mission
Birdsong Wellness is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2023 and incorporated in 2024. Our mission is to support community and ecological healing, growth, and resilience through mental health and wellness services for all ages. We serve rural Trinity, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties in Northern California with individual and group therapy, ecotherapy, restorative yoga, and other wellness offerings.
We work closely with local communities, tribes, and networks to honor the ecological self and create spaces for healing, belonging, and thriving. Combining body, mind, spirit, community, and nature, we provide trauma-informed, somatic, and evidence-based care that builds lifelong skills for individuals, families, groups, and organizations.
We acknowledge harms from colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy and aim to foster equitable, decolonized healing in partnership with mainstream healthcare. We support diverse pathways that care for people and more-than-human allies—plants, fungi, and animals—cultivating creativity, abundance, sustainability, and resilience through place-based, humble, and action-oriented work.
Based in Arcata/Wiyot, CA, we plan to offer services into eastern Humboldt and Trinity counties by 2026 with a mobile counseling bus.
values
Connection, Collaboration, Curiosity, Compassion, Care
Vision
Provide nature-based healing that builds resilience, connection, and meaning.
Work with our community to address systems that cause suffering.
Respect each person exactly where they are in their healing, and honor their social, cultural, and environmental context.
Offer trauma-aware, healing-centered, evidence-based therapy.
Make mental health care affordable and accessible for individuals and groups across all ages.
Expand wellness services in underserved rural areas through innovative mobile counseling units.
Celebrate diversity, promote inclusion, and support the gifts and potential of our community to foster healing for people and the planet.
Brianne hall
she/her
Mother, Therapist, Activist & River Guide
Birdsong Wellness’s Founder
& Executive Director
MS, LPCC, E-RYT
BriAnne has lived most of her life by the ocean in Atlantic Beach FL and Santa Cruz, CA. She began spending her summers in Mt. Shasta and along the Trinity and Klamath Rivers when she was 20 as a commercial river guide, and made the decision to call Humboldt County her forever home in 2014. In 2020, BriAnne became a mother, which has inspired her work towards early childhood intervention and maternal mental health support. Looking at the world through the eyes of an infant has deepened her perspectives of brain development, attachment bonds and exploring ancestral lineages and healing. She is a registered Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Her focus is towards Ecopsychology and Somatic oriented therapies. As a feminist therapist, BriAnne also believes each individual exists within the context of a greater collective community, and aims to consider the social, cultural and environmental impacts of an individual’s experiences in life as well as their path of healing and wholeness.
BriAnne has walked many paths and worn many hats before becoming a clinical mental health counselor. She became involved with outdoor leadership roles while studying Community Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She spent several years working in local food movements and on organic farms studying and advocating for permaculture, sustainability and equitable access to healthy and affordable food. She worked as a commercial River guide for ten plus years, guiding immersive wilderness trips in California, Oregon and Washington. This experience gave her a deep appreciation of the more than human - natural world and it’s potential as a therapeutic ally and inspired her to pursue her graduate certificate in Ecopsychology alongside her Master’s degree from Lewis & Clark Graduate School. BriAnne also carries certifications in teaching yoga (E-RYT 500) and worked leading immersive Yoga teacher trainings through Yoga Alliance from 2013-2016. BriAnne completed her Master of Science degree in Professional Mental Health Counseling from Lewis & Clark Graduate School in 2020. She was awarded a National Board Certified Counselor Scholarship for committing to serving rural communities. BriAnne’s Master’s Thesis was an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis examining Somatic Experiences of Micro-dosing Psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. She worked as a therapist intern at The Center at Heron Hill a nature based and equine therapy center outside of Portland, OR. She currently works in Arcata and Willow Creek, CA providing trauma conscious mental health counseling and Ecotherapy services to youth & adults. She volunteers for Humboldt Psychedelic Commons supporting education and awareness around safety, integration, exploration , protection and decriminalization of psychedelic plant medicines & entheogen’s and non-ordinary states of consciousness. She sits on the organizing committee for the Arcata Out of Darkness Walk for the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. BriAnne is trained in these models of therapy:
