Training & Experience

Following her experience as the Director of the Parent-Toddler Program at the Waldorf School of Orange County, and the school counselor for the Newport-Mesa School District at Peterson Elementary School in Huntington Beach, Nola Casserly went on after licensure to serve as the Director of Children’s Services at the Center For Hope and Healing in Irvine.

Nola has completed her trauma training at the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute with Dr. Pat Ogden, her EMDR training with Curtis Rouanzoin, PhD, and is currently working on her certification in that modality through EMDRIA.

As the co-founder of the “Conscious Mothering” parenting classes with her colleague and gifted therapist, Dr. Jenna Flowers, she has helped many parents in Orange County effectively understand the reactive patterns of their own parenting style with regards to their personal legacy grounded in a neuro-developmental context. Nola now specializes in “Conscious Teen Parenting,” and works to help parents through this challenging time of “neural reconstruction” and the unique opportunities this approach can provide. How we as a culture can help teens manage anxiety and realize their true potential amidst a worldwide period of instability and the pressure of social media is the vision of her work.

Nola also works to help parents and educators understand the critical importance of “trauma-proofing” our children today through the inspiration and work of Peter A. Levine, PhD and Bessel van der Kolk, MD. If trauma is seen as a “fact of life,” and the development of critical regulatory pathways and vagal tone in the nervous system is incorporated into the way we raise and educate our children, resiliency is the outcome and all children can reach their full potential. As a co-founding board member at Sea Star Village, a parent education and child development center in Corona del Mar California, Nola currently seeks to re-vision the way we educate our children today by incorporating these key regulatory aspects of development into the pedagogy there.