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DENITA BENYSHEK, PH.D. - BIO
I practice psychotherapy as a means of expressing love and caring. During the process of counseling, I form a trusting partnership with my clients. I am inspired by my clients' abilities to seek help, gain insight, feel deeply, and change profoundly. Together, we celebrate as they regain joy, find contentment through release of worry, and live fully in the present.
My training in family systems helps us identify and change maladaptive patterns in your current life. My approach is based in family systems, supported by ideas and techniques from humanistic and transpersonal psychology, including studies of shamanism, enriched by the use of metaphor and creativity, strengthened by neurological reprocessing methods for trauma and biofeedback. If indicated, I can work with a naturopath to improve how people feel, think, and behave, using diet changes as well as supplements for neurotransmitter deficiencies, depression, and anxiety. During my career as a professional artist/educator, I decided to develop my talent for psychological healing. I earned a masters degree in psychology, with an emphasis on family systems. A graduate certificate in creativity "married" my two loves, art and psychology, and this relationship deepened during my doctoral studies in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. I later studied pain management at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and neurological trauma reprocessing (EMDR). I continue to study trauma treatment, naturopathic methods of alleviating depression and anxiety, as well as jazz vocals. My work as a psychotherapist is a natural extension of my research and artistic creativity. I bring my ability to focus and concentrate for extended periods of time to our meetings. I am comfortable with intuition, reflection, incubation of ideas and possibilities. I enter deeply into creative flow while working with clients, understand of the importance of rhythm, pacing, and timing, and use creative processes to facilitate client transformation. I am from an immigrant family, Moravian Czechs, and I enjoy working with clients from many countries, regions, ethnic groups, social classes, religions, and sexual orientations. In 2015, I celebrated my 60th birthday! Amazing. Decades of meaningful life experience provided a kind of wisdom that is not taught in any school. 
A Tree in Winter Remembers Spring,
Denita Benyshek, engraved glass, Ethnic Heritage Collection, King County Arts Collection, Harborview, Medical Center, Seattle, WA. FORMAL EDUCATION
Ph.D. Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, Saybrook University, San Francisco, CA.
EMDR (Eye Movement and Desensitization Therapy) I and II. Graduate Certificate in the Psychology of Creativity, Saybrook University. M.A. Psychology, Marriage and Family Therapy, Saybrook University, including training in:
M.F.A. Painting, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. B.F.A. Painting, Wichita State University, KS. Additional education and continuing education training below. 
The Source, Denita Benyshek, reverse-painted glass,
6'2"H x 22"W, private collection San Francisco, CA. PUBLIC ART COLLECTIONS
University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA
Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA King County Ethnic Heritage Collection, WA Glasmuseet (Glass Museum), Ebeltoft, Denmark Snoqualmie View Point Park, Snoqualmie, WA Olympia, WA Art in Public Places Program (deaccessioned due to vandalism). 
The Still Lake of Revery, detail of alder tree.