Ecopsychology and applied Ecotherapy
Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) w/special focus on Children & Adolescents
Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM)
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Ketamine Assisted Therapy (KAP)
Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)/Parts Work
Somatic Therapy and Trauma Informed Yoga
ILF Neurofeedback, Othmer Method
DIRFloortime
FAN Level 1
Scarlet Ibis-Roley
She/her
ANFT, IIFEC-TMHP
Scarlet grew up in the great-lakes region and fell in love with the natural world while spending time in the boundary waters of northern Minnesota. In 2007 she accepted a job at Heartwood Institute, moved sight unseen to Humboldt County and fell completely in love with the rivers, oceans and mountains. Scarlet has felt a strong call to work with families and children her entire adult life, inspired by the work of Joseph Chilton Pierce and his descriptions of the physical body as a means of spiritual connection. After doing core coursework in Child Development she worked in various childcare settings including both Waldorf and Montessori Schools. During this time, she continued independent studies in child development including (but not limited to) inquiries into therapeutic storytelling, children’s yoga, seasonal celebrations, Simplicity Parenting and attachment based play. While completing her degree with a focus on Psycho-anthropology at Goddard college. The need to critically engage with the community to create meaningful change in the field of child development blossomed into what is now ‘Seaside Schoolhouse’, a nature-based family support center. Seaside Schoolhouse became a haven for neurodiverse children and children with other sensory processing issues who struggled in conventional settings. Increasingly Seaside Schoolhouse emphasized time outdoors as a regulatory strategy, which led to eventually being a full nature immersion childcare program before transitioning into an outdoor space for family support in partnership with Agate Moon Ecotherapy Collective. She is honored to live and work in such an amazing community of people and in such a stunning convergence of natural environments.
Combining the therapeutic power of nature with Infant-Family & Early Childhood Mental Health has become the driving force for Scarlet’s offerings.Through attending the Humboldt County IFECMH training program for two years, Scarlet deepened her connection to the field of Infant-Family & Early Childhood Mental Health and discovered her passion for providing reflective support to service providers. Scarlet has spent the last 5 years deeply engaged in the topic of parenting and childcare through connection and nature-based intervention and has trained in various evidence-based modalities to support families and children with playful intervention that supports regulation and healthy attachment, including:
Hand in Hand Instructor Training & Foundations Course for Early Childhood Educators in Hand in Hand Parenting;
Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders and Components of Care @ Postpartum International;
Infant and Pediatric First Aid and CPR training; NBO- Newborn Observational Assessment ; Facilitating Attuned Interactions Training; Infant Massage;
ANFT Nature and Forest Therapy Guide Training; NOLS Wilderness First-Aid Training;
Humboldt County Infant-Family & Early Childhood Mental Health Advanced & Foundational Cohort 2017/18 & 2018/19-2019 ; Theraplay Level 1 and MIM Training; Theraplay Sunshine Circles Training;
Reflective Practice Training and advanced Reflective Practice support with Dr. Rachel Talamantez; Simplicity Parenting Family Life Coach Training;
Katharina Goodshield
Katharina Goodshield ‘Kat’
LPCC Student Therapist Intern
Katharina “Kat” Goodshield is a Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate student at Saybrook University, where she is earning her master’s degree and cultivating a holistic, trauma-informed, and relational approach to counseling.
Originally from Bonn, Germany, Kat earned her bachelor’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Vienna, in Vienna, Austria. Her background in anthropology continues to shape her curiosity about how culture, identity, relationships, and community influence how people understand themselves and move through the world.
Before entering the counseling field, Kat spent many years working as a pianist, composer, and music educator. Her creative background has deeply influenced how she connects with others, shaping her sensitivity to emotion, self-expression, and experiences that can be difficult to put into words.
As a mother of two and someone who has lived across different countries and cultures, Kat brings both personal and professional curiosity to the complexities of relationships, identity, belonging, life transitions, and personal growth. Her developing approach to counseling is grounded in empathy, authenticity, cultural humility, and a genuine curiosity about each person’s unique inner world and lived experience. She is invested in understanding how relationships, life experiences, environments, and broader cultural contexts shape how people feel, cope, connect, and make meaning of their lives.
