MEET the team

Ana do Valle

Founder, OTR, SEP

Ana is the clinical director and supervisor for the Soma Healing Center in Boulder, CO. She has developed her studies in the areas of Anthroposophical Counseling, Sensory Processing and Somatic Experiencing. Ana specializes in working with the social nervous system.  Her focus is on addressing the art of integrating sensory information in order to create embodiment, […]

Keri Shee

MA, OTR, TCTSY-F

Keri Shee (she/her) is a trauma-informed occupational therapist dedicated to empowering children and parents to learn strategies for nervous system regulation, enhance self-awareness, develop mindfulness-based coping strategies, and understand and communicate their sensory and emotional worlds. Keri specializes in supporting adolescents with anxiety, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, general life transitions, and family changes. […]

Korrie Sparks

OTD, OTR/L

As a doctor of occupational therapy, Korrie Sparks supports Soma Center to understand the whole child through in-depth evaluations. Assessments involve 2-3 hours of in-person testing using the Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT), the gold standard of sensory integration testing. This is a battery of 17 tests to understand your child’s ability to register […]

Dr. Joseph Dillard

Team Member & Advisor

Joseph Dillard was first exposed to holistic health, meditation and dreamwork in 1963, when he was thirteen and traveled to the Middle East for five weeks with the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), an organization dedicated to the study of the trance readings of the medical clairvoyant, Edgar Cayce. The group included Hugh Lynn Cayce, […]

Ana do Valle

Position: Founder, OTR, SEP
Email: anamdovalle@gmail.com

Ana is the clinical director and supervisor for the Soma Healing Center in Boulder, CO. She has developed her studies in the areas of Anthroposophical Counseling, Sensory Processing and Somatic Experiencing. Ana specializes in working with the social nervous system.  Her focus is on addressing the art of integrating sensory information in order to create embodiment, empowerment and coherence in our capacity to “experience” the other and ourselves.  Ana works with families and individuals by facilitating attunement and promoting deeper awareness in regards to the power of healing through relationships. She works with birth and medical trauma, emotional regulation and trauma resultant from cultural fragmentation. She teaches and provides supervision to clinicians on the subject of trauma and healing nationally and outside the US.

Ana has always enjoyed the art of empowering and helping others in their healing journey. As a child she had thoughts of becoming a doctor. As she grew up the options were so many she no longer knew what to study. Luckily, her teacher and mentor, Fernando, was able to help her see the “light” behind the occupational therapy field. He said: “ You will be able to find yourself in it.”
As a teenager she worked with terminal clients, infectious diseases and children and adults with other significant physical and mental health needs. Her passion for music and art led her to bring the guitar and recorder to hospitals and orphanages. Often times she ended her days serenading to children and adults for a night of rest, while they were hospitalized.

Shortly after her graduation, she moved to Denver Colorado for an internship that changed the course of her life. In CO she continued to advance her studies in the areas of Sensor Processing and Somatic Experiencing. She has studied several manual therapy modalities and often combines them in workings directly with the body.

During her career Ana has traveled and learned important cross-cultural principles, reinforcing the basic concept that recovering and repairing of humanity’s suffering resides on our capacity to connect to each other as a way to kindle our own transformation.

Ana, mostly during her training in Somatic Experiencing, has spent time with forest rangers in order to understanding animal resilience (fight/flight/freeze). She has visited universities conducting researches regarding the functioning of the autonomic nervous system. She has spent time with indigenous tribes learning their concept of disconnection/dissociation and healing trauma and disease.

Ana travels to Brasil, Mexico and Europe facilitating meditation and wellness retreats. These retreats happen twice to four times a year.

Ana has in the past couple of years, completed her studies in Anthroposophical Counseling (the psychology that studies the wisdom of Human kind). This last step in Ana’s career has brought more knowledge and wisdom to her personal and professional practice. As of a result of it, she has deepened her knowledge on the 15 Senses and its relationship to our capacity to stay healthy in our body. Sensory processing has emerged in her practice as a trajectory to help process our life experiences, broadening our capacity to evolve, transform and heal our essence. She has edited and co-created a short documentary on “What is Anthroposophy” also found in this website.

In the past three years Ana has been working with sound and music. She has adopted classical music (Focus system and dream pad) and the Safe and Sound f Protocol (SSP) into her practice. Ana has, with the collaboration of her staff, developed the SEGAN, a listening and art-based model (multi-sensory) for treating children, couples and adults who present with difficulties in the areas of affect and behavioral regulation. The SEGAN model has embraced various academic tools Ana has learned in her professional experience. Together, they bring wisdom and magic in a short-term intervention approach. You can learn more about the SEGAN and it’s relationship to Somatic Experiencing, Anthroposophy, SSP and Focus throughout our website.

