Spiritual Counseling & Therapy
For the client who reads tarot before a hard decision, keeps an altar of stones and photographs no one has ever asked her about, or times a walk to the same trail every time grief resurfaces: none of it needs a name borrowed from an organized religion to be taken seriously in this room.
Spiritual practice does not always come wearing a label a form has a checkbox for. Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, the licensed psychologist who founded Alafiora, works routinely with clients whose meaning-making has nothing to do with a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple, and this page describes how that practice is actually held inside the clinical work, not treated as a footnote to it.
- What This Page Means by Spiritual Practice
- How This Gets Held in the Room
- What This Practice Does and Does Not Provide
- How This Population's Practices Intersect With Love, Sex, and Sexual Trauma
- Session Structure Built Around What Actually Fits
- How Care Is Structured Here
- Frequently Asked Questions
No section by that word. The menu holds the complete site.
What This Page Means by Spiritual Practice
What Counts as Spiritual Practice Here
Tarot, Energy Work, Nature-Based Ritual & Holistic Practice as Real Clinical Material
This population's spiritual life tends to show up as a set of specific, practiced things rather than a single named tradition. Tarot used as a structured way of asking a real question and sitting with whatever answer the cards return. Energy work, Reiki or a chakra-focused practice among the more commonly named versions, done through hands-on or hands-near-body technique. A felt connection to the cycles of the natural world: the phases of the moon tracked on a calendar taped inside a cabinet door, the same stretch of trail walked every time a loss needs somewhere to go, a specific tree or body of water returned to on the anniversary of something that still needs marking. Herbal and holistic practice: a tea kept specifically for the nights sleep won't come, a tincture reached for during a week that has gone sideways, a supplement routine built up slowly over years of trial and error, not handed down by any single source. And beneath all of this, often, a broader orientation toward the self, the earth, and the plain fact of being human that does not reduce neatly to any one of these practices alone.
None of this requires an organized religious framework standing behind it to be treated with real clinical weight here. A tarot practice, an energy-work practice, or a specific ritual built around the natural world carries the same seriousness in this room that a structured faith tradition would, not a lesser version of meaning-making waiting for something more official to replace it.
Taking a practice this seriously is one thing to state; the next question is what that actually looks like once a client is sitting in the room.
How This Gets Held in the Room
Curiosity, Not Clinical Skepticism
How a Psychologist Engages Clinically With Tarot, Energy Work & Nature-Based Practice
Dr. Lapite-Garrett asks about the role a practice like tarot or energy work actually plays in a client's life the same way she would ask about any other coping resource or meaning-making structure: what does pulling a specific card actually change about the decision that follows it, what does a particular trail hold that a different route through the same park doesn't, what does an altar of stones and dried herbs on a windowsill actually do for a week that has come apart. These questions get asked with real curiosity, not the flattened, note-taking version of curiosity that has already decided in advance that the answer isn't clinically relevant.
This also means paying attention when a practice changes. A client who has stopped shuffling a deck she used to reach for daily, or someone who has let a years-long supplement routine lapse during a stretch this practice already recognizes as depression or dissociation, is offering real clinical information about what's shifted in her capacity to cope, the same way a change in any other coping pattern would be read. Dr. Lapite-Garrett never treats the practice itself as the presenting problem to be corrected; she treats it as a resource whose presence, absence, or change tells its own part of the story.
Session structure also adapts around what a specific client's practice actually calls for, covered further on in its own right. First, a boundary: genuine engagement with a practice is not the same as performing it.
What This Practice Does and Does Not Provide
Clinical Engagement, Not Practicing Tarot or Energy Work Directly
The Scope-of-Practice Boundary for a Licensed Psychologist
Dr. Lapite-Garrett is a licensed psychologist, a doctoral-level clinician trained in psychotherapy and psychological assessment, not a tarot reader, an energy worker, or an herbalist, and she does not read tarot, provide energy healing, or recommend herbal or supplement regimens as part of care. These fall outside a licensed psychologist's actual scope of practice, the same boundary that already governs medication: she coordinates around a client's other resources. She does not step into practicing them herself. Where a client's own tarot reader, energy worker, or herbalist is already part of their life, that relationship sits alongside the clinical work as its own resource, not something the clinical work replaces or takes over.
What she does provide is the clinical engagement described in the section above: discussing directly what a practice does for a client, adapting how sessions are structured around it, and holding it with the same professional regard given to any other real part of a client's identity and coping.
