Meet Our Team
At Embodied Relationships Counseling Center, we specialize in relationship and intimacy wellness. Combining Somatic Psychotherapy, Couples Therapy, and Sexology, we are trained to support your whole relationship. Our goal is to help you create a meaningful and embodied way of life together.
Melissa Walker
MA, LPC, CST, R-DMT
Founder & Director
Melissa is a licensed Dance/Movement Psychotherapist and AASECT Certified Sex Therapist who specializes in intimacy and relationship therapy. A graduate of Naropa University in 2009, Melissa weaves together her Masters level training with additional training in Pragmatic/Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C), Sex Therapy, Psychodrama, and Authentic Movement. She is also certified in Somatic Archaeology and is a SomaSource LifeCycle Practitioner. Melissa is former adjunct faculty at Naropa University where she taught Counseling Ethics & Professional Orientation for 4 years.
Through study and work, Melissa has crafted the Somatic-Concentric Sex Therapy (S-CST) model for working with clients. S-CST is a confluence of dance/movement therapy, contemplative, and sexology theories. This model harnesses the client’s actualizing tendency, a tendency towards growth and complexity, toward a fully embodied experience and expression of the sexual self.
Her book, Whole-Body Sex: Somatic Sex Therapy and the Lost Language of the Erotic Body was published in January 2021. Whole-Body Sex supports readers to craft a personally meaningful, consensual, and sexuality-affirming embodiment of self.
Anna Mayer
MA, LPC, R-DMT
Therapist
Anna is dedicated to supporting couples and individuals in deepening their intimacy through embodiment. Relationships and sexuality can be sources of great joy and expansion in our lives, yet also can be full of stuckness and pain. To help you move toward more authentic, joyful relating, Anna will draw from her Masters-level training in Somatic Counseling Psychology, as well as her clinical training in Somatic-Concentric Sex Therapy and effective communication. While working together, you will use a blend of somatic, contemplative, person-centered, and sexology theories to support your growth.
Anna's approach is open-minded, sex-positive, and nonjudgmental. She is passionate about supporting people to find healing in all forms of relationships, including polyamorous and LGBTQIA relationships. Ultimately, Anna trusts you, her clients, to grow toward the sunlight. She believes in your capacity for healing and sees her job as helping you ‘clean the windows’ so you can find your way toward the light. By connecting with your innate wisdom, you can begin to come into fuller contact with what it means for you to be a vibrant, healthy, conscious co-creator of your intimate relationships.
Jenelle Thurston
MA, LPCC
Therapist
Jenelle brings warmth, genuine care, and integrity to create a non-judgmental container for clients to explore their challenges, uncertainties, and uplift their strengths. Her approach is collaborative, client-centered, and relational, and she trusts in the here-and-now as being a powerful indicator of what needs our attention and care. As a licensed professional counselor candidate (LPCC), and Somatic Psychotherapist, Jenelle’s intention is to support clients in exploring, accessing, and developing a relationship with their bodies in which they can trust their innate bodily wisdom as valuable and healing.
Jenelle’s therapeutic approach integrates her Masters-level training in Somatic Psychotherapy from Naropa University, as well as applications of Somatic-Concentric Sex Therapy, Pragmatic-Experiential Couples Therapy, parts work, inner child work, attachment theory, nervous system regulation, somatic practices and mindfulness. Additionally, her work is informed by years of practicing and facilitating yoga, breathwork journeys, and wellness retreats. Jenelle desires supporting individuals and couples in working through challenges to create deeper connection, ease, intimacy, and pleasure with oneself and others.