Denita Benyshek, 2020, acrylic on paper. |
PUBLICATIONS
Benyshek, D. (forthcoming, projected 2021). A personal consideration of contemporary artists as
shamans: integrated, multi-disciplinary, embodied. In Y. Owens & O. Vincent Adepoju (Eds.), Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Book Abstract: Exploring how the sacred, the arts and sciences may implicate each other at the level of creative methods, modes of understanding and expression, essays include rethinking the sacred in order to highlight it as a pervasive quality of human experience, noting the strong emergence of the sacred in contemporary science. ------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. (2020). Our Time of Coronavirus and Black Lives Matter: Loss, Grief, Trauma, Resilience, and Healing Change. Coreopsis: Journal of Myth and Theatre. societyforritualarts.com/coreopsis/autumn-2020-issue/our-time-of-coronavirus-and-black-lives-matter/ Denita Benyshek offers a personal narrative that weaves together the experiences of individuals, families, and society during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, growing awareness of systemic racism and police brutality, and the upsurge of Black Lives Matter protests. Multiple data sources are integrated, including online news, research websites, social media posts, clinical research, drawings, graffiti, photographs by community members, and observations by psychotherapy clients. Social stressors and symptoms of stress, loss, grief, and post-traumatic stress disorder are considered, while adaptations of individuals, couples, families, and communities demonstrated everyday creativity that resulted in personal growth, strengthened relationships, heightened resilience, and contributed to needed social change. The author provides an insider view of events from March through June, 2020, using creative nonfiction and arts-based inquiry, towards illuminating the experience of this time to offer validation, meaning, inspiration, hope, and connection to contemporary readers as well as information for future researchers in the social sciences. ----------------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. (2015). The contemporary artist as shaman: An artist-researcher perspective. ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, 32, 2&3, 54-60. www.academia.edu/36891520/The_Contemporary_Artist_as_Shaman_An_Artist_Researcher_Perspective Denita Benyshek, a professional visionary artist and cross-disciplinary scholar, explores the relationship between shamanism and artistic creativity through visions, dreams, artwork, and autobiographical stories. Using the definition of shaman constructed by anthropologist Ruth-Inge Heinze, Benyshek demonstrates how artists shamanically journey to other realms, undergo destruction and rebirth, unite opposites, and receive inspiration from nonordinary states of mind, anomalous experiences, transcendent consciousness, and sacred spirits. Painter Paul Cezanne, choreographer Martha Graham, sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and Mande blacksmiths provide examples of shamanic creative processes. This article may support future studies that find shamanic artists contribute to individual, societal, and planetary healing. ----------------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. (2015). Artists as Shamans: Historical Review and Recent Theoretical Model. E. E. Djaltchinova-Malec (Ed.), Shamanhood and Art: Traditional and Contemporary Arts, Artists, and Shamans, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary, Polish Institute of World Art Studies, Warsaw, and Tako Publishing House, Toruń, Poland, pp. 211-240. ----------------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. (2013). Art audience as shamanic community: How art meets psychological, social, and spiritual needs (Wang, Trans.). In G. Shuyun, W. Weibo, & Q. Fang (Eds.), Modern artists and shamanism (Vol. II). Beijing: 商務印書館 (The Commercial Press). English text is available online. ----------------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. (2013). An Overview of Western Ideas regarding the Artist as Shaman (Wang, Trans.). In G. Shuyun, W. Weibo, & Q. Fang (Eds.), Modern artists and shamanism (Vol. II). Beijing: 商務印書館 (The Commercial Press). ----------------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. (2012). An archival exploration comparing contemporary artists and shamans. PhD, Saybrook University, San Francisco, CA www.academia.edu/25182315/Contemporary_Artists_as_Shamans_Archival_Exploration_full_text_and_references Shamans and artists have been perceived as similar across a variety of dimensions. Nonetheless, these similarities have not been systematically explored and are poorly understood. This study was designed to investigate these similarities. Stanley Krippner (personal communication, January 12, 2010) provided the initial definition of a shaman that, after minor modifications to more fully represent knowledge about shamans, became: A shaman is a socially designated spiritual practitioner who obtains information in ways not available to the shaman’s community through the voluntary regulation of the shaman’s own attention, which is used for the benefit of the shaman’s community and