Therapist Integrates Sustainability into Somatics Practice

For Michael Anne Conley, "Green Health Care" means "aligning your work environment with your intentions and values."

She believes it is vitally important that the locations where people come to experience health care be more than aesthetically pleasant. They must be as environmentally safe as possible. Although Michael Anne has long been a green activist in her own life and work, participating in the Greening Your Workplace component of the Teleosis Green Health Care Program has sharpened her determination in a way that benefits herself, her clients and colleagues and the environment.

Focusing on body-oriented solutions, Michael Anne has practiced an integrative approach to addiction and health issues since 1984, first as a health educator and then also as a licensed marriage and family therapist. Part of this therapeutic process includes supporting others in their journeys to deepen their relationship with themselves and strengthen their social and family connections. In her practice, as well as in her personal life, Michael Anne believes that "to master oneself is to transform the world within, which one then transmits when relating to others. This approach is how we change the world we share together." With this in mind, she saw the Green Health Care Program as an opportunity to enrich the relationship between her work and her values.

In 1997, Michael Anne expanded her practice to open Stillpoint Center for Health, Well-Being & Renewal. As part of her vision of providing care in a cross-disciplinary way, Stillpoint’s four offices are shared by a dozen professionals in various health disciplines. Michael Anne renovated this work environment and chose ecologically sound options such as low VOC paints, energy efficient lighting, and jute padding under carpet to prevent off-gassing. Through her participation in the Green Health Care program, Michael Anne is able to deepen the alignment with her core values, while gaining clarity around all the different ways that she can still improve. Her involvement with the Teleosis Institute has helped her affirm her decision to make her work environment safe, non-toxic, and ecologically sustainable.

One aspect of her multilayered approach to health care involves community support. “Being a part of the Green Health Care program is a real treat,” she says, “because there is nothing like joining with others to support a common purpose.” She sees the Green Health Care program as providing a community that is creating pathways toward sustainable health care, facilitating collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas.

For Michael Anne, the Green Health Care Program serves as "an opportunity for me to meet others who are moving in a direction that our health care system needs to move into. We must begin to do this. There are some things you don't compromise. If the human family intends to sustain itself, there is no other option than to live more wisely on the earth." Michael Anne believes the Green Health Care program is a chance for practitioners to "make our little drop in the ocean, to remind ourselves that we are all in this together creating possibilities for our patients, communities and for world to sustain human family into the future."

Michael Anne Conley, MFT
Stillpoint Center for Health, Well-Being & Renewal
953 Mountain View Drive
Lafayette, CA 94549
925-274-3311
Click here for her website