Mandala Dreaming

Welcome

I am grateful we have crossed paths . . .

My name is Debra and I have been practicing psychotherapy and dreamwork for over 18 years. After 12 years of private practice psychotherapy with individual clients, my practice has shifted primarily to ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, dreamwork, and the integration of alternative states of awareness through various arts-based, nature-based, and applied shamanic practices.

At Mandala Dreaming, we take a holistic approach to mental health, recognizing that physical, emotional, and spiritual health are interconnected. We work primarily with individual adults and groups from a diverse range of gender, sexual, ethnic, socioeconomic, and spiritual backgrounds.

Based on a trauma-informed, psycho-spiritual model of growth-promotion, preparation, harm-reduction, and integration, our work centers on exploring the seen and unseen through non-ordinary states of awareness. From these perspectives and within such realms, we support and facilitate healing and growth collaboratively and compassionately.

Common Concerns

The most common concerns among those seeking our services include:

Feeling overwhelmed with life's demands, life stages, and life transitions
Feeling stuck creatively or energetically
Experiencing high levels of stress or anxiety
Grief, loss, and trauma
Existential concerns around end-of-life, freedom and responsibility, isolation and disconnection, or meaning and purpose
Confusion around spirituality, identity, or vocation
Difficulty with relationships at home, school, or work
Persistent feelings of loneliness, sadness, or depression
Curiosity or fear around visionary experiences or spiritual emergence
Questions or intuitions around one's birth or pre-birth experiences

Services

Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)

We offer individual and group ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP), a cutting-edge treatment that combines the therapeutic potential of ketamine with personalized, depth psychotherapy.

Learn More

Dreamwork

Merging Jungian psychology with shamanic wisdom to awaken the soul and bring insight to unconscious processes driving thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Psychedelic Preparation & Integration

Preparation and integration are a vital part of the therapy process designed to enhance the benefits of psychedelic experiences and reduce potential risks.

Integrated Energy Medicine

Working with subtle energy systems that underlie physical, mental, and emotional health to enrich your life and promote healing.

Depth Hypnosis & Applied Shamanic Counseling

Non-psychedelic, therapeutic modalities incorporating hypnotherapy, transpersonal psychology, Buddhist psychology, shamanism, integrated energy medicine, altered states, and regression therapies.

Inner Child & "Parts" Work

An eclectic approach informed by Internal Family Systems (IFS) principles to help you heal emotional wounds by connecting with different parts of yourself and understanding how they interact.

My Spiritual Path

~The flowing creek & enchanted forest of Jesusita Trail, Santa Barbara, CA (image captured by Debra Droggitis-Sherk, March 2026)

My entry into this life on earth was tumultuous. Having left the womb three months prematurely and spending 66 days in an incubator, I had an early education in threshold mastery, graduating from the space-between-worlds. Learning to survive in liminal spaces gave me important wisdom around being present for others through vulnerable transitions.

Those 66 days of incubation were my initiation into understanding the liminal spaces where life hangs in the balance, where the tender work of nurturing happens, where miracles emerge through careful tending. Before I could walk, I learned that survival requires both fierce determination and profound surrender.

One of my most formative childhood experiences occurred when I was 7 years of age. My family took in a stray, pregnant, black cat, whom we aptly named Midnight. Soon after, I was somehow the sole member out of 7 family members to witness Midnight's miraculous birthing and awakening of each of her kittens. She would not let me leave her side during the entire experience. Whenever I tried to relieve myself, she would extend her paw out toward me as if to say, "Please, don't go."

Many decades later, I have grown to realize I could not leave Midnight's side because she needed my presence. This was my soul recognizing its calling. I was not just witnessing kittens being born . . . I was receiving my first teaching about the sacred work of being present for transformation. Every whale or feline that visits my dreams, every hawk encounter, every dolphin swimming beside me in wild ocean waters is an affirmation of my sacred connection with soul beings in animal or human form . . . confirming what I've always known: I speak the language of souls in transition.

My Energetic Signature

By nature, instinct, and intuition, I carry the frequency of someone who mindfully tends to the creation and nurturing of sacred spaces, creating the conditions that help you to feel safe, so that your most vulnerable and authentic expressions may come alive. I meet you wherever you may be on your healing path, while maintaining the consistent thread of sacred presence.

People tend to seek out and trust in my support for my capacity to listen and hold space for whatever wants to be born through them. My presence fosters a safe and steady container where souls can labor through their most important transitions. My unique frequency of sacred witnessing demonstrates that the deepest healing happens when someone trained and qualified in threshold work sits present with whatever is emerging, without trying to control the process, but by simply ensuring safe passage.

My Soul Symbols

I serve as a soul midwife. The symbols I align with tell the story of my soul medicine:

Circles and mandalas (holding space, unity, wholeness, the Self)
The moon (intuition, cycles, transitions)
The hearth fire (tending the sacred flame of transformation)
Spirals (personal power, cosmic energy, the journey of the soul, the sacred flow of life, the interconnectedness of all things, going inward)
Flowing water (emotional fluidity, change, adaptability, and the unfolding of consciousness)
Infinity symbol (eternal presence, continuity, life and rebirth, unity in duality, balance between opposites)
The ouroboros (eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth)

These are not random attractions ~ they are the sacred geometry of my soul midwifery medicine.

