About Leigh Ann
I came to this work through my own diagnosis, and the inner work it catalyzed.
When I was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, I did what many of the people I now work with do: I approached healing from every direction I could.
I pursued conventional care alongside integrative medicine and did everything I knew to support my physical body. But alongside all of that, another question kept returning:
What is here for me in this?
That question changed the course of my life.
My story
Cancer asked me to look at more than my body.
- The detox protocols.
- The nutritional changes.
- The IVs.
- The extensive supplement routines.
I understand what it is like for healing to become a full-time job—to organize your days around appointments, protocols, research, and the constant question of what else you could be doing to support your body.
And I was deeply committed to all of it. But I also knew I wanted to leave no stone unturned in my healing.
Including the psyche.
Cancer asked me to look at my life differently—not only at what was happening physically, but at the way I was living.
I began seeing patterns of martyrdom, people-pleasing, self-abandonment, and emotional material I had carried for years without fully recognizing how deeply it was shaping me.
Around this same time, I was introduced to EVOX Voice Mapping + Biofeedback. EVOX opened a depth of emotional and psychological work I had not previously been able to access and became a pivotal part of my own process.
While I was tending my body through conventional and integrative care, I was also going deeper into my mind, emotions, and unconscious life.
I was tending both. And that combination changed far more than my relationship with cancer.
Map. Metabolize. Expand.
In many ways, I lived the process before I had language for it.
The arc I now explore with clients is an arc I know personally.
Map
As I was supporting my physical body, I was also beginning to map more of what was happening within my psyche. I began to recognize patterns I had been living inside without fully seeing them.
Metabolize
I began to metabolize emotions, experiences, and ways of relating that had shaped me for years. Not only understanding where they came from, but letting them be felt and digested until they no longer had to shape me in the same way.
Expand
And as some of those old patterns loosened, a different version of me began to emerge. Not one I could have planned or forced, but one I could finally make room for, and keep making room for.
A version who could
Speak more honestly.
Choose differently.
Take up more space.
Stop organizing so much of her life around keeping everyone else comfortable.
Create work that felt deeply meaningful.
Build a life that felt increasingly like my own.
The version of me who existed before cancer could not have created the practice or the life I have now.
My cancer experience involved real physiological care, and I would never reduce disease to psychology alone. But tending my psyche alongside my body transformed the way I experienced my life.
I didn’t only want to reach the other side of cancer.
I wanted to become freer on the other side of it. And in many ways, I did.
That possibility—the idea that a person can move through illness and discover not only what needs tending, but what version of themselves may be waiting to emerge—is now woven deeply into the way I work with others.
The practice
The Accrescent grew from that process.
Before cancer, I had earned my B.S. in Public Health and was working in research. I already knew I wanted to work with people more directly, but I had not yet found the form that work would take.
After being introduced to EVOX and experiencing such meaningful changes in my own inner and outer life, I found myself thinking:
“I think this is the tool I am meant to use in the world.”
Today, Depth Psychology is the foundation of how I understand the work, and EVOX remains one of the most powerful tools I pair with it.
- Before cancerB.S. in Public HealthWorking in research, and already knowing I wanted to work with people more directly.
- DiagnosisEarly-stage breast cancerConventional and integrative care, alongside going deeper into my psyche.
- A turning pointIntroduced to EVOXMeaningful changes in my own inner and outer life.
- About a year after diagnosisThe Accrescent, my private practice, beginsThe Accrescent originally began with EVOX.
- As the work deepenedPhD in Depth Psychology and Integrative HealingPacifica Graduate Institute, in pursuit of a fuller understanding of the psyche: the unconscious, dreams, symbolism, relationships, identity, meaning, the body.
I practice what I ask of you
I don’t ask my clients to go anywhere within themselves that I am unwilling to go within myself.
I am still
Mapping my psyche.
Metabolizing my material.
Expanding into more of my Self.
My own inner work did not end when I founded this practice. There are places within my psyche I meet readily—and places I resist, avoid, fear, or would rather run from.
I do not believe there is a finish line where we become perfectly healed human beings.
I believe in a continually deepening relationship with our Selves—with the conscious and unconscious psyche—and an ever-expanding capacity to live with more authenticity, peace, joy, vitality, and choice.
I also believe that I can only accompany another person as deeply into their psyche as I am willing to go into my own. That is why doing this work myself remains such an important part of how I practice.
Education + training
Where my approach comes from
My approach has developed at the intersection of Depth Psychology, public health, mind-body work, nervous-system regulation, and biofeedback.
PhD in Depth Psychology and Integrative HealingPacifica Graduate Institute · in progress
B.S. in Public Health
Certified ZYTO + EVOX Specialist
Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner
Certified Flower Essence Specialist
Somatic Experiencing-informed techniques
Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Continued studyNervous-system regulation, mind-body health, trauma, and integrative approaches to healing
I am also the host of The Accrescent Podcast, where I explore many of the same questions that animate my practice: the relationship between psyche and physiology, trauma, illness, healing, meaning, and what it means to become more fully ourselves.
To be trusted with someone’s inner world is a gift.
There is something profoundly meaningful to me about being invited into another person’s story.
People allow me to sit beside them as something they have carried for years begins to shift—or as a part of themselves that has been quiet for a very long time begins to emerge.
I never take that invitation for granted. Every person I sit with is extending an extraordinary kind of trust. I hold that with gratitude, responsibility, and reverence.
Years ago, I wrote that this work sets my soul on fire. It still does.
Not because I believe I have all of the answers for another person, but because there is something extraordinary about witnessing what can happen when someone begins meeting more of themselves with honesty, courage, and curiosity. To be invited into that process is one of the great honors of my life.