At Leaves of Change, we believe that healing is a journey of the mind, body, and spirit. Our healing arts practice offers a variety of alternative healing modalities designed to help you flourish, including hypnosis, yoga, creative self-expression through art, storytelling, and writing.
Leaves of Change was created to share these non-traditional healing practices with a wider community. We offer our services both in-person and online, through Zoom sessions. Whether working with individuals, groups, or directly in schools and other organizations, we bring these transformative practices to those seeking a holistic path to wellness.
At Leaves of Change, we understand that the foundation of a healthy body begins with a healthy mind. We invite you to join us on your own healing journey and discover the transformative power of holistic wellness.
Gabriela Emamjomeh, M.Ed, CHt, RYT-200
As the Founder and Executive Director of Leaves of Change, Gabriela is dedicated to empowering individuals through hypnotherapy, life coaching and fostering resilience and balance in their lives. Her mission extends to creating impactful community programs that support children and adults in managing the challenges of everyday life. By offering tools for healing, connection, and growth, Gabriela inspires her clients to thrive.
Gabriela’s career began as a peer health educator at a nonprofit organization in Washington, DC, where she discovered her passion for teaching and learning. This calling led her to one of the nation’s most respected school systems, where she taught students at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Her commitment to education propelled her into a leadership role as an Instructional Specialist, where she designed and implemented innovative programs to enrich students’ learning experiences and facilitated districtwide professional development workshops.
At the heart of Gabriela’s teaching philosophy is the belief that every individual deserves to be seen, nurtured, and heard. She emphasizes the importance of honoring diverse learning styles and fostering environments where connection, understanding, and personal growth can flourish. Rooted in emotional intelligence and character development, her work reflects a deep commitment to creating spaces that inspire and uplift.
As the Founder and Executive Director of Leaves of Change, Gabriela is dedicated to helping others navigate anxiety and achieve balance through transformative wellness practices. As a wife and mother, Gabriela seamlessly integrates these techniques into her personal and professional life.
Her career began in Washington, DC, as a health educator, later evolving into roles within one of the nation’s top school systems. With experience teaching across all grade levels and working with diverse populations, Gabriela has enriched educational experiences by fostering inclusive environments and designing innovative programs tailored to varied needs.
At Leaves of Change, Gabriela focuses on hypnotherapy and life coaching, empowering clients to overcome stress, trauma, and anxiety through these transformative practices. A certified hypnotherapist and yoga teacher, she incorporates mindfulness and relaxation techniques into her work, offering practical tools for healing and personal growth.
Beyond her professional achievements, Gabriela’s personal journey with yoga and mindfulness has become a cornerstone of her life and work. Over the past two decades, Gabriela spent countless evenings and weekends teaching yoga at retreats, in studios, wellness programs, nonprofits, and private settings, working with both children and adults. Her interest in hypnotherapy emerged from her own transformative experiences, using it to navigate through life’s challenges.
What began as personal pursuits evolved into profound passions that helped her overcome stress and trauma. Today, Gabriela weaves yoga, mindfulness, and hypnotherapy into her practice, guiding others on their own healing journeys with compassion and expertise.
Gabriela has also made a lasting impact as a consultant, offering professional development on Differentiated Instruction and writing curriculum for school systems, nonprofits, summer camps, and after-school programs. Her work emphasizes literacy, life skills, emotional intelligence and character development as well as language acquisition, often integrating the arts as a tool for engagement and expression.
Raised between the U.S. and Latin America, Gabriela was deeply influenced by her family’s artistic background—her parents worked in the arts and embraced its power as a medium for healing. This creative legacy has shaped Gabriela’s own approach to life, work, and teaching, infusing everything she does with a sense of imagination and possibility.
Gabriela’s unique combination of expertise in education, life coaching, and hypnotherapy makes her an exceptional guide for those seeking meaningful change. With years of experience supporting diverse needs, fostering resilience, and empowering personal growth, she understands how to create a safe and nurturing environment for transformation. Her ability to blend teaching, coaching, and hypnosis ensures a personalized approach, helping clients overcome challenges, unlock their potential, and achieve lasting, positive change.
Gabriela’s bicultural and bilingual upbringing, shaped by her American and South American roots as well as her family’s artistic background, inspires her holistic and compassionate approach. Her parents’ love for the arts as a medium for healing influenced her creative spirit and continues to shape her perspective on life and work.
Gabriela holds degrees in Psychology and Education, advanced teaching certifications, and has completed specialized training in yoga and hypnosis. Through her consulting work, she also designs curriculum and professional development focused on social-emotional learning and language development, supporting educators and families alike.
Her passion for lifelong learning and wellness continues to guide her mission: helping others achieve balance, resilience, and fulfillment in their lives.
Nelson Simon, M.S. in Philanthropy and Media
Nelson is a masterful storyteller, educator, and artist whose work bridges human connection, personal empowerment, and social change. With a dynamic career spanning performance, writing, peer counseling, and oral history, he has dedicated himself to amplifying voices, strengthening family bonds, and fostering creative expression. His guiding philosophy is that relationships form the foundation of thriving lives—and that every story, no matter how small, has the power to inspire, heal, and unite.
With over 30 years of leadership in Re-evaluation Counseling (RC), a grassroots peer counseling movement, Nelson has been a transformative force in family support. His innovative approach to parenting, including his signature “special time” technique, empowers children to take the lead while parents follow, cultivating self-confidence, emotional expression, and deep connection. His work has helped countless families create environments of mutual care, joy, and resilience.
A trained actor in the Meisner Technique from the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, Nelson co-founded the Working Theater, a groundbreaking company dedicated to producing performances that honor the lives and struggles of working people. He has collaborated extensively with choreographer Susan Hefner and composer Michael Evans, using performance and video to explore the humor, vulnerability, and complexities of the human experience. His work breathes life into untold narratives, making the arts a vehicle for empathy and change.
