Pine /pīn/ : to yearn intensely and persistently
Prune /pro͞on /: to reduce, especially by eliminating superfluous matter
Spruce /spro͞os/ : to tidy up, refresh, enliven
Meeting in vibrancy
I have enjoyed a career as a psychotherapist and it has been my honor and pleasure to work intimately with many incredible clients over the years. The work I offer now builds upon my therapeutic skills and abilities, while also being distinctly different. Stated most simply, rather than meeting you in your pain, I am committed to meeting you in your pleasure. Even if you are initially motivated to give this a try because you are seeking relief from some measure of anguish, I will gently and steadily work to reintroduce you to the life force that already exists inside you. Our time together will be less concerned with exploring the reasons for your malaise (therapy can be absolutely perfect for this) but instead will be aimed at immediately shifting your experience so that you can quickly feel back into parts of yourself that you have missed — or may have never known.
Through listening closely and developing thoughtful creative experiments, I invite you to become aware of how you relate to yourself and the world. I serve as a facilitator and catalyst – creating opportunities for your familiar ways of feeling and thinking to become destabilized so that your most authentic self can emerge.
By identifying strengths rather than weakness, we can begin to remove the obstacles that make it difficult for you to live with vitality. Many of our choices are creative adjustments to difficult situations and it is only with compassion and understanding that we can experience change.
— Anastasia Gochnour, Spruce Founder
How we work
Our approach emphasizes abundance rather than scarcity. When we become curious about what we pine for, we can begin to embrace our desires and nourish ourselves well. Participation in a collaborative process increases the potential for self-acceptance, understanding, and transformational change.
We ask the question: ‘What do I need to feel the way I want to feel?’
Our offerings span the practical,
Examples of our work with organizations & communities
Practice Community
Created an innovative group practice model to foster and strengthen community for new therapists. Provided on-going supervision with an emphasis on the experience of the practitioner and attended to quality of physical space so that therapists could feel well-supported and treatment environment provided enhanced experience for clients of attention, intention, and care.
Zen Center of New York City
Coordinated all responsibilities required for residential oversight with particular attention to quality of physical space and supportive hosting for temporary residents and sangha members. Provided background support for members to enhance opportunities for meditation and reflective spiritual practice.
Safe Horizon Streetwork Project
Developed evaluation tools to measure effectiveness of program interventions. Conceptualized and oversaw scheduling to respond to changing staff and program needs. Participated in physical space design conversations and decisions to enhance quality of care. Provided supportive supervision to volunteers and interns, founded alumni association to respond to acute program needs, and co-created fundraising tool and event.
Initiated collaborative portrait project to document relationships and to enhance and honor ending process at homeless youth program. Created portraits with over 100 young people as they prepared to graduate from the program. Clients were invited to choose an image to leave behind and a wall honoring the past graduates remains hanging as a celebration of the life and love shared through the years in the space.
Examples of our work with individuals
Mature professional post-rehabilitation
Provided care and administrative support during a process of re-establishing after a period of rehabilitation. We enjoyed keeping company on walks, swims, field trips, and meals and also attended to a variety of practical needs together. We responded to pressing correspondence, enhanced billing system, and established relationships with other professional support services. In the context of spending time together, we were able to build in pleasure around otherwise daunting tasks.
Acupuncturist
Currently engaged in a creative collaboration in the process of determining and actualizing her five-year plan. We organized and arranged the move of her physical space, helped to establish relationships with other related practitioners, and are helping her to launch an upcoming group. Inviting exploratory considerations of desires, facilitating arrangements, creating invitations, packing boxes, and providing temporary transportation have all been included in our time.
Couples preparing for childbirth
Served as support, engaged in reflective conversations about process, created photography documentation of pregnancy and labors, attended births and provided postpartum support. Prepared meals, washed dishes, provided childcare, ran baths, gave the parents respite in creative ways.
Individuals in mental health crisis
Provided respite, arranged for restful place to stay, prepared meals, accompanied to appointments, established restorative routines to offer care and stabilization. Went for walks together, fixed healthy meals, incorporated healing touch through massage and affection.
Newly divorced author
Currently engaged in creative collaborative arrangement. Time together combines administrative and practical support with efforts designed to enhance and elevate daily experience: furniture rearrangement, errands, introducing new personal accounting system, company on meetings and excursions, grocery shopping and meal preparation, choosing and hanging sparkly lights in the bedroom, collection of provisions and arranging flowers for the home. Our time is co-created and mutually rewarding and we engage in regular check-ins to refine and deepen the dimensions of our arrangement so that this unexpected time of loss of and turmoil can bloom with vibrancy.
Individuals and families honoring milestones
Officiant and celebrant for a variety of milestone experiences. We have created rituals to honor birth and death processes, intention-setting, altar-making, weddings, graduations, birthdays, anniversaries for couples and also singles. It is a pleasure to engage in thoughtful exploratory conversations to discovery personalized practices to lend elegance and ceremony to the potent markers of transition and change.
“Anastasia was the manager of a residential community that I lived in for six months. Her official role was to manage the daily operations of the entire community, from preparing meals to organizing events to caring for the facility. This was a complicated role, with many different needs and preferences to take into account, and Anastasia performed it perfectly. She was highly organized, efficient, and communicated with clarity, warmth, and calm. This would have been enough, but Anastasia also provided something even more special: spiritual mentoring and personal guidance. When anyone was struggling, or needed a compassionate ear, Anastasia was there. She made the house feel like a home and the community members feel like a close-knit family. I am so grateful for her, and I can't recommend her highly enough.”
— Resident, Zen Center of New York City