My Midwifery Approach

Soul midwifery is a way of being and practicing that serves across all realms and disciplines. Whether being present with you, tending my own dreams, writing stories that need to be born, or simply witnessing and listening to another soul that needs to be seen and heard ~ I feel extremely humbled and enlivened when facilitating the process of midwifing something from potential into reality.

My creative expressions ~ through color, light, sound, the spoken and written word ~ they all want to emerge because art, stories, and music are how souls remember their way through transformation. I do not just help beings be born . . . I help them remember why they chose to be born.

The practices I weave into my work include guided visualization and imagery catalyzed by shamanic drumming, journeying, expressive arts, movement and meditation, and such modalities involving soul retrieval and recovery, personal power retrieval and re-balancing, inner child work and "parts" integration, energy release and recalibration, and regression therapies.

My Background

Life Experience

Training & Certifications

Education & Licensing

I have had the privilege of being alive for over five decades, with countless lived experiences within which I have learned, grappled, and grown through.

I am a mother, wife, soul midwife, therapist, feminist, animal lover, dreamer, artist, and writer.

In my current transitional life stage of menopause, I am receiving first-hand, real-time knowledge that menopause is not an ending, but a beginning ~ marking the transition into my role as elder midwife ~ having learned to curiously and compassionately tend to my own energy so that I may serve the deeper birthings that await in others.

Like many of us, I have a deep awareness of the individual and collective traumas carried over from generations past. I have grown to learn that the intergenerational trauma that I carry is not a burden, but a qualification. Having felt the weight of collective pain in the world today, I understand what needs healing.

My frustration with injustice and oppression toward the vulnerable ~ namely, women, children, and endangered animals, the unhoused, the mentally ill, the underserved and less-privileged, the immigrant populations, indigenous peoples and traditions, the environment ~ is driven by my soul's fierce love for what wants to be born into wholeness.

Education & Licensing

Training & Certifications

Education & Licensing

With great honor and passion, I have studied and continue to study in the following fields:

Depth Psychology with an emphasis in Jungian and Archetypal studies
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)
Alchemy
Transpersonal Psychology
Integrated Energy Medicine
Applied Shamanism
Depth Hypnosis
Applied Buddhist Psychology
Andean Cosmology
Mindfulness
Holistic Wellness

My work and philosophies have been influenced by such masters as Carl Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, Marion Woodman, James Hollis, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, Rick Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, José Luis Herrera, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Michael Singer, Gabor Maté, Isa Gucciardi, and many more.

I hold masters degrees in both Depth Psychology and Counseling Psychology, and a PhD in Depth Psychology with Emphasis in Jungian & Archetypal Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA.

I am a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in California (LMFT# 84463)

Training & Certifications

I have earned certifications and/or completed additional training in:

Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy from Polaris Insight Center in San Francisco, CA & Kayru Wellness in Carmel, CA
Dream Tending at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA
Depth Hypnosis, Applied Shamanism, Integrated Energy Medicine, and Dreamwork from the Foundation of the Sacred Stream in Berkeley, CA
The Feldenkrais Mindfulness Method, The Gifts of Grief, and Meaningful Aging at Midlife workshops at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA
The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music through the Association of Music and Imagery
Domestic Violence Training through Domestic Violence Solutions in Santa Barbara, CA.

LMFT traineeships, internships, supervision, and applied clinical experience in several modalities, orientations, and diverse populations in Santa Barbara, CA:

Santa Barbara City College's Health & Wellness Center
New Beginnings Counseling Center
Grief and Loss Volunteer Counseling at Hospice of Santa Barbara
Group Co-Facilitator at Hotel de Rivieria Residential Home
Volunteer Telephone Operator for 2-1-1 Crisis Hotline

Our Work Together

Through a grounded and trusting relationship that we develop and nurture together, I help you to align with your inner guidance, release old, worn-out patterns of thought and behavior, restore your internal resources, and reclaim your innate, healing capacity.

I support you in your healing path toward increased stability and balance, more fulfilling relationships, personal growth and transformation, as well as a deeper spiritual connection to Self, to nature, and to community.

I thank you for being born and for arriving here now . . . and I look forward to growing with you.

Get Started Today

*I offer Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) in-person throughout California. Remote Dreamwork, Spiritual & Shamanic Counseling, and Psychedelic Preparation & Integration is offered worldwide via Google Meet.

Schedule an Initial Consultation

Sessions & Packages

Initial Telephone Consultation

15 mins|Complimentary

Individual 50-minute session (KAP Integration, Dreamwork, Integrated Energy Medicine, IFS, Shamanic Counseling)

50 mins|$225

Depth Hypnosis 3-Pack

(3) 1-hr sessions

3 hrs|$700

Depth Hypnosis 6-Pack

(6) 1-hr sessions

6 hrs|$1,350

Individual KAP Immersion (Initial Protocol)

6 hrs|$1,350

Includes: (3) Pre-KAP remote preparation sessions, (1) 3-hour in-person KAP medicine journey.

Individual KAP Single Session (scheduled after Initial Protocol)

3 hrs|$700

Includes: (1) 3-hr KAP in-person medicine journey.

Group KAP Immersion

7 hrs|$700

Includes: (1) pre-KAP remote preparation session, 5-hr KAP in-person group medicine journey, (1) post-KAP remote group integration,

and (1) vegetarian meal.