“Every day, from my therapy desk, I see that sexuality has been repressed in the larger Indian context.
Part of my life’s work is to help people normalize their sexual and creative expression in relationship to their personal power, to heal from sexual shame and expand their understanding of sexual trauma.“

About me and the Clinical Practice:

My name is Neha Bhat (ABT, ATR-P). I’m a licensed arts-based sex and trauma psychotherapist, an artist, a teacher and the author of Unashamed, a pioneering book on navigating shame in the urban Indian context. Making mental health practice more culturally-sensitive is a key area of interest for me. I write as @indiansextherapist on social media for this reason. I run a sex and sexuality-focused, arts-based trauma therapy practice where people from diverse cultural backgrounds seek therapy and attend inner work classes to learn tools to help themselves shift from merely surviving against their pain to thriving into their integrity and power.

We have the following areas of focus:

1. SEXUAL VIOLENCE FOCUSED TRAUMA THERAPY

2. RESTORATIVE JUSTICE & INTERSECTIONS WITH THE LAW

3. INTERPERSONAL ABUSE:PREVENTION & HEALING

4. NEURODIVERGENCE IN EDUCATION

5. ARTS BASED, SPIRITUALLY FOCUSED CREATIVE WELLNESS TECHNIQUES for Mental & Sexual Health

Something unique about me, is that:

I have a penchant for guiding people to dig deep to uncover what might be hidden beneath the surface of their presenting
life challenges.

I like bringing distinct, even oppositional ideas together to create innovative solutions to challenging and long-standing sociocultural problems.

My Background:

As a queer Indian person working across the different cultures in the world, I care deeply about challenges related to abuse and violence, in connection to collective health. I’ve trained extensively in clinical mental & sexual health practice, both in the Indian and the American Healthcare systems.

Spiritual tools and somatic practices are part of my healing methodologies. I’m particularly interested in using arts-based wellness tools, principles of depth psychology and drawing from ancient Indian spiritual wisdom in the therapy room, to assist people to heal the deep wounds that trauma creates, when it lives repressed within our bodies.

My book, Unashamed, 2024 by Harper Collins, written on these lines, is a therapeutic guide to heal from sexual shame, especially for people navigating the diversities of the urban Indian context.

My specialties are: Trauma Therapy; Sexual violence focused trauma therapy; Interpersonal Violence in Couples; Sex focused psychotherapy; Neurodivergence in teenagers and adults; LGBTQ+ identity development; Decolonial and indigenous approaches to wellness practices; Art Therapy; Theatre of the Oppressed and Somatic work; Depression and Anxiety resilience; Monogamous and Polyamorous Relationships; Parenting LGBTQ+ children; Complex grief, personal empowerment practices and working with intergenerational trauma patterns in the Indian psyche.

I’ve worked with:

• Individuals
• Couples
• Indian Family systems (Mother-Daughter units, Father – Son units and such)
• Small organizational groups and work teams
• Legal systems for trauma survivors and perpetrators – courts and jails
  
  Over the past 11+ years of clinical practice, I have served the following categories of people :
  
• children between 5 and 15 years of ago, with special needs, on the neurodivergent spectrum (Autism, ADHD and so on)
• adult survivors of sexual trauma and adult perpetrators of sexual trauma – individuals, couples and family units impacted by sexual violence
• higher educational institutions and Title IX offices in the US, in offering better pathways of access to justice and healing to survivors of sexual violence.
• adult women (both cis, trans and non-binary) under incarceration – both in Indian and American prison systems
  

Learning Tools for You:

This website is designed as a learning archive of insights from my clinical practice, my articles and videos on trauma therapy from a decolonial Indian lens, and access to training tools for people at different levels of interest and study. The material published on this website in the form of pieces of writing, videos, questions, talks, worksheets and toolkits, is all a part of my life’s work, that I’ve been slowly putting together for you.

I encourage you to go deeper into my offerings that we’ve curated in this space.

You may have found a piece of my writing resonant, something I said in a public talk insightful, or perhaps, you harbored a gentle curiosity about this unique practice of healing and wellness that’s being discussed here… which lead you to this practice.

Perhaps you want to update your trauma learnings, or unravel the history of what happened to you, maybe there’s grief in your heart that hasn’t been tended to — for whichever reason you find yourself reading till here, I whole-heartedly welcome you.

Learn in a Digital Masterclass/Workshop:

My Upcoming Trauma Training Workshops:

Learn through Social Media: