Personal Biography
With deep roots in Mindfulness-based approaches, Allan’s work is richly eclectic, integrating multiple evidence-based approaches including ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), CBT (Cognitive behavioral Therapy) and DBT (Dialectical behavior therapy) and Psychodynamic approaches.
These strands weave together, supporting a climate which gently catalyzes transformation and change. This might include increasing meaning, joy and purpose in one’s life or increasing fulfillment, passion and resiliance in relationships.
Allan’s therapy style blends a playful, humorous and lighthearted approach with empathy, caring, respect, depth and patience. A pervasive thread is the assumption that people are constantly seeking meaning and purpose in their lives and that values and purpose play a central role.
Further, that underlying all human experience and behavior, people want to be loved and cared for, to feel validated and valued as well as live passionate and fulfilling lives.
Allan has worked internationally, has taught relationship and communication skills for over twenty five years sharing the journey of hundreds of individual and couples.
Perhaps most important is the optimism which he brings to his work – the idea that people can transform their lives, that healing is a constant and inseperable aspect of being alive and that relationships can be strengthened and transformed in powerful ways.
He is a licensed psychotherapist with offices in San Francisco. Daly City and Burlingame and runs workshops and trainings for individuals and couples in the Bay Area.
Sources of Inspiration
My work is deeply shaped by contemplative and mindfulness -based, humanistic, existential and psycho-spiritual perspectives with an emphasis on cultivating a mindful presence as a means by which to connect with that which is most alive in our hearts and being.
I am inspired by numerous thinkers, clinicians, researchers and approaches including Mindfulness-based approaches, Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior therapy (DBT), Psychodynamic approaches and Gottman Couples therapy.
I deeply appreciate my teachers: Jack Kornfield, Daniel Goleman, Norman Fischer, Rabbi Alan Lew, John Kabat Zinn and Saki Santorelli have all been invaluable in opening me to the fullness of silence as well as the essential wholeness of being human.
Also John and Julie Gottman, Steven Hales, Russ Harris, Ellen & Peter Bader, Daniel Wiles, Harville Hendrix, Marsha Linehan and Tom Marra who gave me the tools to do the craft of therapy.
Finally, perhaps the greatest inspiration has been the courage, resiliance and determination of the hundreds of individuals andcouples, from so many different cultures and walks of life with whom I’ve worked these past twenty seven years. You have been without doubt, my greatest teachers.