its members. Defining constructs were operationalized and validated cross-culturally to support multidirectional comparisons between artists and shamans using archival data from psychology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and creativity studies. Previous publications about 24 well-known artists provided archival data for comparisons with shamans. The dimensions explored included familial influence, talent, neurological functions, calling to vocation, social support, personality, training, initiation, inspiration, positive disintegration, transliminality, imaginal realms, altered states, purported psi experiences, mental health issues, soul retrieval, spiritual emergence, transpersonal orientation, intent to benefit, and creativity. Tables, charts, and diagrams organized archival information that, supported by descriptive comparisons, explored the nature and extent of similarities between artists and shamans. The integration of visual art, poetry, and stories provided an emic artist’s perspective and alternate ways of knowing for the reader. The study found that four artists from traditional cultures fulfilled all defining constructs of shaman, comprising a set of prototypical shamanic artists. In contrast, twenty artists fulfilled some, but not all, constructs defining shaman. These shamanlike artists were noncentral members in a fuzzy set where the shamanlike artists had family resemblances to traditional shamans and shamanic artists. The study identified and articulated gaps in knowledge as well as establishing a broad, well-grounded theoretical model that can serve as a foundation for future research on relationships between contemporary artists and shamans, and, potentially, contribute towards transformation of art experiences in artists, art audiences, and art institutions. ----------------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. M. (2011). The flapping butterfly wings of gifted mentorship: Ruth Richards and Saybrook University. NeuroQuantology: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Neuroscience and Physics, 9(3), 535-544. ----------------------------------------------------- Benyshek, D. (1990). Journey into the Dead Zone. In H. Frost (Ed.), Season of Dead Water (pp. 21-28). Portland, OR: Breitenbush Books. (My interviews with bird and animal rescue workers, on Prince William Sound in Alaska, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.) SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
Benyshek, D. (2013). Shamanistic arts benefit audience healing, growth, and social change. R. Richards (Chair), Art as healer: Preschoolers to seniors to society at large. American Psychological Association Annual Conference, Division 32: Society for Humanistic Psychology, Honolulu, HI. Benyshek, D. (2011). Exploring Artists as Shamans: A Critical and Historical Overview. The 10th Conference of the International Society of Shamanistic Research: Shamanism and its Arts. State Ethnographic Museum, Warsaw, Poland. Benyshek, D. (2009). Artist as shaman: Academic performance art. Shamanism in the 21st Century Conference, Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing, San Rafael, CA. Benyshek, D. (2009). The Contemporary Artist as Shaman, The 9th Conference of the International Society for Shamanistic Research, University of Alaska, Anchorage. Benyshek, D. (2009). Creative Opportunity within Creative Block, Creativity Studies Department, Saybrook Graduate School Residential Conference, San Francisco, CA. |
ADDITIONAL TRAINING and SEMINARS ATTENDED
Creativity and Madness, American Institute for Medical Education
Telehealth ethics.
Ethics of Self-Care: Art Based Approach
Counseling Skills for the Treatment of Complex Trauma.
A Practitioner's Guide: Helping Families Support LGBT Children.
Improving Cultural Competence.
Spousal/Partner Abuse Detection and Intervention.
Ethics, Boundaries, Dual Relationships, HIPAA Privacy.
Understanding the Gut Brain: Stress, Appetite, Digestion, and Mood, with Lisa Goehler, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Nursing Research, Neuroimmunology and Behavior at the Center for for the Study of Complementary Therapies at University of Virginia. Seminar offered through Institute for Brain Potential.
The World of Stories & Symbols: The EMDR-Sandtray Protocol with Children and Adolescents, Ana M. Gomez, Phoenix, AZ.
Neuroendocrine Approach to Anxiety and Depression: A Practical Approach to Salivary Testing. Brandy Webb, ND, DiagnosTechs.
Sexual Addiction, Continuing Medical Education, Sacramento, CA.
EMDR I and II (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), an integrative neurological-cognitive mind/body treatment for trauma, chronic pain, and negative past experiences through bilateral brain stimulation.
Pain management at the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN (3 weeks).
Personal Mythology and Dreamwork, Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Association for Humanistic Psychology.
Healing and Transformation: Traditional Belief and Healing Systems in a Changing World, an Interdisciplinary Approach, Society for the Study of Shamanism, San Rafael, CA.
Career Transitions in Challenging Times, Susan Burns, MA, Association for Humanistic Psychology.
