available to folx in our community. I am now doing my best to translate everything I have learned working in the field in various forms since the 1999 into public speaking and workshops and through writing. I am still a practicing, licensed psychotherapist in Louisville, KY and life coach for clients throughout the country. I have found my own unique route of assisting others by overlapping spirituality and mental health with a primary focus on assisting others through their awakening journeys and in helping leaders and other heart-led “overachievers” maintain real balance in their lives. I am learning more all of the time, and I am still deeply in love with this work.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Since we are all here learning different things and we all have our own unique thread of medicine to offer the world (and ourselves) it feel very important to me that we all do our best to learn to listen to our own inner knowing. Our own deepest truth. Our own intuition. No one else holds the ability to listen inward to your heart and your Truth but you. No one can be the highest expression of you but you. No one can leave the situations you no longer feel healthy or safe in but you. It is your privilege and your responsibility to know and love yourself. Whatever it takes, learn to listen to and to be with your own inner landscape. Learn to accept the wide range of emotions that move through, the parts of yourself you like and the parts you find more challenging and the ups and downs that are inevitable in life. Love yourself from the inside out, and then let that love you know yourself to be spill forth in everything you do. THAT is how peace is made.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Staying in integrity. We did it because it doesn’t feel very good to operate otherwise, but somehow it has also allowed us to be “successful” according the world’s standards as well. There will always be more to learn, and no one gets it “right” all the time, but if and when you realize you are out of integrity, own it, realign and keep moving. Care less about how you seem and more about how you actually ARE. That’s what matters most. You are manifesting an authentically empowered life in which you align with your deepest truth and do your best to honor yourself and others. The rest is secondary. Let’s go!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bridgemindbody.com, www.nicolesartini.com, www.academyimh.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edensidesanctuary/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicole.sartini
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@academyintegrativementalhealth
• Other: https://academyimh.com/cmh-podcast/

Image Credits
All these are self taken. My colleague has all the pics of me actually speaking and is sending them to me today if you want me to send them tonight, but I know you were waiting on this so just wanted to get it in ASAP. Thank you!