That adapting is worth describing concretely, and it is often the first thing this population actually wants to know. First, though, what these same practices actually look like once one of this practice's three specialty domains is the thing being addressed.
How This Population's Practices Intersect With Love, Sex, and Sexual Trauma
Tarot, Energy Work, and Nature-Based Practice Across the Three Domains
Concrete Cross-Domain Application
Within the Love domain, a card pulled the same way, over and over, until it says what a client already hopes to hear, can become one more way an obsessive attachment keeps confirming itself: a spread read specifically to ask whether someone who has not called back is still, secretly, thinking of her, drawn again the next week when the silence continues, and drawn again the week after that. A specific tree visited on the anniversary of a relationship's end, watched for a sign that never quite arrives, functions the same way. None of this makes tarot or a nature-based ritual the problem; the practice itself stays exactly as legitimate a resource as it always was. What gets worked with directly is the specific use a client has put it to, checking a closed door for a crack of light that isn't actually there, distinct from that same practice's own ordinary place in the rest of that client's life.
Within the Sex domain, energy work's own vocabulary, blocked energy, a chakra needing to open, can become the language a compulsive pattern gets explained through instead of named directly: a client who understands a private, escalating behavior as an energy needing release rather than a pattern doing real damage to a marriage or a career. A specific ritual after acting out, a particular tea, a cleansing bath, a stone held until a feeling passes, can function as its own brief relief, remade each time the underlying pattern repeats within days. Neither the energy work nor the ritual is treated as the problem; what gets named directly is the compulsive pattern itself, whatever language it has been explained through.
Within the Sexual Trauma domain, a specific stretch of trail, a stone carried in a pocket, or a particular breathing practice tied to a felt connection to the natural world is frequently one of the only places a survivor's body still registers as safe after an assault, especially where an organized faith community responded to a disclosure poorly or was itself connected to the person who caused harm. That practice is engaged directly as a genuine grounding resource already in place, never treated as a substitute for the clinical work or set aside in favor of a more conventional coping tool.
Session Structure Built Around What Actually Fits
Session Formats Built Around What Actually Fits
Walk-and-Talk Sessions, On-Location Visits & Extended Sessions for Spiritual Practice
For a client whose processing happens better in motion than sitting across a desk, walk-and-talk sessions, a real, currently offered format at this practice, are held outdoors instead of in an office and are worth raising directly at the first conversation. For a client whose only real sense of safety in naming what's happening lives inside a specific room, an altar in the corner, a particular chair by a window, on-location sessions are available too; an office is not the only setting this work can happen in. And for a client whose process needs more room than a standard fifty-minute hour allows before a ritual, a walk, or a difficult piece of history can actually be discussed without watching the clock, the extended session, run at one hundred ten minutes, is built for exactly that pace. None of these formats require a spiritual or holistic practice to qualify for them; they are simply named here because this population, more than most, tends to ask whether a session can look different from the standard model at all.
How Care Is Structured Here
Individualized Care and Outside Accountability
Peer Consultation, Personal Therapy & the Practical Details of Getting Started
None of this is scripted. The same word, energy work or tarot or a connection to nature, can mean something entirely different from one client to the next, and no client here is met with an assumption about what their particular practice means or how it functions before Dr. Lapite-Garrett has actually heard it from them directly.
Working without a supervisor is a structural fact of a solo practice, not a gap in oversight: Dr. Lapite-Garrett's own peer consultation groups, ongoing clinical training, and personal therapy exist precisely so her own beliefs, about a tarot practice or anything else, stay hers, never the unspoken standard by which a client's own practice gets measured. Full session formats, including the extended session named above, and current rates are detailed on the practice's Rates and Fees page, so cost is never a surprise walked into blind.
There's a real difference between reading that a tarot practice or a walk on a familiar trail can belong inside therapy and actually naming one's own version of it to someone new, and that difference is exactly why many people read a page like this more than once before reaching out. A consultation is a brief conversation, held in confidence within the legal and professional limits of confidentiality any licensed psychologist explains before clinical work begins, where questions about how this actually works in session get answered plainly before anything else is decided. Those already certain they are ready are equally welcome to begin directly with a first session, the actual start of care, where history and lived experience are gathered and a treatment plan begins to take shape.
