Faculty

Brinda Jacob-Janvrin is a contemporary dancer/choreographer with more than 25 years of performing experience. She is also a qualified counsellor and has been working extensively with movement therapy over the last 15 years.

Her current movement disciplines include contemporary dance (1994 onwards), Authentic Movement (2011 onwards) and Ashtanga yoga (2013 onwards). Her previous movement training includes Kalaripayattu, Bharatanatayam, Kathak, Hatha, and Vinaysa Flow yoga, Physical theatre, Contact Improvisation, etc.

From 2012 onwards Brinda has been training in and exploring Expressive Arts Therapy as a powerful modality with which to work with clients. While movement and the body is her primary modality, she also engages with techniques from visual art therapy, drama therapy, sand play, and psychodrama.

Today Brinda trains, works with individual and group clients, facilitates, performs and choreographs.

Aarathi Selvan is a licensed Clinical Psychologist (India, NZ), National Certified Counselor (USA) and the Founder-Director of Pause for Perspective, Hyderabad, and a trained teacher of Mindfulness-Based Symptom Management from Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic, Canada.

Aarathi has worked in the area of Mindfulness and Mental Health and Wellness for the last 10 years. She has conducted more than 100 eight-week Mindfulness programs in Hyderabad and across the country. She trains mental health professionals in Mindfulness and Psychotherapy. In the last several years she has worked with different corporates, NGOs, schools, and colleges in delivering Mindfulness-Based Interventions as well as other psychological and psychosocial programs. She manages a team of 16 psychologists at Pause for Perspective. She is a faculty at St. Francis Degree College and teaches the Masters program in Counseling and also teaches the Post Graduate Diploma Program in Psychological Counseling. She teaches, supervises and trains mental health professionals in the city of Hyderabad. She works and supervises in the area of mindfulness, trauma, couples work, queer affirmative counseling, and the intersectionality of mental health and marginalization.

With nearly 15 years of experience as an artist, facilitator, and therapist, Pallavi has had the opportunity to work in schools, special needs centers, arts collectives, charities and hospital settings in India and the UK. She received the Charles Wallace India Scholarship Award in 2015 and completed her training in Drama and Movement Therapy at RCSSD, London in 2017. She is a certified Arts-Based therapist trained with WCCLF, Pune in 2012.

Pallavi is passionate about using the arts with children of all ages. She works with children and adults who are differently-abled and young adults challenged with behavioral issues and mental health concerns. As a Creative Arts Therapist, her practice is influenced by the arts-based therapy approach and the Sesame approach to drama and movement therapy which is informed by Jungian psychology, Laban movement, play theory and Billy Lindkvist’s work with Movement with Touch and Sound. She currently practices under the initiative – Turiya, with different communities, organizations, and institutions.

Atmica is a qualified movement psychotherapist. She has completed her MA in Dance Movement Psychotherapy from the University of Derby, UK. She is a registered member of the Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy, UK and with the Indian Association of Dance Movement Therapy.

Atmica uses a combination of conventional psychological theories and creative tools such as visual art, music and movement to facilitate the therapeutic process. With a person-centred approach to her counselling, she supports clients with emotional, psychological and relational challenges. Her primary objective is to promote holistic development of clients through unique verbal/non-verbal interventions that are informed by theories of the mind-body interrelationship. She is especially passionate about trauma work and incorporates neuroscience backed evidence-based approaches in her therapeutic interventions.

As a mental health professional, Atmica aims at providing a safe space for clients to navigate their concerns within the gentle holding of the therapeutic relationship. She works with children, adolescents and adults across various health, education and social care setups.

Avantika Malhautra is a trained Psychologist, Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT) and a Board Member of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association.

She founded Soul Canvas – Art for Wellness in 2014 and has 9 years of work experience in the field of mental health, working at schools, hospitals, NGOs and therapy centres in India.

Avantika offers psychotherapy to youth and adults through an integrative expressive arts therapy approach that includes presence-oriented, person-centred therapy with a systems, multicultural, queer-affirmative and trauma-sensitive lens through her private practice. Her work is focused on bringing awareness to the mind-body connection, deep listening, creative engagement through the arts and insight.

