Dr. Pipkins
Licensed Psychologist. Consultant.
Somatic Therapy & Mindfulness Services - Online
If you can’t always explain what you feel—but a phrase like “the body keeps the score” lands in your spirit—you’re in the right place.
I offer an integrated mind-body approach to healing, specializing in serving high-achieving Black women navigating complex, high-demand environments—women who are thoughtful, capable, and self-aware, yet still feel tense, wired, or constantly “on” in their bodies.
You may already understand why you feel the way you do. And still, your nervous system doesn’t seem to get the message. Through mindfulness and somatic therapy, we work directly with the body and nervous system to help you settle, regulate, and respond differently to stress over time.
Rather than pushing for change, we build awareness, safety, and capacity—so healing becomes something your system can integrate, not something you have to force.
This free 15-minute call is a gentle way to explore fit — no commitment, just space to ask questions and see what support feels right.
Mindfulness helps you slow down enough to notice what your body is communicating.
Somatic therapy helps you respond to those signals in real time, in ways that gently reshape the nervous system.
Together, they create a steady rhythm of awareness → regulation → integration—support that’s sustainable in real life, not just in the therapy room.
Along with my depth of training in mindful cognitive behavioral therapies, I bring warmth, presence, and a relational way of working to this practice. As I expanded my training to include brain–body approaches such as Brainspotting, which works with the nervous system from the bottom up, I began to notice a meaningful shift in the work. Clients weren’t just gaining insight—they were starting to feel more settled, at ease, and supported in their bodies. That experience is what shaped how I practice today.
A Quick Introduction.
Signs You’re Ready for Mind–Body Connection
You might feel drawn to mindfulness or somatic therapy if insight alone hasn’t been enough — if you understand why you feel the way you do, but your body still feels tense, wired, or “on alert.”
This approach often resonates if:
You can talk about your feelings, yet don’t feel grounded in your body
Stress shows up physically (tight chest, racing thoughts, jaw tension, restlessness, trouble sleeping)
You’ve built awareness or boundaries, but still feel pushed past your limits
You tend to push through discomfort rather than pause and notice
You want healing that feels integrated, not just intellectual
You’re looking for tools that support you in daily life, not only in session
Mind–body therapy isn’t about becoming a perfectly calm or regulated version of yourself.
It’s about building a different relationship with your body and nervous system — one that supports you, responds to your needs, and helps you move through the world with more steadiness and choice.
Why Mindfulness Supports Anxiety and Burnout
Mindfulness isn’t about forcing yourself to be calm, breathing perfectly, or sitting in silence. It’s a practice that helps your nervous system learn new patterns over time — especially if you’ve spent years operating in high-alert, high-responsibility, or survival mode.
When practiced gently and consistently, mindfulness can help you:
• Notice stress signals before they become overwhelming
• Slow down automatic reactions and respond with more choice
• Reduce the physical intensity of anxiety
• Build tolerance for rest, stillness, and internal quiet
• Strengthen emotional resilience and self-compassion
• Reconnect with your values instead of constant urgency
Mindfulness doesn’t “fix” anxiety — it helps your body remember what steadiness feels like, so you can return to it more easily, even on difficult days.
What Mindfulness Looks Like in Our Sessions
In therapy, mindfulness isn’t about forcing calm, becoming emotionless, or sitting in silence for long periods. It looks more like practicing awareness with support while learning how to gently communicate with your body and nervous system.
Together, we may:
Slow down and notice what’s happening in your body in real time
Practice grounding and breath techniques that are doable, not performative
Explore how thoughts, emotions, and sensations influence each other
Identify the subtle signs of stress before they become overwhelming
Experiment with tools you can use inside and outside of the therapy room
Build rituals or routines that fit your actual life, not an idealized one
Mindfulness inside therapy is less about “getting it right” and more about learning what supports your body, especially when you’re navigating pressure, visibility, and high expectations. We move at a pace that respects your history, identity, and capacity — no pushing, no shaming, no urgency.
Why There’s Bridge-work Between Sessions
Therapy is powerful, but lasting change happens when what you learn in session begins to show up in the moments that matter — outside the therapy room, in your real life, relationships, and routines. That’s why I offer what I call bridge work, not homework.
Bridge work is gentle, practical, and personalized, and its goal is simple:
to help your nervous system experience what we talk about, not just understand it.
Bridge work may include:
A short grounding practice
A body-based awareness prompt
A journaling question or reflection
A mindful pause you try once a day
A skill you experiment with during a specific situation
A sensory or breath technique you practice briefly
It’s not about perfection, pressure, or getting a gold star — it’s about repetition, practice, and curiosity. Each small step becomes a bridge from insight → embodiment → habit → transformation.
In other words, we don’t just talk about healing — we slowly rehearse it, inside and outside of session, so it has a place to land.
This free 15-minute phone call is a gentle way to explore fit — no commitment, just space to ask questions and see what support feels right.
Why This Work Matters for Black Women
Many Black women move through the world holding a double weight: the emotional labor of caring for others and the pressure to stay composed, capable, and “on” even when your nervous system is tired. Over time, the body internalizes this pace — tightening, bracing, pushing through.
Mindfulness and somatic therapy offer a different path.
They help you understand not just why you feel overwhelmed, but how your body has been carrying that history — and how to gently release patterns that no longer serve you.
This work creates room for softness, clarity, and a steadier internal life, grounded in who you truly are rather than what the world expects from you.
A Slower, More Sustainable Way to Heal
Many traditional approaches to healing focus primarily on insight—understanding patterns, naming emotions, or tracing experiences back to their origins. While insight matters, it isn’t always enough to change how stress is held in the body.
Mind–body therapy offers a slower, more sustainable path. Rather than pushing for catharsis or constant progress, we attend to pacing, safety, and capacity. We notice when your system needs steadiness instead of more analysis, and when rest itself becomes a form of repair.
Over time, this approach helps your nervous system learn that it doesn’t have to remain on high alert to function or survive. Healing becomes less about fixing yourself and more about building a responsive, respectful relationship with your body—one that supports your real life, not an idealized version of it.
What This Work Makes Possible
When you’re no longer pushing past your body’s signals, you gain access to a different kind of life — one with more choice, more breath, and more room for your own needs. Over time, mind–body therapy helps you move through the world with less urgency and more clarity, reconnect with a sense of internal safety, and build spaciousness you don’t have to earn by overworking or holding everything together. You begin to feel more like yourself again — not the version shaped by pressure, but the one rooted in presence, intuition, and steadiness.