This kind of practice rarely shows up on its own. It often sits alongside whatever else brought someone to therapy in the first place, a relationship pattern that keeps repeating, a compulsive behavior that has stopped feeling like a choice, or a history the body has never fully put down, and it gets held inside that same work, not split off into a separate conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Dr. Lapite-Garrett Read Tarot or Perform Energy Work in Session?Scope of Practice for a Licensed Psychologist Working with Tarot and Energy Work
No, and I want to be direct about this: I am a licensed psychologist, not a tarot reader or an energy worker, and reading cards or providing energy healing directly falls outside what my license actually covers. What I do is engage with what a practice like tarot or energy work means and does in a client's life, with the same clinical seriousness I would bring to any other real coping or meaning-making resource, and coordinate around a client's own practitioner in that space. I don't step into that role myself.
Can Therapy Include a Spiritual Practice That Isn't Tied to an Organized Religion?Non-Religious and Non-Organized Spirituality in Clinical Care
Yes, and this is most of what this page describes. A meaning-making practice does not need an organized structure behind it to be taken seriously here. Tarot, energy work, a felt connection to the natural world, and herbal or holistic practice are all real, valid ways people make sense of their lives, and they get engaged with directly, not treated as something to work around.
What If My Practice Includes Things Like Astrology, Crystal Work, or Just a General Connection to Nature Rather Than One Specific Modality?Astrology, Crystal Work & a Felt Connection to the Natural World in Session
Often, and this is exactly the kind of practice this page is written for. Not every client's spirituality organizes itself around one clean category. Astrology consulted before a big decision, a specific stone kept in a pocket during a hard week, time spent outdoors that functions as its own kind of practice, not as exercise, all of it counts as real material worth understanding, not a looser or less legitimate version of something more defined.
Are Walk-and-Talk or Outdoor Sessions Available for Clients Whose Practice Involves Nature?Walk-and-Talk Therapy, On-Location Sessions & Outdoor Session Formats
Yes, and this is a real, currently available format at this practice, not a hypothetical one. For a client whose own sense of grounding comes from being outside instead of seated across a desk, raising this directly at the first conversation is worth doing; a traditional office setting is never assumed to be the only option.
Will My Herbal or Holistic Routine Be Judged or Discouraged in Session?Herbal and Holistic Practice Alongside Licensed Psychological Care
Not always, and I recognize this is a real concern for people who have had a routine dismissed elsewhere before. A tea kept for sleep, a tincture reached for during a hard stretch, or a supplement routine built up over years gets discussed as real information about how someone copes, not judged outright. I don't recommend specific herbal or supplement regimens myself, since that falls outside a psychologist's scope of practice, and where a medical or herbal question genuinely needs another kind of expertise, that question sits alongside the clinical work; it is not decided inside it.
Is a Licensed Psychologist Actually Qualified to Work With Non-Traditional Spiritual Practices?Doctoral-Level Training and Non-Organized Spiritual Practice
Clinical training in working with meaning-making, identity, and coping does not require a psychologist to personally practice or endorse any specific spiritual framework, organized or not. A doctoral-level psychologist is trained to understand what a practice actually does for a client's sense of self and stability, and to hold that respectfully and accurately, whether the practice in question is tarot, energy work, or a structured religious tradition.
Begin a Confidential Conversation
Talking about a practice like tarot, energy work, or a felt connection to the natural world with someone new is not always simple, especially for anyone who has had it dismissed, pathologized, or judged before, without ever being told so directly. The consultation is a brief conversation, held in confidence within the legal and professional limits of confidentiality any licensed psychologist explains before clinical work begins, where a client's own practice is never on trial and the only subject is whatever they actually want help with. Those already certain they are ready are equally welcome to begin directly with a first session.
For anyone wanting to understand more about how Dr. Lapite-Garrett applies research and clinical judgment together in session, the Evidence-Based Practice page covers what that standard actually requires, and this page can always be bookmarked, or the QR code in the footer scanned, to keep this practice's information close until the timing feels right.
Every session at Alafiora is held by one licensed psychologist
Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett is the founder and sole practitioner of Alafiora. There are no associates, no rotating providers, and no case handoffs: the person who reads a client's history in the first session is the same person still holding it two years later. She is licensed in New Mexico and Indiana, with additional state licensure underway.
Her training is doctoral-level, which typically extends several years beyond a master's-level license in assessment, diagnosis, and the treatment of complex, overlapping presentations. She keeps a deliberately small caseload so that depth is possible, participates in ongoing peer consultation and clinical training, and maintains her own personal therapy.
Whatever brought someone to this page today is never put on trial here
A consultation is a brief conversation with no obligation attached. Those already certain they are ready are equally welcome to begin directly with a first session.