She also partners with organisations to facilitate expressive arts therapy groups in training, through workshops on self-leadership, counselling skills and art therapy. She is passionate about making the arts accessible to all for individual healing and social change.

Nidhi Khurana is a certified Expressive Arts Therapist. Trained at advanced levels in a multi-modal approach, she facilitates powerful and potentially transformative spaces for individuals and groups for wellbeing and mental health. She has worked with groups of various compositions and backgrounds, from inmates of government-run observation homes and children in marginalised communities to cohorts of artists and employees in tech organisations. She also collaborates with organisations like MAP (Museum of Art and Photography) on education and outreach programs for various sections of the population. In her work with individuals, she has a depth-oriented trauma-sensitive private practice, both virtual and in-person.

Nidhi draws significantly from her own journey through the labyrinth of the inner world over the last 15 years. She traversed many spiritual paths before the inner roars brought her to the doorway of a therapeutic approach rooted in Jungian psychology, bringing together spirit and matter. Explorations of the psyche-soma interweavings through authentic movement, various forms of yoga like hatha-yin, breathwork-kriyas, esoteric practices of swara yoga-tattva shuddhi; dreamwork and visual art practices; psychodrama and free movement have been at the core of her process. This descent from the hegemony of the mind to the mysteries and intrigue of the body has brought her to the very powerful and nourishing space of the deep feminine. She sees her work as an emanation from and offering to that space.

Prior to her foray into the world of therapy and inner work, Nidhi had a decade-long tryst with the apparel retail and brand industry in analytics and business management along with a brief entrepreneurial stint in between.

Deenyar N. Garda has been working as a Counselling therapist for over 5 years. He did his M.Sc. in Counselling Psychology from Sampurna Montfort College, Bangalore. While pursuing his Masters, he also did allied workshops and training programs to help him go deeper and lay a foundation on which to build his profession (including CBT, REBT, Art therapy, etc. and a 9-month Transactional Analysis in Action’ course).

Deenyar believes in a holistic and eclectic approach to self-development and healing, with special attention to the mind-body connection. A firm believer that self-awareness, among both clients and therapists, is cornerstone for wellness and growth, through challenges in the different areas of life. He works with clients to help them get in touch with themselves to create positive thought and behavioural patterns leading to a more functional and empowering life. Some of the predominant issues he has worked on are family dynamics, abuse, relationships, identity/sexuality, clinical, depression & suicide, etc., with various populations including students, working professionals and LGBTQIA+ communities.

In addition to working with people, he gives time to personal development and believes that self-work is equally important to be able to be a more effective therapist. He has completed his first level in Family Constellations, and is currently pursuing the second level to become a Family Constellation facilitator, so as to help clients in a different modality.

Ashlon has done his Masters in Counseling Psychology from Sampurna Montfort College. He has held the posts of Assistant Professor of Psychology and College Counselor at St. Joseph’s Evening College, Bangalore. He has also worked as School Counselor at Greenwood High International School, Bangalore. He is currently working as a freelance counselor.

Daisy Isaac has a PhD in Clinical Counselling from De La Salle University, Manila, M.Sc in psychology from Madras University, as well as M.Ph in Integral Counselling Psychology from JDV, Pune. She has done her B.Sc in chemistry and has completed her B.Ed training course.

Daisy is engaged in individual as well as group counselling and has been conducting workshops on various topics related to self- awareness and personal growth for the past twenty-three years. Currently she is a part-time faculty at Montfort College and teaches subjects like psychopathology, life-span development and counselling skills and techniques. She is also a visiting faculty at Peyton Institute for families at Sakalvara. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Martin Luther Christian University, Shillong.

Her areas of interest include training counsellors, interpersonal processing, personality types and issues related to women. She also contributed to the academic world through her publications. She is an avid reader and a passionate traveller.

Raviraj is an occupational therapist who believes that all the problems of this world are rooted in the structural systems of oppression rather than in communities or peoples bodies and identities. His work is informed by Narrative practices, sensory integration, accountability practices, queer writings, children’s books, his mother’s cooking practices and his communities ways of living.

