Clinic Directors

Meet the Counselors

Co-Director Victoria Vogel

Co-Director Grant Rudolph

 

Victoria Vogel, MA, MFT #29744

People come to sit with me in a mood of acceptance and compassion for many reasons.  They come to me because they are unhappy.  They come because their marriage is struggling.  They feel isolated and lack confidence.  They are at their wit’s end with their spirited children.  They are lonely and long for a partner.  Financial pressure burdens them.  Their sexual life is unsatisfying.  Or they know somehow that a greater connection to meaning is possible in their life.

I have over 25 years experience counseling couples, adults, and teens, using a holistic Body-Mind-Spirit orientation.  The cornerstone of my work is the warm connection I have with people.  This “non-judging” mood in the room models something important for them–the strength and acceptance to be present with their most shameful feelings and secret thoughts.  When the inner Friend is at home, suffering vanishes.  Wisdom calms inner conflicts.  Relationships flourish. Insight flows naturally.

As a seasoned therapist, I am skilled with a variety of therapeutic tools and situations.  I have saved many marriages.  I am especially successful with lonely people who want a partner.  I am an expert helping parents with spirited children. I use EMDR for PTSD. I talk to teenagers easily. I am a rock for couples on the sands of divorce. I have compassion and knowledge for people with poor health.

My therapeutic framework includes Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for quick results, Transpersonal Therapy for depth, Positive Psychology for moods, Family Systems Therapy for patterns, and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing for trauma.  But to put it simply, I work with grace.

I have a successful 20 year marriage, a teenage daughter and son in college.

VIPASSANA/MEDITATION BACKGROUND

Sitting has been my practice since 1978–more than forty extended retreats and family retreats.  I am a graduate of the Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock.  I have studied Advaita Vedanta, Tai Chi, QiGong, Yoga, and Zen.  I continue a strong daily meditation and exercise practice.

RELEVANT CLINICAL TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE

My master’s degree in Transpersonal Counseling combines Psychology with spirituality. My skills were honed at Langley Porter Children’s Hospital, UCSF.  I have been Co-Director at Echo Rock Therapy Center for 22 years.  My post-graduate training includes 12 years of Masterson group consultations. I have led a CHADD International ADHD Parent Support Group for 10 years. I am a member of the California Marriage and Family Association.

Victoria Vogel, MFT
EchoRock.Vogel@gmail.com 415 322-8586

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Grant Rudolph, MA, MFT #28068

I feel grateful to have lived a creative life so far, curious about many different people and disciplines.  I have started several businesses, invested heavily in rental housing, conducted an orchestra and chorus, married a good woman, and raised children who are loyal to their friends. Exposure to many worlds has helped me notice a glimmer of what is universal and mysterious in each person, and enabled me to believe in their destiny.

My interests in initiation and friendship led me to participate at the start of the men’s movement, and I have led men’s groups on and off since 1976.  I love listening into each person’s story or dreams, not just for their childhood wounds, but also for reoccurring patterns from myth, fairy tales and cultural anthropology.  Stories from our elders, long gone, have marked the path where they stumbled, that we might pass by safely on our journey.  People often find their disappointed expectations are the result of confusing their daily “wants” with the longings from these inner worlds.  Thinking on the old stories has taught me to converse in metaphor, the language of our inner helpers.

If they like, people bring their dreams to talk about with me. We often spend time getting clear on the exact nature of their difficulty; then solutions seem to present themselves. I sometimes help people find the overlap of oppositions, like that center place between our exalted, majestic possibilities and the disappointments of our human failings and imperfections.

Business leaders often need to just talk with me about their deals and employees.  As someone outside their business, I can be impartial.  I have the empathy earned by running my own businesses, yet I also understand the wisdom of the old teachings.  Everyone needs to be heard by an elder who can listen metaphorically to their daily dilemmas, dreams, goals, and humor.  As a former symphony conductor, I am practiced in hearing each instrument individually, yet also keeping track of how all our inner voices combine in a surge of music that is the song of our life.

Through improvisation and the creative arts I have learned to sustain simultaneous awareness of two worlds: the creative, energized, inner unconscious upwelling flow, and the discerning, rational editing of our self-aware mind.  This is the “magic” I pass on—how to sustain a dancing conversation between the waking and dream worlds.

My intention is to also pass on some of the humor and warm kindness my elders have shown me.

I am grateful to the many teachers who helped me learn about the old ways: Buddhism, mindfulness meditation, Jungian dream work at Pacifica Graduate Institute, the joy and discipline of music practice, the soulfulness of poetry, the satisfaction of learning at Yale University, the ecstasy of dance and song, the daily steadiness of family love, the necessity of community and beauty.

Grant Rudolph has directed Echo Rock Therapy Center since 1986.  He has taught archetypal psychology, dream singing, creative arts therapy, and fairy-tale interpretation at California Institute of Integral Studies, Esalan and JFK University.

GrantRudolph@Gmail.com 415 322-8446
Echo Rock Therapy Center 415 322-8006

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