Michelle Esquibel Itzli Quiahuitl (Obsidian Rain), is a Master’s level, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor who earned their Master’s in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California in 2009. 

Michelle is nonbinary, queer, neurodivergent, Xicanx, and uses they/them pronouns.

As a therapist, Michelle is rooted in traditional healing and trained in depth psychology. They are also a practitioner of Curanderismo.

Some modalities that Michelle offers include: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), IFS (Internal Family Systems), Emotional Freedom Technique/"tapping" (EFT), and Dream Tending™. 

Michelle is the founder of Integrative Elements New Mexico, LLC, an outpatient private practice which provides psychotherapy, workshops, training, and consultation. Michelle practices on the unceded traditional homelands of the Tiwa People of Sandia and Isleta Pueblos, known today as Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I work from a traditional healing and depth psychotherapy approach, a soul-tending way of navigating through conscious and unconscious experiences to help you make meaning, find balance, and become aware of that which is trying to spring forth in your growth and healing process.

Together we work with dreams, images, synchronicities, as well as other important, even sacred, aspects of who you are.

In therapy I often use nature, music, movement, select readings, and experiential activities to help you connect with and remember who you are and what your medicine is, as we say in Curanderismo. Your medicine is the culmination of your talents, gifts, capabilities, resiliencies, and purpose.

There are also practical and grounding aspects of my approach. Utilizing tried-and-true approaches and other educational resources are keys to helping you get the most out of our work together.

I am sex-positive and ethical non-monogamy/polyamory competent. I operate from body sovereignty, fat affirming, Health at Every Size (HAES) perspectives. I am also neurodiversity affirming. My work is grounded in Healing, Racial, Gender, Sexual, Disability, Restorative Justice and feminist principles and I work from an intersectional lens. I strive for collective liberation and the dismantlement of systems of oppression. 

My belief is that ancestral knowledge and traditions are vital to our healing journey and are part of centering integrative and holistic care. As someone who was raised tending an apple orchard that my antepasados planted in northern New Mexico, I hold the ethic of land as kin and value how this underpins our healing processes. I am also passionate about breaking intergenerational cycles of violence and trauma.