Physical
Neurobiology is a cornerstone of physical care. Learn how the brain and nervous system relate to stress, emotion, attention, and rest, alongside appropriate healthcare.
Springs · Dr. Lori Niles
Room for grace.
Freedom to move.
When life feels tangled, you deserve compassionate support—and room to discover what comes next.
Together, we listen carefully, draw on human development and respectfully shared Scriptural wisdom, and find a meaningful way forward.
Online · Hanford · Laton
All ages · Trauma-sensitive care
Compassionate care of self & others
You do not have to untangle it all alone.
Grief, caregiving, change, or a sense of being stuck: you can bring what life is asking of you.
Your body, relationships, inner life, and circumstances all belong in the conversation.
The purpose is understanding that opens possibilities—and support for taking a next step that is yours.
Meet Dr. LoriA whole-person approach
Complex lives deserve more than one lens.
Physical, relational, and spiritual realities belong in the same conversation. So do thoughts, feelings, resources, and the systems shaping daily life.
Relational
Explore connection, belonging, responsibilities, boundaries, and the care you give and receive. Make room for yourself within a life shared with others.
Spiritual
Attend to meaning, faith, doubt, hope, and what you hold sacred. Scriptural wisdom is shared respectfully. Questioning faith is explored and honored, with no pressure to reach a predetermined conclusion.
All ages · Trauma-sensitive
More than one way
to have a conversation.
All ages are welcome, with support adapted to development, communication, and circumstances.
Play can be conversation. Drawing, storytelling, and creative activities offer ways to express what words cannot yet hold.
Trauma-sensitive care honors choice, trust, and your pace. You may pause or pass; painful retelling is never required.
Caregiver involvement and boundaries are agreed before working with children. These are supportive educational experiences, not play therapy or trauma treatment.
Grace changes the question
“What is wrong with me?” can become “What needs understanding, care, and a next step?”
Grace makes room for honesty, responsibility, and new possibilities. You do not have to earn compassionate care by having life figured out.
Christian faith and Scriptural wisdom inform my work. Your beliefs and freedom are honored. Questioning faith is welcome, without shame or pressure.
Understanding that leads somewhere
From feeling stuck
to finding your next step.
Understanding opens possibilities. What next step feels possible for you?
A conversation, a creative experiment, a boundary, or rest: movement respects your circumstances and pace.
01
Listen
Hear the story with care, including what has been hard to say.
02
Locate
Understand your situation through physical, relational, and spiritual lenses.
03
Discern
Identify what matters and where you have room to choose.
04
Reframe
Explore assumptions and imagine possibilities with curiosity and grace.
05
Move
Choose a realistic next step and the support that can help you take it.
A responsive framework, not a fixed curriculum. The goal is growing agency: greater freedom to understand, choose, and act.
Ways to work together
Care for a person.
Possibility for a community.
The Way Forward
Six sessions over six weeks to understand what keeps you stuck and choose meaningful next steps. Online · Hanford · Laton.
Explore individual coaching
Group experiences
Education, honest conversation, and shared discovery. Learn together, practice compassion, and consider what growth might look like in daily life.
Explore group experiencesOrganizations & meaningful work
Make room for sustainable leadership, burnout reflection, and purposeful change—with attention to people and the conditions in which they work.
Bring Springs to your organization
Attending to the Soul in Healthcare
Compassionate attention to the humanity and inner life of both the person receiving care and the person providing it.
Explore the healthcare workResearch that informs the work
Being heard
is a form of care.
Feeling understood
In a two-week diary study, people reported greater life satisfaction on days they felt more understood.
Compassion & motivation
Across four experiments, self-compassion after a setback supported motivation to improve. In one, participants spent more time studying after an initial failure.
Words & the brain
In a brain-imaging experiment, labeling emotions in negative images was associated with reduced amygdala activity and increased activity in part of the prefrontal cortex, compared with other tasks.
