Laura Raffa is a licensed creative arts therapist, with board certification in dance/movement therapy and a certified group psychotherapist. She is also a certified authentic movement practitioner and has facilitated authentic movement groups in private practice as well supervised several dance/movement therapy interns. She is also a crisis intervention trainer. Laura began her career treating patients through dance/movement therapy during a graduate school internship on Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward in 2005. She has experience working with children afflicted with cancer, patients with autistic spectrum disorder, and forensic patients through her work at Sloan Kettering, Montefiore Hospital, and Bellevue Hospital. Laura began her work on Rikers Island in 2014 on a grant to treat mentally ill patients requiring frequent re-hospitalization to the psychiatric service at Bellevue. Currently, Laura is the Director of Trainings and Treatment Aid Services at Rikers Island. She designs, teaches, and implements trainings for both health and custody staff, facilities staff support and team building groups, consults with clinical teams on challenging patient cases, and supervise staff to implement group programming and clinical engagement on the therapeutic housing units for incarcerated people at Rikers Island.

 

Laura's email: [email protected]

 

Reverence for Impulse is an unscripted, unplanned and (hopefully) unedited podcast with me, Weena Pauly-Tarr. Together with my guests, we’re asking what is alive in this moment?We start each episode with a few minutes of meeting each other head-to-toe, through the language of our bodies, before we press record and bring it to a conversation. We start where we are. This is not a hard hitting agenda or getting to the bottom of things, it's about being in the bottoms of things. Finding each other in the not-knowing. I’m here for the spaciousness, the awkwardness, the silliness, the silence — From the dark insides of our bodies to the brightness of our minds, I'm excited to welcome people who’s impulses I’d like to get to know.

Website: weenapauly.com

Instagram: weenapaulytarr