Wisdom of our Ancestors: Bridge to the Future, 27th International Conference on Shamanism and Alternative Forms of Healing, Society for the Study of Shamanism, San Rafael, CA.
Imagery and Healing: Tools for Healthcare, Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D., Bastyr University, Kenmore, WA.
Shamans of the 21st Century, Santa Sabina, San Rafael, CA.
Water Ceremony with Mandaza Augustine Kandemwa, Bantu shaman from Africa.
Sangoma healing practices, David Cumes, M.D.
Clinical Implications for Serving People of Color, Washington Department of Social and Health Services, Olympia, WA.
Skill Building for Cultural Competence, Truc Nguyen, Minority Executive Directors Coalition, Seattle, WA.
Minority Youth, Kenneth Harding, Federal Way Youth and Family Services, WA.
Jungian Psychology, Carl Jung Society, Seattle, WA.
Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA.
Jazz Vocal Class with Katie King, Seattle Central College Continuing Education, and Kelly Eisenhour.
Modern Dance (Martha Graham and Bella Lewitsky Styles), Jazz Dance, Ballet, Wichita State University, KS.
Keith Johnstone Acting Improvisation Techniques with Terrance Christgau.
Telehealth ethics.
Ethics of Self-Care: Art Based Approach
Counseling Skills for the Treatment of Complex Trauma.
A Practitioner's Guide: Helping Families Support LGBT Children.
Improving Cultural Competence.
Spousal/Partner Abuse Detection and Intervention.
Ethics, Boundaries, Dual Relationships, HIPAA Privacy.
Understanding the Gut Brain: Stress, Appetite, Digestion, and Mood, with Lisa Goehler, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Nursing Research, Neuroimmunology and Behavior at the Center for for the Study of Complementary Therapies at University of Virginia. Seminar offered through Institute for Brain Potential.
The World of Stories & Symbols: The EMDR-Sandtray Protocol with Children and Adolescents, Ana M. Gomez, Phoenix, AZ.
Neuroendocrine Approach to Anxiety and Depression: A Practical Approach to Salivary Testing. Brandy Webb, ND, DiagnosTechs.
Sexual Addiction, Continuing Medical Education, Sacramento, CA.
EMDR I and II (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), an integrative neurological-cognitive mind/body treatment for trauma, chronic pain, and negative past experiences through bilateral brain stimulation.
Pain management at the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN (3 weeks).
Personal Mythology and Dreamwork, Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Association for Humanistic Psychology.
Healing and Transformation: Traditional Belief and Healing Systems in a Changing World, an Interdisciplinary Approach, Society for the Study of Shamanism, San Rafael, CA.
Career Transitions in Challenging Times, Susan Burns, MA, Association for Humanistic Psychology.
Wisdom of our Ancestors: Bridge to the Future, 27th International Conference on Shamanism and Alternative Forms of Healing, Society for the Study of Shamanism, San Rafael, CA.
Imagery and Healing: Tools for Healthcare, Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D., Bastyr University, Kenmore, WA.
Shamans of the 21st Century, Santa Sabina, San Rafael, CA.
Water Ceremony with Mandaza Augustine Kandemwa, Bantu shaman from Africa.
Sangoma healing practices, David Cumes, M.D.
Clinical Implications for Serving People of Color, Washington Department of Social and Health Services, Olympia, WA.
Skill Building for Cultural Competence, Truc Nguyen, Minority Executive Directors Coalition, Seattle, WA.
Minority Youth, Kenneth Harding, Federal Way Youth and Family Services, WA.
Jungian Psychology, Carl Jung Society, Seattle, WA.
Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA.
Jazz Vocal Class with Katie King, Seattle Central College Continuing Education, and Kelly Eisenhour.
Modern Dance (Martha Graham and Bella Lewitsky Styles), Jazz Dance, Ballet, Wichita State University, KS.
Keith Johnstone Acting Improvisation Techniques with Terrance Christgau.