I integrate my training as a psychotherapist, a doula, and a former executive, along with my eclectic background in the entertainment industry, yoga, wellness and mindfulness based nervous system regulation practices, and offer holistic emotional support for all parts of you and your story. I can help you through first loves and past-their-expiration-date perspectives while figuring out who you are, separate from who you thought or were told you should be, while also learning how to celebrate the sweet and strange moments.

I use therapeutic models that make sense for each client, starting from thoughts/ feelings, which create behaviors/beliefs, and listening from the body and heart through a humanistic, mindfulness-based approach.

I invite you to a dedicated, kind, and transformative space for you to show up, do the work, and collaborate together so you can feel comfortable and confident in your life. If you would like to work together, reach out for a consultation, and let’s see if it’s a fit! I look forward to connecting with you.

“Wellbeing is a practice, and so is building our capacity and character in each chapter of life.”
– Ella Lauser

Fun Facts

Passport Stamp Collector – After saving funds for 10 years, backpacked Europe after her senior year of high school and realized traveling was an education worth investing in, Ella decided to fill her passport book with stamps for the next decade.

No Plans Planner

As a point of integrity, I couldn’t ask people to slow down and practice being if that didn’t happen on my watch too outside of the last two minutes of yoga class. Pajama days or no plans plan once a week became a self-care must which often included phone-free time, vinyl record hunting, museum/art gallery strolling or farmers marketing for fresh, seasonal, local goodness. What’s one thing you can do that is nourishing for you today/this week? For an hour? Or 5-20 minutes as a start?

Personal Core Values

*Integrity – if something does not feel in alignment, pausing and then taking steps towards the right action that is honoring.

*Sovereignty – cultivating and empowering inner authority and not outsourcing it.

*Choosing love over fear as the basis of my decision-making process- asking what is loving and true?

*Being accountable for my needs by speaking FOR them not FROM them and encouraging the same in others.

*Practicing self-regulation, compassion and creating boundaries instead of walls or people pleasing.

Her Story

Ella Lauser has had the unique opportunity to be a confidant and support system for people beginning at an early age. With wisdom, humor, and openness passed down to her from her bisexual grandma, Ella began The I Want Sex Club (I.W.S.C.) at UC Santa Cruz in 2000 for students who wanted to talk about sex in a non-judgmental, supportive forum. Shortly thereafter she transferred to UCLA in the Sociology department focusing research on sexuality, death, gender and race equity. She went on to teach comprehensive sexual health education to high school classrooms throughout Los Angeles Unified School District in the first program of its kind in the US. In 2010 she began working as a doula and created Go Ask Ella, a service project dedicated to addressing the “things we don’t talk about but should” as the sister “you probably never had” and became a part of the writing team on Just Get Tested for access to health tests from the privacy of home.

From 2012 to 2017, Ella supported the launch of the first ever 100% Raw Organic Coconut Water in the U.S. In 2013, Ella was recognized as a contributor of “visions of transition” on a global stage as Ella was a featured speaker at London’s TEDxWhiteChapel honoring the heart’s questions around human-ness and woman-hood. She continued to find ways to serve wellness by supporting women in labor and postpartum as a doula, educating the public on natural health practices and innovations as a founding staff member of Harmless Harvest while attending Pepperdine University’s Masters of Arts in Clinical Psychology Marriage Family Therapist program.

As a double-licensed clinician (LMFT and LPCC), Ella reflects on her path of becoming a therapist and guardian of human wellness…

What made me decide to become a therapist?

My life experiences primed me to become a therapist although my arrival to the career was definitely a non-linear path. Despite my ACE score, adverse childhood experiences, being a 6, I kept persevering and seeking answers that couldn’t be answered in just the classroom, a therapist’s couch or by those around me.

When I took a career assessment at sixteen, I learned I would be best suited for “counselor/rabbi/priest.” I wasn’t raised religious but had read Siddhartha and rocked a Tarot deck from my local witchy shop, I wasn’t impressed with the therapy I had had but was curious what counsel could look like. At 19, it seemed Sociology lit me up as did the idea of working in the entertainment industry to be a part of healing through art and storytelling, which led me to Los Angeles. However, I found wherever I was be it on set for music videos, backstage again at concerts, at production or recording studios, at award ceremonies, people (strangers and friends) opened up to me. I was fired at one of my jobs after interviewing celebrities on the red carpet by my boss because the responses were so candid. “Ella you so obviously care more about people than money and fame, it’s unfortunate- you’re not meant for this business, you’re fired.”

Integrating a stream of life experiences, I stayed curious about the big questions and learned I had to carve my own path, caring a lot about the human beings around me and finding different ways to meet them where they were at. Being with people when they’re at a breakthrough point, ready to look at life, in all its awkwardness and beauty, that’s where I love to be. We are not defined by what happened to us but we are informed by experiences and we deserve to have support. We each have a story to tell and to be witnessed, while we ourselves are becoming art and therefore vulnerable to influence. I became a therapist to give back what I was looking for at different stages when I outsourced my knowing to people in authority that were terribly human. I learned that if someone says they have all the answers, R-U-N. You are the expert of your life, no one else and it takes time and dedication to hear and trust our inner sense of Self. Having a dedicated space without agenda but to heal and be heard is a gift to ourselves, our friends and family, our world.

Favorite Films

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) directed by Wes Anderson
Periodical (2023) directed by Lina Plioplyte
Lady Bird (2017) directed by Greta Gurwig
13th (2016) directed by Ava DuVernay
Pixar’s Inside Out (2015) directed by Pete Docter
Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Good Will Hunting (1997) directed by Gus Van Sant
The 5th Element (1997) directed by Luc Besson
The Breakfast Club (1985) by John Hughes
Ikiru (1952) directed by Akira Kurosawa