Creativity · Healing · Growth
A personal motto.
A way of approaching life.
Creativity makes room for another possibility when familiar answers no longer serve.
Healing honors the work of tending what hurts and finding greater wholeness. Here, it names a hope and a direction—not a promise to cure illness.
Growth means learning, choosing, and practicing a meaningful way forward. It includes the freedom to become more fully yourself while caring for others.
More about my approachA commitment to access
Compassion includes
making room.
Finances should not limit access to meaningful support and growth. Springs is developing standard-rate, reduced-rate, and scholarship-supported options that respect dignity and sustain the work.
Explore access & pricingA beginning, not a demand
What might become possible
with a little grace and support?
Bring the question. Bring the uncertainty. Begin where you are.
Start a conversationIndividual coaching
The Way Forward
Six individual sessions over six weeks. Compassionate support to understand where you are, explore what keeps you stuck, and take meaningful steps forward.
Online · Hanford · LatonResponsive to your circumstancesFollow-up as discerned
Ask about The Way Forward
When life asks a new question.
A loss, a changing role, retirement, or a question of faith can unsettle familiar answers. You do not need to name the whole problem before beginning.
What happens in the six weeks?
A clear beginning and a considered ending, with room for the person in between.
We listen, locate, discern, reframe, and move—attending to your body, relationships, emotions, and spiritual concerns as they arise.
Education, creative questions, and respectfully shared Scriptural wisdom can open a new perspective. We translate insight into a realistic action or experiment.
We close with integration: what you have learned, what you will carry forward, and what support you need next.
These are movements within conversation, not six prescribed lessons. Follow-up is discerned together.
Room for the questions you bring.
- Life transitions, retirement, and changing roles
- Vocation, career changes, and leadership transitions
- Grief, caregiving, and life after illness or loss
- Meaning, purpose, identity, and relationships
- Burnout and questions about sustainable work
- Faith, honored questions and doubts, and major decisions
The aim is greater clarity, self-compassion, freedom to choose, and purposeful movement. Grace makes room to acknowledge what is hard and take responsibility for what is possible. Your decisions remain yours.
A few practical questions
Who is this for, and where do sessions happen?
Springs welcomes all ages, online and in person in Hanford and Laton. Conversation, play, storytelling, and creative activities are adapted to age and development. For children and young people, caregiver involvement and appropriate boundaries are discussed before beginning.
What does trauma-sensitive mean here?
Care includes choice, a manageable pace, and permission to stop or decline. You do not have to recount distressing experiences. This describes how I approach support; it is not a claim to provide trauma treatment or play therapy.
Do I need to be religious?
No. My practice is rooted in Christian faith, and I draw on Scriptural wisdom with respect for your beliefs and choices. Questioning faith is explored and honored. You can bring doubt, changing beliefs, or a wish to reconsider what you have been taught, without pressure toward a predetermined answer. You can disagree or decline a spiritual exercise; shared belief is not a condition of care.
Is this therapy?
No. Springs provides coaching, facilitation, education, and spiritual reflection. It does not diagnose or treat mental-health conditions or replace licensed medical, mental-health, or addiction care. When needs fall outside this scope, a referral to an appropriate licensed professional is encouraged.
What if I need support after six weeks?
The closing conversation considers what would serve you next. Follow-up sessions may be scheduled as discerned; continuing is not presumed.
How much does it cost?
Rates and supported-access options are being developed. The commitment is to discuss cost clearly before an engagement begins. See Access & Pricing for the guiding philosophy.
A core part of Springs
Understanding grows
in conversation.
Learn, create, and share life with others. Compassionate conversation can open new understanding and meaningful change.
Explore a group experienceA place to learn.
A place to be heard.
Groups are central to my work: spaces to be heard, learn from one another, and explore a way forward.
A story, an idea, or a creative activity can begin the conversation. Share at your own pace and leave with something useful to try.
Questions worth exploring together.
