Tobias Penno

Therapist Description:

Registered Social Worker

Specialties: Psychedelic integration & preparation, Heartschool (body-based healing), narrative therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, solutions-focused therapy, ACE model (psychedelic integration), mindfulness

Services Offered: Individual, psychedelic integration (individuals), pre- and post-ritual counseling, trauma-focused psychotherapy, substance use disorder counseling, holistic approaches, mind-body therapy, somatic therapy, relational and family therapy, child therapy, mindfulness training, career counseling, research consultation (psychedelics)

Sessions: Telehealth (Australia)

Biography

Tobias Penno is an Emotional Health Practitioner & Social Worker with a background in Government Child Protection. After years of professionally managing extreme child, family and relationship stress, Tobias has found his passion in healing Emotional Pain & Trauma through the body. Tobias is currently working towards making his clinical practise, Emotional Healthcare, fully online where he combines somatic techniques with narrative therapy. Tobias is a researcher at the University of Western Australia, with an award-winning dissertation titled How Ayahuasca Offers Psychosocial Wellbeing and is currently working on a PhD researching the links between attachment trauma, the body, and best-practice in psychedelic integration therapy.

How I work with clients

When I work with individuals I trust that they have the wisdom necessary to work through their current life challenges, and see my role as a co-researcher with them to facilitate their growth and healing. My core practice is with Narrative Therapy, and I also use elements from mindfulness practices as well as a cutting edge body-based modality called Heartschool. With these tools I support and guide people to re-author their narrative, simultaneously working with tension in the body (no touch, just gentle observations) in order to raise awareness around unconscious stress responses. I also find it beneficial to guide people through a process inspired by Dr. Rosalind Watts’ ‘ACE’ model (Accept, Connect, Embody), which is the model developed for use at Imperial College London in their clinical trials with psychedelics.