In our Conversations with Clinicians series, we interview therapists in more depth. They share more about the work that they do, the clients that they work with, their inspirations, passions, personal interests and more. Today, we’re talking with Rachel Lefkowitz Parnes.
Rachel’s journey to becoming a therapist is one of profound personal transformation. She first became aware of her own suffering in an unexpected moment of peace—a 90-minute mindful movement class that allowed her hypervigilant nervous system to settle and showed her a quieter, more connected way of being. Over the next decade, she committed to her own healing through therapy, yoga, meditation, Buddhist psychology, and neuropsychology. At the same time, she built a successful career in tech, including nearly ten years at LinkedIn. Yet, as she grew into her authenticity, she realized her deeper calling: guiding others toward their own power, wisdom, and truth. For Rachel, therapy is about creating clarity amid uncertainty and building momentum in stuckness … a space to break through what feels heavy, grow your confidence, and deepen the connections that matter most.
Where is your office located?
Virtual only
What is your therapeutic orientation?
Psychodynamic, Buddhist psychology, somatic, trauma-informed
What are your areas of specialty?
Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, life transitions
What other modalities inform your work?
yoga, ayurveda, coaching, mindfulness, meditation
What is it like to work with you?
I feel it is my job to show up with spaciousness, attunement, groundedness so that there is room for whatever might be coming up that day for my clients. I get a sense for what is happening—intellectually, emotionally, as well as the felt experience of the phenomenon. I seek to give space to thoughts, feelings that may feel to difficult to experience alone. I look for places where the mind and the nervous system may be misaligned in their goals. The mind wants one thing, yet another thing keeps happening. I look for different parts of self that may be arising or versions of the self that are preserved by trauma that may need something from us. Ultimately, I believe the client has the blueprint for how to live and be the way they want to. Its my job to ask the right questions to help us both see and feel that blueprint.
Who do you LOVE working with?
I love working with clients who come in with curiosity and self-awareness. They know something isn’t quite right and they are brave enough to be curious about personal transformation.
What inspires you about this work?
I love this work. It is so inspiring to sit with folks in their deepest pain, questions. In their trauma and their stories. Its this liminal space therapists get to occupy where we can look at and explore the human experience together with another person and then witness the transformation that comes as a result of this process. Its incredibly powerful and I never tire of it.
We’d Love Some Recommendations From You…
… for the best place to cry in the bay area:
Laugh – Fox Theater, Punch Line, Cobbs; Cry – anywhere looking at the water, SF parks
… for self care practice on a budget:
Absolutely love and humbly bow to the folks at IRC/IMC – https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/ – they offer dana (donation based) talks and retreats.
Favorite non-therapy book:
Non therapy – Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy.
Favorite self-help book/ therapy book:
Pema Choderon – When Things Fall Apart, No Bad Parts – R Schwartz, Bhagavad Gita – Eknath Easwaran.
Favorite quote:
“Each of you is perfect the way you are, and you could use a little improvement” Suzuki Roshi
Other media favorites:
Bon Iver – Awards Season. Confessions – Sudan Archives. Massachusetts – Jensen McRae. Long Game – Emily Nenni
If you could sum up in one sentence why someone might go to therapy, what would you say?
They can’t shake the feeling that there’s gotta be a better way—to be, relate, feel, move through the world. We internalize so much along this life. Beliefs about ourselves, others, the way it “has to be”. Our deepest knowing, heart, self, knows the ways we are caging ourselves in. True freedom lies in the ability to see choice in every moment. In therapy, we start seeing the world, and our place in it as choiceful. We have agency, even if its not always in the most obvious ways.
What is one takeaway moment that you’d like to share from your own experience as a client in therapy?
I can hold this. My capacity to hold my own pain, uncertainty, fear is so much bigger than I could imagine. I can get close to my deepest scariest fears and experiences and I can hold it with the part of myself that is bigger than my stories.
How can people contact you?
Name: Rachel Lefkowitz Parnes
License #: Associate Registrant Applicant
Supervisor: Rosemary McCracken – License# 86912
Phone number: 650-629-2622
Website: https://rachelparnes.co/
Email: [email protected]
Center for Mindful Psychotherapy is a non profit collective of approximately 100 Associate Marriage and Family Therapists in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can learn more about each of them from perusing our Therapist Directory.