MA, LMFT & SEP

Depth psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Sacred Motherhood Guide, and Workshop Facilitator.

Hello!

I am Molly Mitchell-Hardt Field, a depth psychotherapist, somatic experiencing practitioner, sacred motherhood guide, and workshop facilitator, offering a holistic mind-body approach to healing.

Like many in the healing profession, my path began in my own suffering. Much of who I am was forged in the dark cave of my inner sanctum — the place I have retreated to hide, gestate, collapse, dissolve and transform experience into medicine. 

My Journey

Youth

My early years as an elite gymnast taught me both discipline and the cost of perfectionism. Blessed with an exquisitely sensitive nervous system (though I didn't recognize this gift until much later), I navigated a double life—striving for athletic excellence while yearning for authentic connection.

My introduction to The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, a story of a college gymnast who encounters an unlikely spiritual teacher, opened me to concepts of presence, mindfulness, and transcendence that served as my first glimpse into the unseen and human potential.

College

Much of college I struggled with a sense of displacement, isolation, and lack of self-worth.

I chose to take a gap year and moved to Los Angeles to work for a non profit Americorps program called City Year. During that year I worked as a tutor and mentor in the South LA school system.

I finished my college education at USC and spent my senior year learning Swahili and preparing to travel to Tanzania to live and serve in a small village with no electricity or running water.

The times in my life that I have experienced the greatest shifts in perspective have been when I have stepped away from the rushing river of American life, unplugged, and planted my feet amidst people and places that were still connected to the slow rhythm of the Earth.

It was hard to come back to my life as a college student in the intensity of downtown Los Angeles and not see the problematic aspects of our cultural values and behaviors.

During this time, I stole away every spare moment I had to my favorite yoga studio across town. It was in those yoga classes that I finally felt a sense of belonging, but not with any group, for the first time within myself. It was this experience that later inspired me to become a yoga teacher.

Seeking

After some time in existential paralysis, I traveled to India for yoga training and a subsequent harrowing journey through the country on a pilgrimage to Kumbh Mela.

My Journey

I spent the next ten years learning, teaching yoga and determined to live a yogic way of life.

After a lifetime of overriding, my body and nervous system began to show signs of distress that impacted my digestion and resulted in hormonal issues and long term chronic fatigue. I was being asked to go deeper.

Depth

It was around then that I felt called to pivot and move my career in another direction. When I arrived at Pacifica Graduate Institute, I felt I had finally come home. I spent the next few years discovering and learning about the Depth Psychological and Jungian tradition with a voracious curiosity. 

Beyond

After graduate school and my own initiation into the depths of my being through motherhood, I was introduced to somatic experiencing, which all but saved my life during this liminal time. I was so inspired by the depth of healing that transpired that I took up the three year training to become a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). 

Both the Depth/Jungian and Somatic lenses strongly influence my work with clients. The somatic in the resolution of trauma and nervous system healing and depth lens as a framework and cosmology to hold the meaning and complexities of life. Through everything, I have always been seeking a container large enough to it all, the whole human experience rich with complexity, full of messiness, confusion, grief, joy, and despair.

I work as a psychotherapist (LMFT #143845) in private practice virtually throughout California, in person in the Santa Barbara area and as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner worldwide. Beyond all the practices and modalities, I believe that wellness comes from living a soul-centered, and soul-led life—one full of meaning, depth, courage, and connection.

Education and Training

Pacifica Graduate Institute - M.A. Counseling Psychology with and Emphasis in Depth and Jungian Psychology

Education Includes:

  • Psychodynamic, Humanistic, Psychoanalytic, Mythopoetic, Somatic, Expressive Arts, Imaginal, Archetypal Spiritual and Soul-based Perspectives

  • Jungian and Post-Jungian Psychological Theory

  • James Hillman, Marion Woodman, Marie-Louise von Franz, Edward Edinger, Joseph Campbell, Michael Meade and more

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Certificate

Education Includes:

  • In depth expertise in working with both developmental or complex trauma and event trauma or PTSD

  • Tracking the nervous system and renegotiating repair and completion

  • Attunement on the levels of emotion and nervous system/somatic

  • Working with sexual trauma

  • Working with chronic illness/pain patterns

  • Somatic boundary work

  • Supportive touch work

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR)

Yoga Alliance - RYT 200hr+

  • Additional training in Prenatal + Postnatal yoga

University of Southern California - B.A. Psychology


Healing happens holistically by building a trusting relationship with a safe other,
increasing awareness of patterns and dynamics,
learning how to nurture ourselves, and by working directly with the nervous system
to create new ways of being within ourselves and in the world.

Learn more

FAQ’S

  • DescriptioI offer an integrative approach combining depth psychotherapy, somatic experiencing, and Jungian psychology. This means I work with both the psychological depths—dreams, symbols, patterns, and soul—and the wisdom of the body and nervous system. My larger framework lives within the depth perspective, holding the view that "I am a human being; I consider nothing human alien to me." I meet clients with curiosity and compassion, empowering the wisdom of their inner healer. I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach—I meet people where they are and walk beside them, carrying a torch as we navigate the inner labyrinth toward soul.n text goes here

  • I specialize in trauma recovery (both developmental/complex trauma and PTSD), nervous system dysregulation, chronic illness and pain patterns, life transitions and threshold experiences, the motherhood journey, grief, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and highly sensitive people (HSP). I work with relational and attachment wounds, re-parenting, body image concerns, and connecting to the divine feminine and the alchemical cycles of life. I also accompany individuals experiencing life's initiations—the deaths and rebirths that call us to shed old skins and embrace expansion. I can sit with clients in whatever they're experiencing: shame, grief, devastation, depression, rage, peace, joy, or gratitude.

  • Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-based approach to healing trauma developed by Peter Levine. Rather than focusing solely on talking about traumatic experiences, SE works with the nervous system directly through a bottom-up approach. I listen deeply to the wisdom of the body and physiology. This might look like reflecting what you're sharing and then inviting you into the body by asking, "What are you noticing in your body as you share that?" When we drop into the body, we often time travel to different experiences along the journey of our lives and are given the opportunity to experience completion where once there was wounding. Sometimes we simply drop into the truth of what's right underneath the surface of our social mask and finally get to feel and come into deeper congruence between our inner experience and our outer presentation.

  • Depth psychology, rooted in the Jungian tradition, recognizes that our psyche contains multiple layers beyond conscious awareness. I work with dreams, active imagination, synchronicity, archetypal patterns, and the symbolic dimensions of experience. Influenced by thinkers like James Hillman, Marion Woodman, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Edward Edinger, I approach symptoms and struggles not just as problems to fix, but as meaningful communications from the soul seeking integration and wholeness.

  • Yes, I am trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), an evidence-based treatment for trauma and PTSD. EMDR helps process traumatic memories through bilateral stimulation, allowing the brain to reprocess disturbing experiences in a way that reduces their emotional charge and integrates them more adaptively. I pull from the wisdom of EMDR especially when working with a particularly sticky pattern or belief, or if that modality really resonates for you.


  • Sessions are collaborative and tailored to your unique needs. I step beyond recounting stories and into deep listening to the wisdom of your body and physiology. We use movement, sound, touch, image, meaning, and deep attunement to weave in a new thread to an old pattern. We might work with talking and insight, body awareness and sensation tracking, breathwork, dream exploration, active imagination, or supportive touch (with consent). I follow what wants to emerge in each session, honoring both the verbal and pre-verbal, the conscious and unconscious, the psychological and the somatic. The therapeutic container becomes a sacred space to compassionately witness and accompany you in the alchemical process of healing and growth.


  • Yes, I work with women in the motherhood journey and offer motherhood support groups. My own journey through motherhood was deeply initiatory, and my somatic experiencing training proved essential during this liminal time. I understand the nervous system challenges of the perinatal period and hold space for the psychological and spiritual dimensions of becoming a mother. I work with individuals navigating pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and the profound transformation motherhood brings—each an opportunity for inner death and rebirth, shedding old skins to embrace expansion.


  • I hold a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. I completed the three-year Somatic Experiencing Practitioner training and am trained in EMDR. I'm also a certified yoga teacher (RYT 200hr+) with additional training in prenatal and postnatal yoga. My education includes extensive study of psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, archetypal, imaginal, mythopoetic, and soul-based perspectives, as well as work with sexual trauma, chronic illness, pain patterns, and somatic boundary work.


  • I work with individuals, couples, and groups. Clients best suited for working with me tend to be creative, curious, sensitive, feeling, intuitive (or desiring to be more connected to intuition and feeling), experiencing depression or anxiety, navigating life transitions—especially in the realms of relationship and parenthood—and ready to dive into patterns and explore therapeutic work beyond talk therapy and into the realms of somatic and imaginal. I work with highly sensitive people (HSP), those with ADHD, creative individuals, those in liminal transitions, and anyone feeling called to live more authentically and dive deep.


  • Yes, I offer virtual psychotherapy sessions throughout California (LMFT #143845) and somatic experiencing sessions worldwide. I also see clients in person in the Santa Barbara area. Beyond individual therapy, I offer cycle-synced healing intensives, somatic experiencing coaching, and online courses including my Sacred Journey of Motherhood program.


  • I bring together the psychological depths with somatic wisdom, the archetypal with the nervous system, the ancient with the contemporary. I honor complexity, paradox, and nuance. I believe healing isn't about fixing or returning to a former state, but about transformation. If we are lucky in this life, we will experience many inner deaths—each an opportunity to shed the scaly skin of yesterday, to embrace our own expansion, and enter a next dimension of life. If we fail to die, we fail to grow. The therapeutic container becomes a sacred space for this alchemical process. Sometimes this looks like deep attunement and tenderness, and sometimes this looks like challenging calcified beliefs and opening to the possibility of a more expansive cosmology. I offer a container large enough to hold the whole human experience: the messiness, grief, joy, confusion, and despair, all while guiding you toward a life of greater meaning, depth, and authentic connection.


  • If you resonate with a soul-centered approach to healing, if you're drawn to working with both body and psyche, if you value depth over quick fixes, and if you're willing to meet yourself with curiosity and courage, we may be a good fit. Good fit or chemistry in the therapeutic relationship is essential fuel for moving the sacred container of therapy forward. I always invite people to book a free consultation to feel out the relational field and use your intuition to sense if we could do some deep work together.