Group themes may include grief, caregiving, transitions, burnout, discernment, aging, identity, relationships, meaning, vocation, recovery, and change.
Faith and Scriptural wisdom can shape a group as agreed with its host and participants. Religious agreement is never required.
What to expect
- Accessible education and thoughtful questions
- Time for individual reflection and meaningful conversation
- Shared learning that respects different experiences
- Trauma-sensitive pacing and permission to pass or choose what to share
- Age-appropriate play, storytelling, and creative conversation
- Creative possibilities and practical next steps
- Compassionate care for yourself and others
For communities and existing groups.
We agree on the people, purpose, and format together. Groups can meet in community, education, healthcare, workplace, or church settings.
Educational or recovery-related groups provide reflection and support within a nonclinical scope. They do not replace treatment, crisis care, or licensed counseling.
Talk about a groupOrganizations & workplace well-being
Make room for
meaningful work.
Thoughtful coaching and facilitated reflection around burnout, sustainable leadership, transition, and the conditions in which people work.
Bring Springs to your organizationLook at the person.
Look at the system.
Depletion asks us to examine workload, expectations, communication, culture, and the room people have to act on their values.
Together, we identify personal choices, shared responsibilities, and realistic changes to the conditions of work.
Begin with better questions.
- What is creating depletion?
- What has become disconnected from meaning?
- What belongs to the individual—and what belongs to the system?
- Which assumptions about productivity, leadership, success, or worth need reconsidering?
- What would sustainable and meaningful work look like now?
Shape the work around the setting.
Workshops, retreats, coaching, or facilitated conversations: we agree on the purpose and scope together. Faith and Scriptural perspectives are discussed with the host, respecting religious diversity and freedom.
Leadership & transition
Consider changing responsibilities, communication, values, vocation, and the human experience of organizational change.
Burnout & sustainable work
Create reflective space to examine depletion, meaning, expectations, and possible next steps within the actual conditions of work.
This is educational and reflective work. It is not organizational diagnosis, psychotherapy, or a substitute for changes that require leadership authority.
Discuss your organization’s needsThe humanity of care
Attending to the Soul
in Healthcare
The person receiving care has an inner life. So does the person providing it. Both deserve attention.
Here, “soul” makes room for meaning, identity, relationships, hopes, fears, values, and spiritual or existential concerns. It does not require a particular religious belief.
Start a healthcare conversationCare is personal
A person.
A story.
A shared moment.
Making room for humanity in the midst of illness, uncertainty, and care.
The patient
What is happening within the person receiving care?
The caregiver
What is happening within the person providing it?
For the person
receiving care.
Illness and uncertainty raise deeply human questions: What matters now? Who am I as life changes? Where do I find strength?
There is room for hopes, fears, relationships, beliefs, and what is still hard to put into words.
Attention to inner life belongs alongside appropriate clinical care. It does not replace treatment or make medical decisions for the person.
For the person
providing care.
Grief, moral strain, and repeated loss can sit alongside compassion and commitment.
Caregivers need room to be human, ask for support, and consider what needs to change.
That reflection includes the conditions of care. Exhaustion should not automatically become an individual’s failure to be resilient.
Questions that deserve time.
- How does caring for suffering affect the caregiver?
- What happens when vocation and exhaustion collide?
- What might meaningful work look like after burnout?
- What happens when professional identity becomes disconnected from purpose?
- How can clinicians remain human while doing deeply demanding work?
Holding the whole person in view.
This work draws on my advanced-practice board-certified chaplaincy, hospice and palliative care specialization, education, spiritual care, and experience accompanying people through illness, loss, and transition.
Healthcare partnerships may include facilitated reflection, education, caregiver support, and spiritual care, with responsibilities and boundaries agreed in advance.
My Christian grounding informs respectful care across beliefs. Prayer and Scripture are offered when welcome; honesty and care never depend on religious participation.
Explore a healthcare engagementMeet Dr. Lori
Creativity.
