Mahari Wellness
Nice to meet you...
I've always been drawn to the mechanics of the conscious and unconscious mind — the parts of ourselves that shape us without our full awareness. I gravitated toward social psychology and personality psychology in particular. By the time I finished my undergraduate degree, I'd taken nearly every course the psychology department offered, clinical and developmental both. In 2019, I began graduate training in Counseling Psychology at the University of Hawaii.
When I started working with clients in 2020, I learned two things fast. The first was that the evidence-based frameworks I'd been trained in — CBT, CPT, ACT — weren't taking us to the depth of work I intuitively knew was possible, the kind that creates profound shifts. They were professionally convenient. But they weren't moving the needle the way I had hoped. The second was that the model I was working inside of had no room for the other half of the puzzle: the biological terrain.
There was also this: I was spending significant time listening to clients' fears about their psychotropic medications, mothers worried about their children's long-term fertility, fathers concerned about brain development, teenagers who didn't want to be on medication at all. I documented everything carefully and encouraged them to advocate for themselves with their psychiatrists. But speaking with them about holistic alternatives — things I had learned existed, things I genuinely believed could help — was outside my scope. What I wanted was healing that didn't start with a diagnosis.
I didn't experience this as a wall. I experienced it as information. It told me plainly what I already suspected — that the container I was training toward wasn't the one I wanted to practice in. It couldn't hold the entirety or the reality of who I wanted to be as a practitioner... So I built a different one.
I pursued the most effective trauma modalities I could find: EMDR, somatic work, parts-based therapy, first as a student, then as a client doing my own work. I moved through patterns that had been running beneath my awareness for years. Alongside that, I trained in functional and regenerative health, and used it to resolve inflammation, hormone imbalance, and physical symptoms that talk therapy alone had never touched.
That integration — psychological depth held alongside biological terrain — is not a compromise. It's the practice I was always going to build, whether or not I ever added "licensed" in front of my title. Coaching gives me the freedom to work the way this work actually asks to be worked: intuitively, holistically, without a treatment plan built from a diagnosis I don't think tells the whole story.
Mahari Wellness is that practice.
"My purpose is to be a living bridge between the psyche, the soma and the soul — and to transmit that integration so directly and so precisely that the people I work with not only heal, but come to trust themselves as their own primary healer.
I am not here to be the expert you depend on. I am here to be the guide who makes the expert inside you visible and trustworthy."
A Note From Me....
The Philosophy Behind the Work
I don't work from a fixed protocol.
I work from something I call Resonance Tracking —a careful, attuned listening for where the opening already lives in you, and a willingness to follow it rather than impose a sequence from the outside.
The mind and the body were never separate conversations to begin with. My training reflects that: the psychological and the biological, held together, moving through cycles of resourcing, releasing, and regenerating — whichever the moment actually calls for.
Read more about the philosophy
Background & Expertise
Certified Regenerative Health Coach
Enlight Academy, 2025
Certified Integrative Health Practitioner
IHPI Institute, 2022
Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology
University of Hawaii, 2021
Bachelor of Science in Clinical & Developmental Psychology
Westminster College, 2012
EDUCATION
Director of Course Development - The Biology of Trauma
Trauma Healing Accelerated, 2022-2024
Behavioral Health Practicum
Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, 2020-2021
Graduate Intern
Department of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division, State of Hawaii, 2020-2021
Observation & Assessment Intern
Juvenile Justice Department, 2011 –2012
Brainspotting: A Neuro Experiential Approach to Healing - Trauma Solutions (David Grand) - In progress
Integrative Medicine and Nutrition for PTSD, Complex Trauma, and Traumatic Brain Injury - Dr. Leslie Korn - In progress
Somatic EMDR Therapy - Embody Lab (Dr. Arielle Scwartz) - 2024
EMDR Certified (Basic Level 1&2, Advanced trainings in Grief and Complex Trauma). EMDRIA 2021-2023
Integrative Somatic Parts Work - Embody Lab (Fran Booth) - 2022
Working with Perfectionism - NICMB - 2021
Somatic Experiencing for Chronic Pain and Syndromes - Trauma Solutions - 2021
DBT Skills for Adolescents and Families - 2021
EXPERIENCE
SPECIALIZATION & TRAINING
-Publications-
Gibson, R., Acosta, V. M., Hiura, A., & Higa, C. (2021, April). Systems involvement of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) youth at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF). Poster presented at the 18th IVAT Annual Hawai’i International Virtual Summit
Acosta, V. M., Gibson, R., Hiura, A., & Higa, C. (2021, August). Incarceration trends of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) youth at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF). Poster presented at the 129th Annual APA Virtual Convention.
Gibson, R., Whealin, J.M., Dasaro, C.R., Udasin...Pietrzak, R. (2022, June). Prevalence and correlates of suicidal ideation in World Trade Center responders: Results from a population based health monitoring cohort. Journal of Affective Disorders.
