Trauma Specialist in Berkeley, CA and Online
Integrative, Somatic, and Spiritually Grounded Trauma Recovery
Malachi Gillihan is a Trauma Specialist and Certified Spiritual Counselor, offering trauma recovery and healing in Berkeley, the East Bay, and virtually to clients nationwide and internationally. His work supports clients whose trauma shows up through symptoms such as anxiety, depression, hypervigilance or restlessness, disconnection and dissociation, sleep disruption, or even a quiet sense that something is off.
As a survivor-practitioner with an MA in East-West Psychology and PhD candidacy at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Malachi brings both lived experience and deep research and training to every session.
Trauma Recovery and Healing Services
Trauma recovery is not one size fits all. Every offering below is shaped around clients whose trauma shows up differently, with sessions that meet you where you are. Whether the work needs to happen one-on-one, in a group, with a partner, or through the body, there is a path here for you.
Individual Trauma Recovery
One-on-one sessions built around the steady, relational depth that individual work makes possible. Each session is shaped by your pace and your nervous system, with the freedom to bring both past and present into the room.
Somatic and Mind-Body Work
Body-based practices for clients whose trauma is held beyond words. Sessions draw on somatic and body-based awareness, nervous system regulation, breath, and movement to help the body complete what it could not integrate at the time.
Couples and Family Trauma Support
We are both hurt and healed in the relationship. Relational sessions for partners and families whose connection has been shaped and impacted by trauma. The work focuses on understanding how trauma moves between people and what it takes to soften those patterns together.
Complex PTSD Recovery
Focused support for clients carrying the weight of prolonged, severe, or developmental trauma. Sessions hold space for the long, layered work of healing patterns that began early and ran deep.
Group Trauma Recovery
You are not alone. Group-based approaches to trauma recovery and healing in a safe, relational setting. For clients, being witnessed by others walking similar terrain is part of what makes the work possible.
Spiritual Counseling
Meaning-centered guidance for clients exploring and integrating the spiritual dimensions of their healing process. Sessions hold space for questions about purpose, identity, and the larger story your trauma is asking you to live into.
Sexual Trauma Recovery
Survivor-practitioner-led work for individuals healing from various forms of sexual trauma and sexual victimization. Sessions are steady, gender-informed, and guided by someone who understands this terrain from the inside.
Trauma and Addiction Recovery
Trauma-informed support for clients whose healing is tangled up with compulsive patterns. Sessions can hold both threads at once, without asking you to choose which one to bring into the room.
Browse the full range of services to find the offering that fits where you are right now.
Specialty Areas for Focused Trauma Work
Some clients arrive carrying experiences that need a more focused container. These specialty areas exist for that work, shaped around populations, patterns, and formats of trauma recovery that benefit from a dedicated approach.
Male Survivors of Sexual Trauma
Group-based and individual work for men healing from sexual trauma, sexual victimization, and other forms of unwanted sexual experiences. Male survivors are a population that is often invisible and underserved in trauma recovery spaces. The work meets the particular weight male survivors carry, including the silence, the shame, gender socialization, and the long road back to feeling at home in the male body.
Couple’s Intensives
Focused, extended sessions for partners working through the way trauma has shaped or continues to impact their connection. Intensives create space for the kind of relational repair that can be hard to reach inside a standard session length.
Women and Non-Binary C-PTSD Support
A current group offering for women and non-binary clients living with Complex-PTSD. The group meets the layered, developmental nature of complex trauma with relational, embodied work alongside others who understand what it means to have lived inside it for a long time.
*This group is focused on what some refer to as a “Stage 1, Process-Oriented Support Group,” supporting efforts to find greater stabilization, connection, and co-regulation.
Trauma Intensives
Concentrated, longer-format sessions for clients who want to move into focused work over a shorter span of time. Intensives are shaped around a specific area of trauma you want to give sustained attention to, with the depth and pacing tailored to your nervous system.
If a specialty area speaks to where you are, the next step is a conversation about whether it fits.
Workshops, Retreats, and On-Demand Courses for Deeper Healing
These workshops, retreats, and on-demand courses create space for immersive, self-paced, or community-held experiences, whether you are a survivor working through your own healing or a practitioner deepening your understanding of trauma.
Yoga and the Sacred Wound
An on-demand course integrating trauma science, yoga psychology, and mind-body practices for sexual trauma recovery and healing. The course offers a foundational understanding of trauma theory, the particular shape of sexual trauma, and immediate practices you can begin using for your own recovery or work with survivors.
Nervous System Reset Mini-Retreat
A grounded, embodied experience for clients whose nervous systems need somewhere soft to land. The mini-retreat blends somatic practice, breathwork, and contemplative reflection into a focused window of regulation and rest.
Free 5-Week Email Series: Heal Sexual Trauma Through Yoga
A free, five-part email series introducing the core concepts of what trauma is, how it shapes a person, and the practices you can begin taking up on your own. Drawn from Malachi's own healing journey and his integration of trauma science with yoga psychology and mind-body work.
Browse all current and upcoming workshops, retreats, and courses, or join the free 5-week series to take the first step on your own time.
Meet Malachi Gillihan, Trauma Specialist and Survivor-Practitioner
Malachi Gillihan is a Trauma Specialist, yogi, and Certified Spiritual Counselor based in Berkeley, California, whose practice grew out of his own healing journey as a survivor of Complex-PTSD and sexual trauma. His approach blends Western psychological frameworks with Eastern contemplative traditions, drawing on somatic practices, nervous system understanding, mindfulness, and attachment-informed care, shaped by years of training under leaders in interpersonal neurobiology, including Dr. Dan Siegel and Deb Dana.
He holds an MA in East-West Psychology and a certification as a Spiritual Counselor from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he is currently a PhD candidate researching group-based interventions for male survivors of sexual trauma. He is a member of ISTSS, APA Division 51, and co-chairs the Complex Trauma Special Interest Group within ISTSS.
Why Clients Trust Malachi Gillihan in Berkeley, CA, and Beyond
Trauma recovery and healing can feel clinical, heavy, or out of reach. The work here is built around a different premise: that healing happens best when the approach holds the whole of you, and the space leaves room for both depth and lightness.
Healing from the Inside Out: A practitioner who has done the work himself brings a kind of knowing that changes what is possible in the room.
An Integrative East-West Approach: Talk, body, breath, and meaning are all part of the conversation, so you never have to leave a piece of yourself at the door.
Grounded in the Nervous System: Safety in the body is not a slogan here. It is the foundation that makes everything else in the work possible.
Room for Levity: Trauma recovery does not have to be heavy all the time, and the space here keeps your humanity, humor, and capacity for joy welcome as part of the healing.
Lucia Grauman, Psychology Today Review
"Malachi is a highly skilled, knowledgeable, mixed modality trauma specialist. He is warm and compassionate and easy to talk to. I highly recommend him as both a general trauma therapist, as well as a specialist in sexual trauma."
AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS
Begin When You Are Ready
Healing rarely starts at a tidy moment. Whether you are at the very beginning of this work, somewhere mid-journey, or returning to it after time away, you do not have to figure out the next step alone. A consultation is a place to talk through what is showing up, what kind of support might fit, and whether this practice feels like the right container for the road ahead.