Gretchen Blycker, LMHC, LMT, RYT, has been a professional in the health and wellness field for the last 20+ years. As a licensed mental health counselor specializing in mindfulness-based therapy and sexual and relational health, part-time faculty member of a university teaching Human Sexuality, licensed massage therapist, and registered yoga teacher, she is in a unique position of being able to integrate an expert’s knowledge from four professions in the health field. Her unique range of trainings and professional experiences serve to benefit an evolution in thinking and understanding of what promotes balance and health in a comprehensive and truly holistic way (mind/body/energy). In her therapeutic work with clients, Gretchen draws from a mindful process that investigates and explores core beliefs as well as sexual behaviors and practices with a view of how they affect outcomes of mental and relational health.
Gretchen has developed the Mindful Model of Sexual Health that she uses in her work. This model is a framework to organize the distinctive and dynamic information from an individual’s body and mind, it serves as a navigational system, and it offers integrative mindful tools that are beneficial in providing personalized guidance in her work with clients. This mindful way of working is both inclusive of all people, while also allowing for the complexities and individual differences that are supportive of the multiplicity of expressions of our individualized authentic sexual selves. Health requires that we are connected to our whole selves. The Mindful Model of Sexual Health acknowledges our inherent wholeness and our interconnectivity as well as the complexity of myriad factors that influence sexual health and subjective satisfaction and contentment. This model provides a map to navigate the intricacies of the many influencing factors that create a balance towards, or barriers to, sexual health.