Healing. Growth.
My personal motto—and the possibility I look for in complicated, changing seasons.
Compassion.
Curiosity. Grace.
I’m Dr. Lori Niles—educator, coach, advanced-practice board-certified chaplain, and ordained minister. I help people understand what they are carrying and discover what comes next.
That begins with listening, useful questions, shared knowledge, and room for creativity.
I bring physical, relational, and spiritual understanding together. Neurobiology anchors physical care; trauma-sensitive support and play as conversation help me meet people across the lifespan.
Compassionate care of self and others belongs at the heart of the work.
Scriptural wisdom.
Respectfully shared.
Christian faith shapes my life and work. Scripture invites me toward listening, love of neighbor and self, grace, and freedom.
Scriptural wisdom belongs in conversation with lived experience and the sciences, alongside practical care for grief, illness, and injustice.
Bring your convictions, doubts, and changing beliefs. Questioning faith is explored and honored. Your freedom to reconsider and choose matters.
Listening, love, and freedom: James 1:19 · Mark 12:31 · Galatians 5:1, 13
Understanding.
Then a next step.
Insight can loosen a stuck place. Together, we ask what becomes possible now.
Try something new, tend a relationship, ask for help, or choose rest. The goal is growing freedom and agency.
Grace makes room for understanding, responsibility, and possibility.
Experience that serves the person.
My work draws on human development, education, cognitive coaching, brain health, grief and loss, spiritual care, personality theory, and decades of experience accompanying people through significant transitions.
- Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)
- Advanced-practice board-certified chaplaincy
- Hospice and palliative care specialization
- Cognitive Coaching certification
- Brain health coaching certification
- Myers-Briggs / MBTI certification
- Ordained ministry
My experience includes teaching, leadership, facilitation, grief work with adults and children, pastoral care, and palliative and end-of-life care.
My doctorate is in education. My preparation informs this work; it does not imply licensure to provide psychotherapy or medical treatment.
Start a conversationMore about Dr. Lori
A bivocational life.
Rooted in community.
As a bivocational pastor and church planter, I support myself through professional work while planting and nurturing church community.
Springs is part of that self-support. Your fee pays for your service; church attendance, shared faith, and ministry participation are never required.
Explore more of my community life and teaching:
Springs website: www.drlorin.coach
Email: drlorin.coach@gmail.com
Available: Online · Hanford · Laton
Doing life with people
Shared moments.
Lasting connections.
Access & pricing
Dignity belongs
in the conversation.
Finances should not limit access to meaningful support and growth.
The access model is being developed around standard-rate, reduced-rate, and scholarship-supported sessions. The intention is to widen access while keeping the practice sustainable.
Clear costs.
Respectful choices.
You should be able to understand the cost before agreeing to work together and ask about support without having to tell a painful story to prove your worthiness.
Options under consideration
- Standard-rate sessions to support the ongoing work of the practice.
- Reduced-rate places for people who need a lower cost, within the practice’s available capacity.
- Scholarship-supported sessions or groups when designated support is available.
Before an engagement begins.
The conversation should clarify the total cost, payment arrangements, cancellation terms, and any supported rate that is available. Support should be discussed privately and respectfully, with no promise of funded places before funding exists.
Rates, scholarship availability, and booking arrangements are not yet finalized. Contact Dr. Lori to discuss current options.
Ask about access optionsRead & reflect
Understand more.
Imagine what’s next.
Readings, creative questions, and practical exercises for compassionate care, spiritual growth, and finding a way forward.
Discernment & meaningful choices
You don’t have to solve the whole future.
A brief reflection on understanding the question in front of you and choosing one realistic next step.
Read the reflectionA guided pause
Five questions for a changing season.
A simple reflection tool shaped by Listen, Locate, Discern, Reframe, and Move.
Open the reflection toolExplore the research on compassion, neurobiology, and change
Questions this space will keep returning to.