A gifted writer and oral historian, Nelson is the author of Soul of the Hurricane: The Perfect Storm and an Accidental Sailor, a memoir praised by National Book Award winner Alice McDermott as “the kind of character-driven, storm-battered, seafaring yarn Joseph Conrad would have loved.” As the lead editor of Bold Responders: Voices from NYC’s Department of Corrections Response to 9/11, he documented the courage and resilience of first responders in the wake of national tragedy.
In 2006, Nelson led a StoryCorps initiative to post-Katrina New Orleans, capturing firsthand accounts of survival, loss, and community rebuilding. These powerful stories, later featured on National Public Radio (NPR), gave a voice to those whose experiences might have otherwise been forgotten, ensuring their legacies live on.
As a workshop leader with Leaves of Change, Nelson channels his wealth of experience into transformative learning experiences for children, educators, and families. His workshops seamlessly weave together storytelling, the arts, and emotional intelligence to foster deeper connections, inspire resilience, and create positive change. By equipping participants with tools for self-expression and active listening, he helps build more inclusive, compassionate communities.
His work at Leaves of Change extends beyond skill-building—it creates spaces where people feel seen, heard, and valued. Whether he’s guiding children in storytelling exercises, helping educators develop more connected classrooms, or leading families in activities that nurture trust and joy, Nelson’s impact is both profound and lasting.
With a lifelong commitment to fostering creativity, connection, and social change, Nelson continues to leave an indelible mark on every individual and community he engages with.
Gabriela Emamjomeh, M.Ed, CHt, RYT-200
Gabriela is passionate about helping others manage anxiety and find balance through the same coping techniques that transformed her own life. As a wife and mother of two, she integrates these principles into her home, sharing them both with her family and clients.
Gabriela’s career began in Washington, DC, as a health educator at a nonprofit organization, where she discovered her love for teaching and learning. This passion led her to one of the largest and most respected school systems in the country, where she taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels before advancing to a leadership role as an Instructional Specialist. In this role, she designed and implemented special programs that enriched students’ educational experiences.
In addition to her professional work, Gabriela’s personal journey with yoga and mindfulness became a cornerstone of her life. She dedicated her evenings and weekends to teaching yoga in studios, wellness programs, local nonprofits, and privately to both children and adults. Her interest in hypnotherapy blossomed after experiencing its transformative effects firsthand while navigating grief and pain. What began as hobbies evolved into profound passions that helped her manage stress and trauma. Today, she integrates these practices into her work, guiding others on their own healing journeys.
Gabriela has also made an impact as a consultant, providing professional development on Differentiated Instruction and writing curriculum for nonprofits, summer camps, and after-school programs. Her work focuses on social-emotional learning, literacy, and language development.
Growing up between the U.S. and South America, Gabriela was influenced by her family’s artistic background—both of her parents worked in the arts and had a deep love for the arts as a medium for healing – which inspired her own creative spirit. This artistic influence continues to shape her perspective and approach to life and work.
Gabriela holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UMBC (Catonsville, MD), a Master’s in Education in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Maryland (College Park, MD), and has pursued studies in Mental Health Counseling at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD). She also holds an Advanced Professional Teaching Licensure from the Maryland State Department of Education, with certifications in Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, Spanish and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Gabriela is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-200). She completed her Yoga Teacher Training at the Nosara Yoga Institute (Nosa, Costa Rica) and completed her Hypnosis training at the American Institute of Health Care Professionals (Warren, OH). She is a member of the Yoga Alliance and the International Hypnosis Association. Gabriela is committed to lifelong learning and maintains her credentials through regular professional development courses.
Nelson Simon, M.S. in Philanthropy and Media
Nelson’s many eclectic passions and pursuits – family work, peer counseling, performance, writing, oral history, storytelling – have been fueled and guided by some basic unifying principles: that caring, human connection is the foundation we need to build good lives; that children are natural artists, thinkers, scientists, explorers – endlessly curious and creative – and we adults get to provide the resource and
environment where they can thrive; that everyone has a story worth telling, and by
telling our many stories we find our way back to…human connection.
Nelson’s endeavors have taken him down many paths. Here are some highlights:
As a family work leader under the auspices of Re-evaluation Counseling (RC), a grass roots peer counseling organization, Nelson has thirty years’ experience working with young people and their families in an environment of mutual caring, support, and fun. One innovation developed in this setting is called “special time,” in which the young person gets to decide every aspect of an activity while the parent (supported by other adult allies) follows their lead completely. This practice has been found to help young people’s confidence, power, and sense of self.
After studying the Meisner Acting Technique at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, Nelson helped found the Working Theater, which endeavors to make theater for, about, and with working people. He is also a long-time collaborator with the choreographer Susan Hefner and the composer/percussionist Michael Evans, with whom he has created performances and videos that explore the human condition with wit, irony, and lots of pitfalls.
Nelson’s memoir, Soul of the Hurricane: The Perfect Storm and an Accidental Sailor, was published by Chicago Review Press. Alice McDermott, winner of the National Book Award, wrote that it was “…the kind of character-driven, storm-battered, seafaring yarn Joseph Conrad would have loved. Or written.”
In 2023 Nelson was the lead editor of the book Bold Responders: Voices from NYC’s Department of Corrections Response to 9/11, which chronicled the untold stories of the men and women who worked side-by-side with New York’s firefighters and police on the day of the attacks and in the months that followed.
In 2006 Nelson led a team of interviewers and facilitators from StoryCorps, the national oral history project, to New Orleans to chronicle the life of the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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