Joy Faith Wellness

Joy Faith Wellness Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Joy Faith Wellness, Alternative & holistic health service, Lanesborough, MA.

Joy Ruben Welts, PhD
Licensed mental health counselor
Board-certified dance/movement therapist
Somatic + expressive arts psychotherapy • Groups • Retreats
Helping people heal from trauma + become embodied, creative & alive

Not everything we know is available in words.The right hemisphere of the brain plays an important role in implicit, sens...
09/18/2026

Not everything we know is available in words.

The right hemisphere of the brain plays an important role in implicit, sensory, emotional, and nonverbal processing. The left hemisphere plays an important role in language and explicit thought.

🧠 The brain operates as an interconnected whole. But the different strengths of the two hemispheres help explain why talking alone may not reach every part of an experience.

Movement, visual art, sound, rhythm, imagery, metaphor, and speech engage different forms of processing. Expressive arts therapy brings verbal and nonverbal ways of knowing together, allowing them to work as parts of an integrated whole.

The work is not only expression and not only insight. It is the movement between them.

You are not only your thinking mind. You are not only your body, emotions, or unconscious. You are the sum of all of them.

This is one reason expressive arts therapy can support deep and meaningful change: more of the person is able to participate in the healing process.

Research:

Schore, A. N. (2022). Right brain-to-right brain psychotherapy: Recent scientific and clinical advances.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12991-022-00420-3

Rauch, S. L., et al. (1996). A symptom provocation study of posttraumatic stress disorder using positron emission tomography and script-driven imagery.
https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1996.01830050014003

Bolwerk, A., et al. (2014). How art changes your brain: Differential effects of visual art production and cognitive art evaluation on functional brain connectivity.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101035

Wang, J., et al. (2025). Colors of the mind: A meta-analysis of creative arts therapy as an approach for post-traumatic stress disorder intervention.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02361-4

I’d like to reintroduce myself and my work.I’m Joy Ruben Welts. I hold a PhD in Human Development, and I’m an expressive...
09/16/2026

I’d like to reintroduce myself and my work.

I’m Joy Ruben Welts. I hold a PhD in Human Development, and I’m an expressive arts and somatic psychotherapist. Through Joy Faith Wellness, I work with individuals and lead groups, workshops, and retreats.

I’ve always been passionate about helping people discover and embrace who they are and shape lives that feel more fully their own. My work is guided by an interest in healing and growth through a synergy of creativity, embodiment, and spirituality.

I’m licensed as a mental health counselor, creative arts therapist, and alcohol and drug counselor. I’m a board-certified dance/movement therapist, an experienced registered yoga teacher, and an ordained interfaith minister. My additional certifications and training include Reiki, Let Your Yoga Dance®, Divine Sleep® Yoga Nidra, Shake Your Soul®, SomaSoul Somatic Therapy®, and hypnosis. I’m a student in Janet Adler’s Circles of Four teacher-training program in the Discipline of Authentic Movement, and I’m in my third year of studying herbalism.

I’ve worked across community mental health, drug court, a jail, inpatient psychiatric treatment, inpatient eating-disorder treatment, intensive outpatient programs, and residential treatment—settings where life and death were truly on the line. I’ve also worked in educational settings from preschool to college, in yoga studios, at Canyon Ranch wellness resort, and as a birth doula. The human experience fascinates and inspires me, and I feel called to this work.

I’m a nerd and a renegade—a natural disruptor who also cares deeply about inherent order and logic. I’ve studied many disciplines and worked in many settings, all focused on understanding and supporting human development. I take an integrative approach that reflects how I see health and wellness: as a complex whole.

In my own healing and development, art, the body, ritual, and community have been central. Whatever modalities I draw from, we turn toward lived experience—experience housed in and occurring through the body. For me, being human is an embodied, creative, and spiritual experience. My work is rooted in all three.

I’m grateful to do the work I do.

My medicinal vinegar steeping on the counter. I’m finishing my third year of herbalism training, and I’ve been thinking ...
09/14/2026

My medicinal vinegar steeping on the counter. I’m finishing my third year of herbalism training, and I’ve been thinking more and more about how I want this part of my work to come forward.

09/10/2026

Low stakes. High fun. Let’s dance!
An 8-week dance group in Dalton, MA

Mondays, 7:15–8:15 PM
October 26–December 14
Limited to 5 people • $240 for the full series

Message me for details.