Discernment & choicesGrief & transitionBurnout & workBrain health & developmentCaregivingMeaning & vocationThe soul in healthcareGrace & Scriptural wisdomCompassionate careCreativity & getting unstuck
These resources invite learning, reflection, and meaningful action. Scriptural wisdom is clearly identified and shared respectfully; questions and different perspectives are welcome.
Discernment & meaningful choices
You don’t have to solve the whole future.
A reflection from Springs · Dr. Lori Niles
“What now?” can be an enormous question. It may arrive after a loss, at the end of a familiar role, or in a season when the old answers no longer seem to fit.
Sometimes that question contains several others. What has changed? What still matters? What do I need to understand before deciding? What is actually mine to choose?
There is no requirement to answer all of them at once.
Begin with the situation you are in.
Try describing what is happening without immediately explaining what you should do about it. Name the circumstances, the responsibilities, and the uncertainties. Make room for what you are feeling, too.
You might notice a difference between a fact and an expectation. “My role has ended” is different from “I should already know who I am without it.” Both deserve attention, but they ask for different kinds of reflection.
Let the next step be proportionate.
A meaningful next step does not have to settle the rest of your life. It might be a conversation, a piece of information, a request for support, or time set aside to consider a possibility.
It can also be a decision to pause deliberately while you gather what you need. A pause with a purpose is different from an answer forced before you are ready.
A question to carry with you
What would help me understand this situation a little more clearly before I decide what comes next?
You remain the person who chooses. The work of reflection is to make that choice better understood and more honestly your own.
A Springs reflection tool
Five questions for
a changing season.
Take these questions at your own pace. Write a few words, think quietly, or use them to begin a conversation. You may skip any question.
- Listen. What is the story I need to hear myself tell?
- Locate. What is happening physically, relationally, and spiritually? What else in my circumstances needs attention?
- Discern. What matters most in this situation? What seems to be changing?
- Reframe. What might grace change about the question I am asking? What possibility have I not yet considered?
- Move. What small action would express care for myself or someone else? What support would help me take it?
Optional spiritual reflection: where might Scriptural wisdom invite you toward love, freedom, or a faithful next step? You may also reflect from your own beliefs.
This tool supports education and reflection. It is not an assessment or treatment. If a question feels overwhelming, you can stop and seek support appropriate to your needs.
Research & the Springs approach
Being heard
is a form of care.
Understanding, connection, and compassion matter. Research helps inform how we listen, reflect, and move forward together.
Feeling understood
In a two-week diary study, people reported greater life satisfaction and fewer physical symptoms on days when they felt more understood by others.
Lun, Kesebir & Oishi (2008) · On Feeling Understood and Feeling Well
Compassion and the motivation to act
Across four experiments, self-compassion after difficulty supported motivation to improve. Findings included greater motivation to make amends and more time studying after an initial failure.
Breines & Chen (2012) · Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation
Putting experience into words
In a brain-imaging experiment, labeling emotions in negative images was associated with lower amygdala activity and greater activity in part of the prefrontal cortex.
Lieberman et al. (2007) · Putting feelings into words
How this informs Springs
Careful listening makes room for your experience. Education offers language for what is happening. Compassion and grace support honest responsibility and the freedom to choose a next step.
Springs brings these commitments into conversation with neurobiology, human development, creativity, and respectfully shared Scriptural wisdom.
We ask: What are you understanding more clearly? What feels possible now? What support would help you move?
Contact
Begin where you are.
You can start with a question, a possible group, or something you hope to explore in your organization.
What would be useful
to share?
A short description is enough. There is no need to include medical details or a long personal history in an initial inquiry.
- Whether you are asking for yourself, a group, or an organization
- The question or area you would like to explore
- Whether you prefer online, Hanford, or Laton
- Whether you would like to discuss access options
Contact Dr. Lori
Websitewww.drlorin.coach
Available online and in person in Hanford and Laton.
All ages · Trauma-sensitive support
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