Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.

Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, is a psychotherapist, yogi, and the author of six books in the fields of psychology and spirituality, including the award-winning Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path (Sounds True, 2010), the seminal Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment (Hohm Press, 1999), and The Guru Question: The Perils and Rewards of Choosing a Spiritual Teacher (Sounds True, 2011). As a psychotherapist, she specializes in using somatic approaches to therapy to support spiritual practitioners and teachers of all traditions and religions to heal trauma and thrive, as well as working with complex spiritual traumas within spiritual communities. As a yogi, she founded and teaches The Yoga & Psyche Method, which integrates the insights of somatic psychology, trauma research, neuroscience, and yogic practices.

Her articles have been featured in magazines and journals including Shambhala Sun, Tricycle, ReVision and Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Her new ideas are published regularly on her Huffington Post blog. Her personal essays have received critical acclaim, including the satire Zen Boyfriends, which was transformed into a musical, and Death Has No Mercy: A Memoir of a Mother’s Death, which was featured in Best Buddhist Writings of 2006. Her books are translated in over a dozen languages, and she has been teaching workshops at major retreat centers in the United States as well as internationally on the subjects of all of her books since 1997.