Ana has a very special daughter named Juliana, who has created the logo for Soma Healing Center. Juliana has many of her drawings illustrating Peter Levine’s children’s books on the subject of healing trauma. She is the main character in the movie “The Mosaic of Healing; The Portal into Transformation”, an educational movie created to illustrate one’s healing path when they participate the SEGAN Model.

Keri Shee

Position: MA, OTR, TCTSY-F
Email: kerishee@gmail.com

Keri Shee (she/her) is a trauma-informed occupational therapist dedicated to empowering children and parents to learn strategies for nervous system regulation, enhance self-awareness, develop mindfulness-based coping strategies, and understand and communicate their sensory and emotional worlds. Keri specializes in supporting adolescents with anxiety, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, general life transitions, and family changes. Keri also offers parent coaching, facilitates parent-child sessions and has extensive experience in consulting and collaborating with families, educators, psychotherapists, and a variety of multidisciplinary teams. 

Keri began her occupational therapy career at Johns Hopkins Hospital and later worked in Baltimore Public Schools. In 2009, she earned a Master’s degree in Secondary Education at CU Boulder and became a middle school language arts teacher in the Boulder Valley School District. During her children’s early years, Keri founded Bolder Writers, LLC where she led creative writing groups for middle school students. She also completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training, eventually founding Spark Youth Yoga, LLC. In 2017, Keri transitioned to her current role at Soma Healing Center, training in polyvagal theory, Safe and Sound Protocol, and HeartMath and earning a 300-hour Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga Facilitator (TCTSY-F) certification from the Center for Trauma and Embodiment at JRI. 

Keri’s therapeutic approach is rooted in the belief that embodied self-connection is central to healing, and her warm, open presence creates a sense of safety for her clients.

In addition to her work as an occupational therapist, Keri is a writer working on her first memoir. She also serves on the Board of Trustees at Boulder Country Day School. Keri is a mama of two, a nature and travel enthusiast, a LGBTQIA+ activist, and a lover of cozy spaces.

Korrie Sparks

Position: OTD, OTR/L
Email: korrie@sparksot.com

As a doctor of occupational therapy, Korrie Sparks supports Soma Center to understand the whole child through in-depth evaluations. Assessments involve 2-3 hours of in-person testing using the Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT), the gold standard of sensory integration testing. This is a battery of 17 tests to understand your child’s ability to register and interpret sensory information including vision, touch, balance, body awareness, auditory processing, and praxis. Insights from testing can provide a deeper understanding of your child’s nervous system and support pin-pointed and effective treatment. You are provided with a 10-12 page report that can be used to support wellbeing at home, school, and within the community.

Korrie specializes in the assessment of children with varying diagnoses, including but not limited to autism, sensory processing disorders, ADD/ADHD, twice exceptional, social-emotional vulnerabilities, and developmental trauma. She has extensive experience collaborating and consulting with families, school staff, and multidisciplinary teams including speech, physical therapists, and psychologists. She received her masters and doctorate degree from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2013. Her doctoral work included intensive training in Ayres Sensory Integration® and the development, implementation and evaluation of a school-based mindfulness program with over 100 kindergarteners and 1st graders. She is certified in Sensory Integration through USC/WPS and has volunteered as a normative data collector for the Evaluation of Ayres Sensory Integration (EASI), a new standardized test designed to measure sensory integration abilities. Korrie has also worked with the Collaborative for Leadership in Ayres Sensory Integration (CLASI) to co-facilitate treatment courses. She is fortunate to call Dr. Susanne Smith Roley her close mentor as a first-generation student of Dr. A. Jean Ayres.

Before moving to Boulder from Southern California in 2020, Korrie worked in private practice as a clinic and community based OT. She also worked as a school-based therapist with school districts across Southern California and provided Independent Educational Evaluations (IEEs) as second opinions. She is well-versed in IDEA special education law and has supported countless families in advocating for school-based services. In 2022, Korrie worked as an OT for Boulder Community Health within the pediatric rehabilitation department. After the department’s closure in December 2022, she opened her private practice in South Boulder. During her free time, Korrie loves taking adventures in nature, reading, creating “cozy” spaces, dancing, cooking, and taking walks through the mountains with her miniature dachshund Darcy.

