Nati Porat, MA, MEd

A Self that goes on changing is a Self that goes on living - Virginia Woolf

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Nati Porat, MA, MEd's style

Why Nati Porat, MA, MEd chose to be in the helping profession

I have long been interested in how people grow through life’s unpredictable turns, and in the stories we tell about who we are. My background in counseling, dance/movement therapy, the performing arts, and education has taught me to listen to the whole person, including what may be expressed through the body, emotions, imagination, and the stories we carry. My interest in myth, symbol, and depth psychology continues to deepen my curiosity about the images and meanings that arise from within. I am drawn to the ways these different threads can come together to help us better understand ourselves and the experiences that shape us.

Focusing brought these threads together for me. It offers a way to stay close to what the body knows, sometimes even before we have words for it, and to trust the person’s own unfolding process. I find it deeply meaningful to accompany someone as they discover a kinder and more spacious relationship with themselves, while accessing their inner wisdom and discovering how their life energy wants to be expressed. I see the therapeutic process as a space where there is room to slow down, listen inward, and become curious about what is already present within you. My role is to offer steady companionship and support as you find your own way forward.

Nati Porat, MA, MEd's approach

My work is rooted in Inner Relationship Focusing, a gentle process of listening inward. You bring an issue that matters to you, and I offer invitations that help you notice how the whole situation feels in your body. Sensations, emotions, images, memories, or gestures may arise, sometimes in ways that are unexpected or difficult to put into words. There is no need to force an answer or tell your story before you are ready. Patient curiosity with your process is cultivated as an essential component of the Focusing practice, allowing you to stay close to your own experience without needing to rush toward an explanation.

I am also drawn to myth, symbol, and depth psychology. When an image or symbol arises naturally in a Focusing session, we can stay with how it resonates in your body and life rather than impose an interpretation or decide too quickly what it means. Such moments can help a fuller sense of self and meaning take shape, including aspects of experience that ordinary explanation may miss. We practice being with each part of your experience, including feelings that seem contradictory, confusing, or difficult, from a place of compassionate presence. As a relationship of trust grows within, something that has felt stuck may begin to shift. I follow your pace and your own sense of what is right, while offering steady companionship and precise, gentle guidance.

What you can expect from sessions with Nati Porat, MA, MEd

We begin with an issue you want to explore: perhaps grief or longing, confusion about an area of your life, a question of belonging, a relationship pattern, a decision, or a creative block. You can share as much or as little background as you wish. I help you pause and sense how the issue lives in you, creating space to notice what is happening beneath the surface and listen for what it may want you to understand. There is no expectation that you need to arrive with a clear story or a solution. We begin with what is present for you and allow the process to unfold at a pace that feels right.

At times words emerge; at other times an image, symbol, gesture, or small bodily shift tells us something new. We can be curious about the meaning it carries for you, without rushing to explain or interpret it. Together, we make room for the parts of your experience that may not yet have language, trusting that something meaningful can emerge when we stay present with them. The aim is to help you hear your own wisdom and recognize what feels true for you. From there, you can begin to carry that wisdom into your life, one authentic step at a time.

Nati Porat, MA, MEd's experience working with the Jewish community

Since October 7, I have felt a stronger calling to bring my work to Jewish people who are carrying grief, fear, disorientation, and longing for safety or belonging. As an Israeli and Jewish practitioner who speaks Hebrew and English, I want to offer a space where you can speak openly about antisemitism, antizionism, your relationship with Israel, or painful ruptures in family and community without having to defend or explain why these experiences matter to you. I recognize that these experiences can touch many parts of a person’s life, including identity, relationships, community, family, and one’s sense of safety in the world. My hope is to offer a space where you can bring these experiences honestly and without needing to simplify them.

There is no single way to experience what has happened since October 7. You may feel sorrow, anger, isolation, despair, fear, conflicted loyalties, numbness, or several things at once. In our sessions, we can make room for the full complexity of your experience and listen for what your own body, memories, images, and sense of meaning are asking you to know. I welcome Jewish clients across backgrounds and levels of observance, and will follow the experience you bring rather than ask it to fit a particular story. You do not have to know exactly what you are feeling or what you need before we begin. We can stay curious together and make room for whatever is present.

October 7 and its aftermath affected me deeply, as an Israeli and as a Jew. Out of that pain has come a clearer sense of purpose: to bring Focusing to other Jews and Israelis as we live with what has happened and seek ways to heal within our shared reality. I believe we have the capacity to make meaning of our experiences, both personally and collectively, without rushing past grief or asking anyone to find a lesson in suffering. My hope is that, by listening to what this time has stirred in us, we can grow in resilience and continue to bring beauty into the world. I see this work as an opportunity to make space for both the pain and the possibility that can exist alongside it, while honoring each person’s own experience and pace.

Nati Porat, MA, MEd's Book Recommendation Zone

• The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story by Dara Horn
  A powerful and deeply relevant exploration of Jewish life in the aftermath of October 7. Horn places contemporary antisemitism and antizionism within a larger historical story while ultimately turning our attention toward Jewish life rather than Jewish victimhood—toward agency, resilience, belonging, and the possibility of making meaning without allowing trauma to define us.
• Focusing by Eugene Gendlin
  This foundational book introduces the practice at the heart of my therapeutic approach: learning to listen to the body’s subtle, often not-yet-verbal knowing. Gendlin offers a gentle way of turning inward and allowing what is unclear or unresolved to gradually find words, meaning, and movement.
• What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life by James Hollis
  Hollis invites us to look beneath the roles, expectations, and adaptations that can quietly shape a life and ask what is genuinely seeking to be lived. Rooted in depth psychology, this book speaks beautifully to questions of meaning, authenticity, longing, and the ongoing task of becoming more fully ourselves.
• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  A quiet, beautiful meditation on solitude, relationship, creativity, and the changing seasons of a woman’s life. Using shells and the sea as metaphors for inner experience, Lindbergh reminds us of the importance of making space to hear ourselves beneath the demands and noise of everyday life.
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  A novel I love for the way it captures the inner currents beneath ordinary human relationships: love and disappointment, grief and longing, memory, absence, and the passage of time. Woolf gives language to the complexity of inner experience and to the ways the people we have loved continue to live within us.

Approaches

• Attachment-based
• Existential
• Expressive Arts Therapy
• Inner child work
• Mindfulness and Meditation
• Person-Centered Therapy

Concerns

• Anxiety
• Bereavement & Grief
• Chronic illness
• Codependency
• Divorce/Separation
• Emotion regulation
• Life purpose and meaning
• Parenting
• Relationships
• Stress management
• Transitions & Change
• Trauma

8 years in practice

Degrees

• MEd Counseling Psychology and Dance/Movement Therapy by Antioch New England Graduate School 1998
• MA Educational Theatre by NYU Steinhardt 2012

Certificates

• Certified Focusing Professional by The International Focusing Institute 2019

Average costs per session

$150 - $180

Payment Methods

• Zelle Quick Pay
• Venmo
• PayPal