Hi, I'm Adam
I've spent my life exploring why people suffer, how they heal, and how to be best in service along the way. In all of my work, I keep my focus on wholeness rather than brokenness as a compass for the work of healing.
I spent my early life working with social service organizations around the world to understand how cultural and economic systems perpetuate suffering - and how to change them. After experiencing a health crisis in my personal life, I traveled to study ethnobotany and traditions of natural healing with indigenous groups in Ecuador and Peru, and began to spend more time exploring the relationship between meditative traditions, spiritual practice, and modern psychology.
As a student at Harvard Divinity School, I studied the most effective and time-honored ways to transform and heal the human psyche. I was awarded a grant by the Center for the Study of World Religions to work with Sarvodaya, a renowned development organization in Sri Lanka; I performed mindfulness-informed clinical work for the Department of Youth Services in Massachusetts; and I served as President of the Harvard Buddhist Community, where I helped lead a regular meditation group for Harvard students and faculty and invited some of the most globally celebrated teachers to the Harvard campus.
Also during this time, I began to spend four to six weeks each year in silent meditation retreats. To date, I have spent well over a year in these meditation retreats, and consider them to be the anchor for my healing work.
After graduating from Harvard, I worked to transform educational systems around the country, helping to create mindfulness and meditation programs at multiple schools. As a result of this work, I served as a core consultant in the creation of WholeSchool Mindfulness, a non-profit that trains and places mindfulness teachers nationwide. I have also been a national instructor for the Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education, and my work has been featured in Mindful Magazine and Tricycle Magazine.
Most recently, I work as a teacher and licensed therapist in Austin. I've helped to create and teach the Relational Awakening Training with Paige Britt, as well as Radiant Hearts Collective, a non-profit organization that supports people in accessing alternative therapies and communities of peer support.
Education:
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Master of Divinity, Harvard University
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Master of Fine Arts, University of Texas (Austin)
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Master of Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Texas State University
Adam Ortman MDiv, MA, LPC
License # 96337
How I work
More than any one tool or framework, I bring a radical openness, presence, and attunement to our work together in order to help you more deeply feel what you feel, know what you know, and become who you most essentially are. Most often, this integrates the following approaches:
Relational Awakening is the practice of accessing shared states of consciousness for accelerated healing and development. It may sound esoteric, but in practice it's very simple. You may feel more peaceful, spacious, and self-aware while simultaneously having access to emotions that would ordinarily be challenging to feel and stay with. As a result, emotions process much more rapidly, and surprising insights arrive with less effort. Some people describe it like a shared psychedelic or deep therapeutic meditation. Learn more at www.RelationalAwakening.com
Mindful Embodiment means learning to feel, tolerate, understand, and ultimately integrate the sensations and emotions flowing through you. The body and the mind are not separate. This means that much of our wisdom and knowing is expressed through the body, along with stuck memories or habitual behaviors. In combination with Relational Awakening, this mindful orientation to the body can support positive transformation.
Attachment-Based Therapy is grounded in the understanding that our earliest relationships teach us what to expect from connection. Whether we can be seen, trusted, and safely depend on others, or whether we need to protect ourselves to get by. These early patterns rarely stay in the past. They tend to show up in how we love, how we set boundaries, and how we respond when we feel hurt, scared, or alone. In our work together, the relationship between us becomes a living example of these patterns as they arise, and a place to have a new experience of being met, understood, and safe. Over time, this can help you build a more secure relationship with yourself and with the people you care about. And even more broadly, the Relational Awakening approach has the ability to access and resolve deep attachment wounds, while supporting what might be called "secure attachment with life."
Parts Work begins with the recognition that we are not one single self, but an inner ecology of parts: protective parts, wounded parts, and parts carrying beliefs or roles we adopted long ago to stay safe. Instead of trying to override or get rid of these parts, we get curious about them: what they are protecting, what they need, and how old they might be. When these parts are met with curiosity and compassion instead of judgment, they tend to soften, releasing the energy they had kept stuck to fuel the bigger, more creative, compassionate, and connected Self.