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
At Leaves of Change, 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 with both her children and clients.
Gabriela’s career began in Washington, DC, as a health educator at a nonprofit, 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.A.
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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