Much of my work looks gentle: a drawing, a movement, a pause to notice what is happening inside the body.But gentle does...
09/07/2026

Much of my work looks gentle: a drawing, a movement, a pause to notice what is happening inside the body.

But gentle does not mean superficial.

I work with people who have learned to fear, punish, abandon, or distrust themselves. Together, we build the capacity to stay—with the body, with difficult feelings, with their own needs, and within relationships.

Over time, that can mean learning to care for a body once treated as an enemy. Feeling long-held defenses begin to soften. Recognizing thoughts as thoughts, and feeling an impulse without having to obey it. Remembering your own aliveness—and becoming curious enough to follow where it leads. Letting yourself be known in relationships without abandoning yourself in order to belong.

The art, movement, and imagination are not decorations around the “serious” work. They are part of how we reach places that words alone cannot—and how people come to feel safer in themselves, more at home in their own bodies, and freer to pursue what makes them feel alive.

The work isn’t choosing which parts of ourselves are acceptable. It’s increasing our capacity to remain present with all...
09/04/2026

The work isn’t choosing which parts of ourselves are acceptable. It’s increasing our capacity to remain present with all of them.

Altered/Altared BooksI call this The Bhagavad Gita of My Sacred Intuitive Life.I’ve been altering—or maybe altaring—its ...
09/01/2026

Altered/Altared Books

I call this The Bhagavad Gita of My Sacred Intuitive Life.

I’ve been altering—or maybe altaring—its pages for over 10 years. It carries physical pieces of my life: the red wing on the cover was a gift from a studio owner when I taught yoga on Long Island. I made the straw-rope collage when I left my first post-graduate job—a time full of turmoil and hope. Its pages hold landscapes of places I’ve traveled, invocations of the Empress and the High Priestess, things gathered from the earth—snakeskin, feathers, leaves—and pages and pages of writing.

I can open to a page and follow whatever curiosity or whim is there, without needing to know what it means or turn it into something finished. The book keeps each fragment safe and contained until I return and discover how it informs me.

I use altered books with clients, too. Because the pages already carry words, history, and wear, there is no pristine surface to protect and no perfect result to produce. One page at a time, they make room to follow impulse, play, curiosity, and desire.

In a life filled with pressure to perform, this is a place where we can arrive unpolished.

08/28/2026

Friday Morning Reflective Group

An 8-week online support group for slowing down, turning inward, and making space for your own experience through writing, art making, gentle movement, body awareness, and rest.

Fridays, 11:00–12:30 ET
September 25–November 20
(no group October 16)
Online via Zoom
$480 for the full series

This summer I had an epiphany:I’m not bad at relationships.Actually, I’m pretty good at them.Relationships often feel re...
08/25/2026

This summer I had an epiphany:

I’m not bad at relationships.

Actually, I’m pretty good at them.

Relationships often feel really hard to me. I’m not always good at asking for help or showing vulnerability. I’m working on that.

But I care. I love deeply. I’m honest. I ask for what I need. I consider other people. I know my feelings. I’m present. I’m accountable.

And maybe most importantly, I’m learning that I don’t hurt people just by existing. My existence isn’t offensive. The fact that I have needs isn’t offensive or hurtful.

I realized some of this on an Authentic Movement retreat this summer. I was moving with people I’ve known and practiced with for years, and I became aware of how attuned I felt to myself and to them. I could be close when I wanted closeness. I could take space when I wanted space. I could be sensitive to another person and sensitive to myself at the same time.

And this time, I didn’t judge myself for any of it.

I’ve also been thinking about how differently things move through me when I’m alone versus when I’m with another attuned person.

Alone, I can use nature, expressive arts, movement, writing—all kinds of things—to be with my feelings. Something can become more orderly, manageable, even peaceful.

But when I process something alongside someone who is present and accepting, something different can happen.

It’s like I take the elevator to a whole new floor.

The thing itself changes. It doesn’t live inside me in quite the same way anymore. Sometimes a feeling or belief that has been unconsciously shaping how I respond to the world actually transforms.

My lived experience changes.

Healing happens in relationship.

In my own life, SomaSoul® Somatic Therapy and the Discipline of Authentic Movement have provided these kinds of relational spaces for me to heal and grow.

And I love providing them for others.

Address

Lanesborough, MA

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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