Kat is particularly interested in trauma-informed care, the ways past experiences and relationships shape us, major life transitions, mindfulness, and somatic and experiential approaches to healing. She is excited to begin her clinical training at Birdsong Wellness in August 2026 and to continue developing an approach that honors the complexity of the whole person.
Tina Dawson
LMFT Student Therapist Intern
Tina is a Certified Massage Therapist CMT, Doulas by Nature certified Doula , and Marriage & Family Therapist Intern specializing in Expressive Arts Therapy, Prenatal, Pregnancy And Postnatal Therapy, Substance Use Recovery, Grief work, Trauma therapy.
Tina loves being in the redwood forest, by the sea, within the sanctuary of the Arcata marsh, and among the bonnie hills of her ancestral homelands in Scotland. She was raised in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and has lived in Humboldt County for 30 years. She came to San Francisco in 1997 to join her communal living Sufi community, and to study Feminist Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) with teachers such as Starhawk, Luisa Teish, Charlene Spretnak, and Johanna Macy.
She later migrated up the coast to Humboldt to serve the Luna Tree sit, Earth First, and Julia Butterfly in 1999. When Luna was safe, she settled for 3 years living communally with over 100 other healing arts practitioners at Heartwood Institute, nestled deep within the hills of Southern Humboldt. This is where she received her massage and craniosacral therapy training, and led an environmental activist retreat program.
After Heartwood she chose Arcata as her home, met her husband, and started her healing arts practice, Heart of the Rose Healing Services for Women. Here she served her community for over 20 years as massage therapist, childbirth educator, and birth doula, having the honor of attending over 100 births.
Years of working intensively with women, their children, and their families inspired her to move into a deeper therapeutic landscape. In 2022 she embarked on a 5-year Marriage Family Therapy Psychology degree at her alma mater CIIS, this time with a focus on Expressive Arts/Drama Therapy (EXA). She is thrilled to begin her internship at Birdsong Wellness, and transform her practice by serving her community as a therapist. Her Heart of the Rose career has shown her the importance of creating safety and trust to foster a respectful and healthy therapeutic relationship.
Her foundational therapeutic belief is that when people are provided with a safe, relational, therapeutic space, which includes access to the natural world, play, and the arts, they are able to access their innate capacity for self-development and growth. This is especially true for children. She’s excited to offer this space for her Birdsong clients, and looks forward to working with individuals, groups, families, children, and couples.
During her time at CIIS, she received a solid foundation in counseling techniques, theories, group therapy activities, social justice and childhood trauma training, and EXA modalities. She’s excited to help clients approach the therapeutic value of the expressive arts, like dance, movement, song, music, visual arts, games, drama, etc. These modalities can help people access the intuitive and imaginal language of symbols, metaphor, ceremony, and ritual.
Tina’s trainings:
MA in Counseling in Expressive Arts Therapy, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA - 2022 to present, graduation 2027
Heart of the Rose Healing Services for Women – Creator, Owner, Practitioner and Manager of Private Practice Massage and Cranialsacral Therapy / Doula Services / Childbirth Educator /
Theatre of the Oppressed training with Mandala Center for Change – Dell Arte- 2025
Drama Therapy with pioneer Armand Volkas at Center for the Living Arts– 2023
Living a Soulful Life Grief Facilitator training with Frances Weller -2023
Tarot Training - Carolyn Ayers – Arcata, CA - 2013-2015
9-month Herbalist Studies – Dandelion Herbal Center, Fieldbrook, CA – 2012
Birthing From Within™ Mentor / Childbirth Educator Training – 2007-2010
Birth Doula Training – Doulas by Nature – 2006
1st and 2nd Degree Reiki – Usui System of Reiki Healing – 2003
Certified Massage Therapist – Heartwood Institute – 350 hours – May 2002
Women’s Spirituality Department - California Institute of Integral Studies – Fall 1997- 1998
Board of directors:
(Please check back soon for my detailed descriptions of our board members!)
BriAnne Hall - Executive Director , MS, LPCC salaried position at $2000/mo.
Adam Walker Hall, DO ~ Director of Operations, volunteer
Lauren Stacks ~ Secretary, volunteer