ABOUT TANIA KNEUER AND ELEMENTAL WELLNESS THERAPY

Elemental Wellness Therapy LLC is a mental wellness center offering psychotherapy and somatic services for teens and adults. This center also offers consultation and mentorship to individuals and organizations seeking a shift or change from the current western medical mental health service approach.

Tania was fortunate to have been chosen to pioneer a new model of mental health care locally in Bend, Oregon 16 years ago, followed by her national work to help expand this innovative collaborative mental health program for teens, young adults, and families brought from the UK, the first of its kind in the US. There are now over 400 programs that have adopted this approach to mental health and wellness and is in all 50 states. She continues to provide consultation and training to adult learners regionally, nationally, and to federal based organizations to help promote further growth as more and more programs are created across the country.

Tania wanted to create her own center in Bend, Oregon to be able to use a framework that has evolved from this work, her own lived experience, and 24 years of specialized training in both mental and physical health. She continues to love her current home, community, having moved here from the Midwest in 2002. It is for those who want an alternative to understanding distress and its effects on us, moving away from a medical model of “What’s wrong with you?” to “What’s happened to you?”. How our responses are understandable when we bring various influences of our lives into context. Please see When we have this understanding, we can heal.

She is the only provider in Bend, Oregon who utilizes the Power Threat Meaning Framework, a framework as an alternative to diagnosis that is gaining traction in various countries for its innovative approach to mental health and wellness. Please see the “Approach” tab for a deeper explanation. It is not meant to replace all current ways of working, but to support and enrich existing non-diagnostic approaches, respecting different cultural traditions, and also suggesting new ways forward.

Tania hopes to provide a new way of understanding how to move through what were highly meaningful responses to your difficult life experiences, so they no longer affect your life or health. She comes from a place where our bodies are inherently intelligent and not meant to be fixed. It’s about learning how to trust our bodies’ wisdom so that new patterns may be created to shape our lives and relationships. Expanding our lives into a new direction rather than contracting so we feel freer to explore what’s to come. She does not see the mind, the body, our emotions, and our spirit as separate, but one. With a cultural humble lens, Tania aspires to learn from you with the aim of guiding you toward you personal definition of wellness. She aims to support you in cultivating a fresh narrative characterized by hope, empowerment with encouragement to explore and engage with new curiosities in life.