Lisa Larson has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist for 26 years and a Brainspotting Trainer for the past 11 years. She is a deeply compassionate guide for those healing from trauma. Her work is rooted not only in decades of clinical experience, but in her own profound journey through trauma and recovery. 

Early in her career, Lisa practiced traditional talk therapy. But everything changed when she and her teenage son experienced two separate, life-threatening allergic reactions just weeks apart, both flatlining and being brought back. Although they physically recovered, Lisa was left with acute PTSD. No amount of talking could reach the terror held deep in her body. 

Then, after just two sessions of EMDR, something shifted. She felt herself again; clearer, lighter, and finally free from the internal storm. That moment awakened something powerful in her: a knowing that true healing is possible, even when trauma feels overwhelming. 

Guided by this calling, Lisa sought out the most effective trauma-healing modalities available. She trained with the founder of EMDR and later with David Grand, Ph.D., the creator of Brainspotting. Through Brainspotting, she witnessed clients, many who had carried trauma for decades, release pain they thought would haunt them forever. She saw people reclaim hope, regulation, and wholeness. She knew this work was sacred.

Lisa came to understand that talk therapy alone cannot reach the subcortical regions of the brain where trauma is stored. Real transformation happens when the body, brain, and spirit are given space to release the trapped survival energy of fight, flight, freeze, faint, or fawn. Brainspotting offered that path.

With a full heart and a clear purpose, Lisa founded Pacific Counseling and Trauma Center in Folsom, California in 2012. As a Brainspotting Trainer, she now dedicates her life to teaching therapists how to bring deep, lasting relief to the traumatized—so healing can ripple outward to families, communities, and future generations.

Lisa teaches with warmth, authenticity, and a belief that no one is beyond healing. Her message is simple and hope-filled: Trauma and PTSD are not life sentences. With the right support, freedom, peace, and joy are possible—even after the most overwhelming experiences. 

Healing from trauma involves more than reducing symptoms. For many clients, profound healing includes reclaiming meaning, connection, hope, compassion, inner truths, and an embodied experience of one’s authentic Self, experiences that can be understood as spiritual whether the client believes in God or identifies with a religion.     

This experiential workshop explores the intersection of spirituality and psychotherapy through a clinically inclusive, client-centered lens. Participants will learn to distinguish spirituality from religion and explore ethical ways to invite spiritual resources into treatment without imposing the therapist’s beliefs. The class will include a live demonstration.

Using Brainspotting and other experiential frameworks, Lisa Larson, LMFT, will demonstrate interventions designed to help clients access inner resources, authentic identity, corrective attachment experiences, desired emotional states, deeply held truths, meaningful purpose, and, when initiated by the client, a relationship with God or a Higher Power. Special attention will be given to trauma, grief, shame, betrayal, forgiveness, boundaries, and the restoration of meaning after painful life experiences.