He consults with communities, children, families, adults and organizations to discover and reauthor their preferred ways of being. He is a teacher of Narrative practices and Early childhood development; and teaches in local and international workshops and diplomas. He supports the work of therapists and community health workers through supervision and consultation.

Divya Kandukuri is an anticaste activist and founder of The Blue Dawn, a support group and facilitator of accessible mental health care services for Bahujan communities. She is also a freelance journalist and video producer whose work lies around the intersections of caste, gender, pop culture, and mental health.

Christy Nag is an Adivasi of Munda Tribe whose work lies in the intersections of Adivasi, transgender and child rights. Since 2016 she has been working along with the Adivasi youth from tea gardens in Dooars and is a member of Prayatn – Striving for Equality. Christy is pursuing integrated MPhil-PhD at TISS, Mumbai and is a member of the Queer Collective – TISS, Adivasi Students’ Forum – TISS and the Blue Dawn. She has been writing on Adivasi concerns from Adivasi perspective and has bylines in Youth ki Awaaz and First Post.

Vamsi is a Bangalore-based theatre artist who has been involved with the theatre fraternity for over a decade. Starting out as a hobby during his undergraduate years at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, theatre soon became a significant occupation, and then a full-time profession. Vamsi’s practice is influenced by his Dalit identity, experience and location, which inform the questions, topics and mediums that he engages with.

Neeraj is a Queer Affirmative and Trauma Informed Counselling Practitioner. They are trained from SMART on Foundation of Expressive Creative Arts Therapeutics modalities (Batch 2022). Neeraj runs a small practice in New Delhi and online globally. They come from interdisciplinary disciplinary background in Psychology, Social work and Women’s and Gender Studies. Recently, They finished a project on Trans Affirmative Mental Health Care Guidelines with TISS Mumbai. Neeraj trains practitioner on Gender, Sexuality, Trans, Gender Diverse, Queerness, Caste and Affirmative approaches and is interested in conversation and building movement around the same.

Robin is an Expressive Arts Therapy Practitioner (certified by Studio for Movement Arts & Therapies, Bangalore) with a keen interest in movement based practices. Body & movement and what it means to live an embodied life are his areas of research and exploration.

Before moving to Expressive Arts, Robin worked as a a Communications professional specialising in Public Relations, Social Media and Digital Communications.

Monica Gangoly has been associated with SMArT as a graphic designer since its inception. She graduated from the second batch of FECAT and now contributes as a resource builder, strategic planner, developing the Learning Management System and instructional design of the various courses offered by SMArT.

She also spearheads her design studio – MGP India, creating communication material for corporates & individuals. With over 2 decades of experience in the field of advertising & design, Monica started her career at Grey Advertising, before launching out on her own.

Kate Donohue is a licensed psychologist & a registered expressive arts therapist (REAT). She holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology & has maintained an active private practice for 33 years. She has also been teaching for 30 years, at institutions such as the California Institute of Integral Studies, Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, JFK University & the San Francisco C.G. Jung Institute. She is a co-founder of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association & an MCEP & CEU provider.

Kate believes that searching for meaning connects us to the soul & the spirit, resulting in a life that is more open, more joyful & closer to the true self. Her approach to psychotherapy is guided by her passion for art, culture & spirituality. Her work marries Jungian oriented expressive arts therapy with a search for what is real, authentic & unique within us.

Since 1986 Dr. Leonilla has been deeply involved in studying the Mind-Body-Spirit relationship. She has worked on finding a synergy between eastern and western spirituality and has spent a considerable amount of time researching the practice of meditation and delving deep into eastern spirituality.

Phoenix transformation sessions and Shadow Work developed by her help leaders empower themselves through transformation, integration, and individuation.

Dr. Leonilla is the founder of BODHI -a Centre for Human Growth into Consciousness and has spearheaded this organization for the time of its inception. She is also the founder of the Resource Center for Training and Development, this center works with the Psycho-spiritual approach in helping people unfold and discover themselves.

She was awarded the gold medal for her Ph.D. for best research work and M.V. Govindaswamy memorial prize for her research work for MPhil, in NIMHANS. She also holds a doctoral degree in Metaphysical Sciences from the University of Meta-Physics in California, USA.