Ashley King

M.S.Ed., Ed.M., LPC

My Story

Born and raised in the Philadelphia area, I spent 12 years in Quaker School where my reverence for cultivating an inner life first took shape. I then ventured to Goucher College to study English and Writing. Forever fascinated by our collective human experience, I have been driven by a desire to dive deep into the human heart and psyche for as along as I can remember. In 2001 I earned my M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to teach high school English before receiving my Ed.M. in Counseling Psychology from Temple University in 2009.

Since then, I have worked with countless individual clients, couples, and groups as a therapist, coach, teacher, facilitator, and healer. Alongside my formal academic education I have studied yoga, reiki, mindfulness-based practices, Buddhist meditation, orgasmic meditation, tantra, shamanism, somatic therapy, dance, Authentic Relating, Circling, and energy medicine. I am fond of saying that I come from the “non-guru” lineage. My deepest and most transformative learning experiences have occurred quietly in the trenches, under the tutelage of profoundly ordinary (and at the same time extraordinary) human beings. In particular, I am indebted to a beloved longtime mentor for her fierce love, tireless wisdom, and unconditional support. It has been largely through thousands of hours of direct transmission and presence that I have cultivated the craft that I now call Psychoalchemy.

Some of the esteemed teachers with whom I have studied over the years include Esther Perel, Terry Real, Diana Fosha, Nicole Daedone, Cheryl Strayed, Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg, Kelly Morris, Ashley Turner, Adyashanti, Nerissa Nields, Mark Matousek and more. I am also a graduate of the Conquering Lion Yoga Teacher Training Program, the OneTaste Coaching and Leadership Program, the Hakomi Two Year Comprehensive Training in Mindful, Somatic Psychotherapy, Circling Europe’s SAS training, the AEDP Level I Immersion, and the Core Energetics Primer.

My Practice

I have a boutique Psychotherapy and Wellness practice based in Center City, Philadelphia where I selectively take on clients who are committed to conscious change and transformation. If you are interested in any of the services I offer ranging from Psychotherapy to Intuitive Energy Healing, please contact me for availability and additional information. Services are available both in person and via phone/video chat.

My Mission

A word about inclusivity, trauma, and my practice values…

All human beings are welcome here.

I work with a diverse client population that has, as its common denominator, the desire to rigorously reckon with the complex and often paradoxical experiences of life.

An uncomfortable truth about psychotherapy is that, at its core, it is a politically incorrect endeavor. Human beings are messy inside—we’re wild, instinctual, sometimes disobedient creatures. The terrifying beauty of aliveness is that it is an insubordinate force; it chafes at imposition and refuses to abide socially-sanctioned notions of propriety. The sanctity of therapeutic space rests on a commitment to welcoming everything, to taking up the vow of Roman African playwright Terence who once wrote, “I am human. I consider nothing human alien to me.” 

Our exiled parts are exiled precisely because they were once deemed too threatening to be included in the folds of psychic life. Reengagement with them requires a radical and courageous openness. In solidarity with the sentiment that nothing about the human experience is verboten, I hold ideology to be anathema to honest and ethical therapeutic practice. Therefore, this is a dogma-free space.

My commitment, as both human and therapist, is to meet and recognize the individual(s) in front of me first. I do not assume a litany of abstract “truths” based on one’s particular position in the matrix of identity (race, class, gender etc.). While belonging to a specific group or occupying a precise intersection might be very important to someone, I am interested in what that means for the unique person.

In the same way that not all people who suffer from depression are alike or relate to their condition in the same way, not all people occupying shared categories of identity relate to them uniformly. We are not monoliths. It is never my place to impose a narrative (even if thought to be “enlightened” or “fashionable”) onto another.

Of course we are all products of systems, from family of origin to capitalist culture. Looking at and healing the wounding impacts of these myriad systems is certainly the domain of good psychotherapy.

And, at the same time, wound is not all there is, systemically-induced or otherwise. I am just as interested in looking at evidence of intactness as I am in looking at what has been injured. Transformance is every bit as important as trauma.

In therapy we look at barriers to greater freedom. Some of these barriers are imposed on us from the outside. And some of these barriers are unwittingly self-erected on the inside, in the way of unconscious patterning, protections, and armor. We cannot always change how the world meets us, but we can absolutely change how we meet the world.

To the latter end, therapy is about empowerment. It is about learning to govern our own nervous systems in the midst of a chaotic and troubling world. Clients who are drawn to my practice tend to be curious and motivated humans in pursuit of greater self-agency. They are people who are ready to become responsible citizens of both their power and their vulnerability in service of a more satisfying wholeness.

As a somatic therapist, I am interested in how we hold wounding in our bodies and how our patterns of self-organization take up residence therein. I am extensively trained in working with the neurobiology of trauma, though I have never felt an affinity with the moniker of “trauma-informed” (despite it being a technically true descriptor in my case). It has always been my value to highlight potentiality at least as much as injury. Something about leading with trauma does not pay appropriate homage to my more soulful vision.

I have never particularly understood why contemporary psychotherapy has made trauma so precious. The “open secret” is that, in a traumatized culture, no one gets out unscathed. Trauma is the water that we swim in; there is nothing rarified about it. We are all casualties in one way or another. Ultimately, I hold everyone’s suffering as important, and I am not interested in making a hierarchy or tournament of it. Despite the vast differences in particulars, it is my hope that we can come to view our wounding as a commons of soul, something that unites us rather than divides us. Wholeness and belonging flow from here.

To our collective freedom, Ashley