Pilar is a Psychedelic Facilitator and Integration Therapist, working, living, and loving between California, Costa Rica, and Colombia. She received her BA in Fine Art from University of Southern California where she learned in the ins and outs of the analog photo lab. Spending lots of time experimenting with light, color, and shadow—having only to rely on the senses of her body in the dark room—Pilar accidentally fell into her first conscious meditation practice. From there, she went on the study Meditation and Trauma-Informed Yoga and received her 200-RYT certification. She taught public and private classes in Venice, CA until she became increasingly more interested in the marvelous and complex relationship between the emotional and somatic body. Continuing her somatic education by studying the body-based psychotherapy modality of Somatic Experiencing©, Pilar’s enrapture with the psyche + body grew like wildfire—spreading to Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she received her MA in Depth Counseling Psychology in 2019.
In her Masters program, Pilar studied psychotherapy from a Jungian, Humanistic, and Imaginal perspective. To study the unconscious in such depth propelled her psyche (soul) and soma (body) to link patterns she had discovered in her years of disciplined meditation practice and psychedelic adventures. The psychedelic realms no longer solely belonged in symbolic imagery and intangible conceptualization, but rather had been given a language for her modern mind to understand these psychedelic spaces within and without with profound clarity. Pilar spent hours reading, writing, and working—in both academic and therapeutic formats—with her images presented in dreamtime and psychedelic spaces to integrate discovered wounds of her lineage and what divine sacred medicines can bring forth. Inspired by the world of the unseen, Pilar explored the realms of witchcraft in her published thesis, Bones of the Therapist’s Chair: An Exploration of Witchcraft and Psychotherapy to further employ the unconscious relationships of the ancient witch as it pertains to the role of the modern psychotherapist.
Pilar continues to spend a good portion of her personal time in various meditative practices, traveling around the globe, and studying with indigenous plant medicine wisdom keepers from the Inga tribe in the Putumayo reign of Colombia. She is a Gemini sun/Libra rising/Libra moon, a Manifesting Generator and can easily be found floating in any body of water, or getting her feet and hands dirty in the earth :)
