About Deborah Orandon

Deborah Orandon is the owner of Self Awareness Counseling, Portland Oregon.  She has a formal education in counseling, massage and movement and brings diverse life experiences to her work.  Her formal education is listed to the right.  Some of the life experiences that led her to this varied background are discussed below.

Deborah Orandon's Story

When I was three years old my mother took me to see a film of a ballet performance of the Sleeping Beauty.  Even though the picture was grainy and I remember being confused about the plot, my vivid memory is of the certainty with which I knew that something about the body moving in these captivating ways was for me.

Since then my love of dance and intrigue with human behavior has taken me down all sorts of unexpected roads.  My early life of professional ballet and modern dance study eventually led to rebellion and lots of dancing in punk clubs—which satisfied my desire to dance with abandon, and some of my insatiable curiosity about the many ways people live. I finally found my peace with dance by integrating freedom with choice and inner-focus in my creation of Inner-Awareness Movement technique.  

Along the way I studied massage to learn more about the body and found a profession that I loved. I discovered however, that when people feel safe in a massage session, and the nervous system has slowed down, they often suddenly realize things about how they’re feeling about their lives. Some people will verbalize these awarenesses during their massage session and, I soon discovered that I was hungry for skills to enhance and engage that important process.  A degree in counseling was the only thing that made sense.

So in 2000 I went back to school, took on a double major, and in 2003 I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Dance and Psychology from Western Oregon University.  I was also deeply interested in experiential psychotherapeutic techniques, and in 2005 I completed a year of training in Hakomi Body-Centered Psychotherapy / Re-Creation of the Self Model of Human Systems in Portland, Oregon.  In 2005 I entered Portland State University’s Counseling Education Master’s Degree Program and Graduated in 2008.  In addition to the required mental health counseling coursework at Portland State University, I took an extra year to begin the process of Addictions Counseling Certification and Couples, Marriage and Family Counseling Certification through Portland State University’s Continuing Education Dept.  During that time I completed a one-year internship at the YWCA of Greater Portland’s Counseling Center.

This brings the story to the present.  Creating Self-Awareness Counseling in Portland, Oregon has been a long time in coming.  In some ways, I see this as three businesses-in-one. My Counseling services, Massage services and Dance/Movement services all stand on their own as separate modalities.  Certainly, my dance and bodywork background shapes the way I experience and engage with all people and so it always informs my counseling work. Similarly, my counseling skills will always be there to support my massage clients if difficult emotions arise.  However, most clients will utilize one service primarily.  But these modalities can also be integrated, if it is previously agreed upon by both the client and me.  For instance, people who receive massage or counseling from me could also take some of my classes, or more than one modality could be integrated into a session to improve the therapeutic effect.  For more about this please see my Integrated Modalities page. 

It is very rewarding for me to find myself in Portland, a city I love, doing the three pieces of work that mean everything to me.  I feel blessed to have arrived and honored to participate in the deep and challenging work of transformation with my clients and students.