Desmond Gilna, MIAHIP, MICP, Grad. Psych, is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City. He began his Buddhist practice in 1984, spending 12 years living and practicing in Zen monasteries in Japan and the US. He is a certified Integrative psychotherapist and broadened his clinical training with further studies in Gestalt Therapy, Holotropic Breathwork and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Before relocating to New York from Ireland, Desmond maintained a private psychotherapy practice in Dublin and worked as a consultant psychotherapist on a multi-disciplinary trauma team with Beaumont Hospital. Along with his private psychotherapy practice he also worked with a number of psychiatric institutions as a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. Desmond leads Attachment Based Therapy workshops helping individuals to identify and explore self-defeating attachment patterns that arise in relationships.

His expertise and interests include the following:

• Helping individuals examine the complexities of human living and relationships
• Facilitating client’s insight into the unavoidable paradoxes that life presents and using that knowledge to gain strength
• Guiding clients as they explore issues of grief and loss, identity and self-esteem, intimacy and loneliness, futility and meaningfulness
• Working with individuals affected by abuse and childhood/adult trauma
• Helping client’s understand and trust their way of being in the world