Mental Health Care Solutions for Sonoma County

The Lomi School founders in 1970s
Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic founders in 1980s

Since 1987, the Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic has provided effective, accessible, and affordable mental health services to our local Sonoma County community. Our 30-person counseling staff offers therapy geared toward each client’s needs. Our sliding-scale counseling program serves individual adults, adolescents and children, as well as couples and families. We also offer group therapy and educational classes to the public.

From the beginning our goal has been to expand the availability and excellence of psychotherapy thereby improving overall mental health and quality of life in Sonoma County.

We offer an integrative therapeutic approach utilizing our Mindfulness-Based Somatic expertise. Also we utilize various appropriate methods, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Attachment-Based Therapy, Trauma-Informed Care, Art and Movement Therapy, and other methods applied to individual needs depending on the current issues and needs of the client.

The world has changed since 2020, and mental health care is needed now more than ever. We support community members traumatized by the wildfires, pandemic, and other life challenges to find stability and a positive, loving relationship with life, love, and others. We specialize in supporting clients with depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, parenting concerns, addiction, chronic pain/illness, loss and bereavement, stress, spiritual concerns, financial stress, creative blocks, early childhood trauma, major life changes, and the impact of trauma.

Our Mission

To provide high quality, affordable, and accessible mental health care and education to our community and professionals, specializing in a mindfulness-based, integrated model of care.

Our Vision

We envision a safe and vibrant community through the support of accessible mental health care.

The Lomi School was founded in 1970 to integrate the healing traditions of psychotherapy, somatic practices, and meditation in a coherent form. Eight years later, The Lomi School Foundation was founded as a non-profit organization to sponsor the work of The Lomi School and its various, worldwide training programs. In 1987, The Lomi Community Clinic was founded to offer affordable, sliding scale psychotherapy to residents of Sonoma County, and as a training institution for psychotherapists. At the time of its founding, all of the low-cost clinics in the county had waiting lists. The Clinic began in a small building on College Avenue in Santa Rosa with four interns.

Our Timeline

  • The 1970s

    The Lomi School was founded in 1970, an exciting time of experimental and integration of many modes of work. The Founders, Robert K. Hall, MD, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD, Alyssa Hall, LMFT, and Catherine Flaxman, LMFT envisioned a school where they would integrate various methods to address the whole person’s needs. They employed various forms of meditation, bodywork, breathwork, Gestalt Therapy, movement disciplines of yoga, martial arts, and movement therapy, and art therapy into an organized body-oriented psychotherapy called Lomi Work. Their first workshops were three-week intensive workshops for the public. These workshops were transformational, and some participants wanted to be trained in this integrative model.

    The Lomi School’s workshops and trainings were held in various locations from Santa Cruz, Hawaii, San Francisco, and Marin County. It was during this period that the collective published The Lomi Papers, a collection of essays by the founders and senior graduates of the training program. There was also a 35mm movie made about Lomi work entitled “An Approach to Growth.”

    The Lomi School’s work spread as teachers travelled teaching, and graduates took the work to different parts of the country and the world. Robert Hall and Richard Strozzi-Heckler began teaching in the Psychology Department at Naropa Institute. Teachers began teaching in workshops and trainings in Europe and Latin America.

    In 1978, The Lomi School Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation was formed.

  • The 1980s

    The Lomi School Bulletin was first published, an investigation of the relationship between awareness disciplines and the social issues of that time–including birthing, dying, conflict resolution, education, violence, community, the arts, and healthcare.

    The Lomi School continued providing trainings for professionals in its intensive training program. The four-month intensive trainings expanded the depth of the program, and included a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. The program consisted of body and breath work methods, Gestalt Therapy, movement disciplines, meditation, anatomy and kinesiology, and supervised work with model clients.

    In 1984 Tomales School of Psychotherapy was introduced, a new program leading toward a Masters Degree in Psychology and geared for MFT licensing. This School was formed by Robert Hall, MD, Mary Merrill, PhD, Ernestine Ward, LMFT, and Thomas Pope, LMFT. The program was founded on the belief that the basic human need is to integrate the mental and physical functions. It was intended to train therapists in the use of both the body’s subtle feelings and the mind’s intellectual capacities.

    In 1987 The Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic was created in Santa Rosa, CA as an outgrowth of the Tomales School of Psychotherapy. The idea was to establish a clinic that could serve the community with low-fee counseling, as well as be a training center for interns who wanted post-graduate training in a somatic approach to psychotherapy.

  • 1987 - Present

    The Clinic has provided 100,000’s sessions of low-cost, sliding-scale therapy for Sonoma County residents in need as well as training and supervision for over 500 therapists.

Over the years, we have grown tremendously. As governmental support for psychotherapy dwindled and the insurance industry cut accessibility for treatment, clinics such as the Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic have become the backbone of community mental health.

The Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic is an integral part of the Sonoma County mental health care delivery system. We are a licensed mental health facility by the Department of Public Health (License # 110000511). We are an approved internship program for Psychologist Interns by the California Psychology Internship Council. Referrals to our clinic from Sonoma County Mental Health, from court diversion programs, from Child Protective Services, Veterans Affairs, psychiatrists and doctors, and many other agencies, allow us to serve an ever-widening portion of the Sonoma County population, as well as other nearby counties. Since 1987, the need for non-profit mental healthcare has grown as government resources have shrunk and as the insurance industry has found ways to limit reimbursement. We have taken the role of providing care to people who cannot pay full fee for treatment, but who are in extreme need for care. Our clientele includes many who come to us for understanding and growth, but also those who are in crisis and face immediate survival issues mentally, emotionally, and physically. Our staff increasingly serves those with major mental illness.

Lomi’s Legacy Fund for Mental Health is a long-standing program that provides free short-term counseling for community members impacted by a crisis. Lomi has activated this fund several times throughout the last 30 years. More recently, it was used to support fire survivors during the aftermath of multiple wildfires (1,017 free sessions provided), youth impacted by the wildfires (115 free sessions provided), individuals who were struggling during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic and could not afford care (837 free sessions provided), and unhoused and low-income community members as they navigated a time of crisis (284 free sessions provided). Since 2017, Lomi has provided 2,253 free crisis counseling sessions to Sonoma County community members in need through our Legacy Fund for Mental Health.

Help us to continue providing affordable, accessible, and quality mental health services for Sonoma County.