Dr. Joseph Dillard

Position: Team Member & Advisor
Email: joseph.dillard@gmail.com

Joseph Dillard was first exposed to holistic health, meditation and dreamwork in 1963, when he was thirteen and traveled to the Middle East for five weeks with the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), an organization dedicated to the study of the trance readings of the medical clairvoyant, Edgar Cayce. The group included Hugh Lynn Cayce, son of Edgar Cayce, Bill and Gladys McGarey, founders of the American Holistic Health Association, Ida Rolf, founder of the bodywork known as Rolfing, and several very talented psychics. Immersion in the inclusive, holistic and compassionate worldview of the Edgar Cayce readings created a major paradigm shift from his roots in Protestant US culture. He began a lifelong interest in dreamwork and meditation: Dillard taught seminars in these areas in conjunction with the ARE from 1967 to 1975. In college, Dillard studied comparative religion, psychology and philosophy, with a particular interest in Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika (Mahayana) Buddhism. This caused a second major paradigm shift, because the causal and non-dual perspectives found in Buddhism were not addressed by the “Christian Vedanta” worldview of the Cayce readings. In 1975, Dillard graduated from the University of Texas with a BA in philosophy.  In 1976, he began work in the mental health field and received his Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Arkansas in 1978. He practiced Jungian, Gestalt and other forms of therapy that use dream material extensively. Dillard also received training in Berne’s Transactional Analysis and Glasser’s Reality Therapy. He later received training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with David Burns, M.D. In 1979, while working in northern Arkansas as the administrator of one of two multidisciplinary pain-treatment centers that he developed and managed, he had the opportunity to develop and present health risk reduction programs to groups of senior citizens. For this work, in addition to program development at the pain treatment center, he was awarded a PhD in Holistic Health Sciences from Columbia Pacific University in 1980. In 1981, with inspiration from the sociometric methods developed by psychiatrist J.L. Moreno, Dillard created Dream Sociometry, a dreamwork methodology. The multiple, authentic, autonomous and wise perspectives that Dillard continuously encountered within himself as a consequence of applying this method to his own life created a third crisis in his world view, calling into question fundamental assumptions about who he was, why he was here and what the purpose of life was. Assumptions fundamental to Buddhism, including karma and dharma, were in turn relativized within a broader perceptual context. In 1983, a dream led to a move to Phoenix, Arizona and work as a psychotherapist at the ARE Clinic. About this time, he became an admirer of Ken Wilber’s integral psychology, whose influence is found throughout his writings.

In 1985, Dillard co-authored Dreamworking, How to Use Your Dreams for Creative Problem Solving, with Stanley Krippner, a pioneer in dream telepathy and the exploration of shamanic healing. Dillard married for a second time in 1986, and his daughter Kira was born in 1987. From 1983 until 2008, he worked in private practice as a LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) in Phoenix, Arizona, treating individuals, couples and families for relationship issues, depression, anxiety, addiction, ADD/ADHD and spiritual development issues. Therapy using Dream Sociometry led to the development of a type of Dream Yoga called Integral Deep Listening. IDL is a transpersonal methodology that creates an I-Thou relationship with one’s inner compass using an interviewing protocol with dream characters and the personifications of life issues. In 2000, Dillard began teaching therapeutic imagery, dreamwork, comparative religion and psychology at the Southwest Institute for the Healing Arts (SWIHA), in Tempe, Arizona. In 2006, Dillard began training Integral Deep Listening practitioners in Germany. In 2011, he married Claudia Hahm, a Berlin naturopath and art therapist. Dr. Dillard loves to hike, mountain bike, and swim. He co-leads yearly trips to Bimini, Bahamas with his wife to  free dive with wild dolphins.

In addition to Dreamworking, Dillard is author of several textbooks used with the IDL curriculum. These include: Transformational Dreamwork: Toward an Integral Approach to Deep Listening, Waking Up, Integral Deep Listening Interviewing Techniques, Integral Deep Listening Practitioner, Integral Deep Listening and Healing, Integral Deep Listening and Meditation and Dream Sociometry.  An introductory text, Dream Yoga: Der weg der Träume, is available in GermanHe has also written another text on meditation, Transcending Your Monkey Mind: The Five Trees and Meditation, as well as a text dealing with nightmares, night terrors and PTSD, Ending Nightmares for Good. and a work exploring mystical experiences, Light from Heaven: Deep Listening to Near Death Experiences.

More information about three transformational world views that have been part of Dillard’s development can be found at his website at: Integral Listening.

 
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