Isa Martinez Mulcahy, LCPC, R-DMT

You may understand why you feel anxious, overwhelmed, or disconnected, but still notice that the feeling lives in your body. Your shoulders stay tense. Your mind will not slow down. You feel restless, numb, shut down, or unable to fully relax, even when nothing is immediately wrong.

I am a bilingual English and Spanish-speaking therapist and Registered Dance/Movement Therapist. I work with women, adults, and couples navigating trauma, anxiety, relationship challenges, cultural identity, and major life transitions. I specialize in helping clients reconnect with their bodies, understand emotional and relational patterns, and feel more present in their lives.

Traditional talk therapy can be meaningful, but words do not always reach everything we carry. Trauma and chronic stress may also appear through tension, disconnection, difficulty resting, emotional overwhelm, or the feeling that your body is constantly preparing for something to happen.

In our sessions, we may use conversation, breath, movement, body awareness, creativity, and nervous system regulation. There is no expectation that you know how to dance or perform. Movement can be as subtle as noticing your breathing, shifting your posture, or becoming curious about where an emotion is felt in your body.

My work is also deeply informed by culture. Born in Colombia and raised between Latin America and New York, I understand the complexity of living between cultures, balancing family expectations, and building an identity that feels authentic to you. I welcome conversations about first-generation experiences, bicultural identity, interracial relationships, blended families, immigration, belonging, and the emotional patterns passed through generations.

I also bring nine years of clinical experience working with veterans, active-duty service members, and military families. I understand that military culture carries its own language, expectations, transitions, and ways of surviving.

Therapy with me is thoughtful, creative, grounded, and collaborative. Together, we can help you feel safer in your body, clearer about your needs, and more connected to the parts of yourself that may have been pushed aside.

Healing does not always begin with the right words. Sometimes it begins with a breath, a movement, or the experience of finally feeling understood.

Check out my website here: Isa Mulcahy, LCPC, R-DMT

Research, Writing & Leadership

My approach is informed by my ethnographic research, “Give Peace a Dance: An Ethnographic Research Project About a Dancing Community in Chicago and the Implications for Dance/Movement Therapy,” which explores how movement and community support emotional regulation, belonging, and healing. You can read the research here.

I also serve as President of the Illinois Chapter of the American Dance Therapy Association, where I support the integration of movement-based and culturally responsive approaches to mental health.

I’ve written about Dance/Movement Therapy in Spanish, including reflections on the body and my work with disabled veterans in Chicago. These pieces were published in Contratiempo Magazine:

• “Dance, A Healing Art” (2011) — reflections on the body as a bridge between trauma and resilience
• “Todos Somos Artistas” (2018) — a celebration of creativity, expression, and accessible healing

Together, these projects continue to shape how I understand the body:
as a site of wisdom, memory, resilience, and possibility. They remind me that healing doesn’t always start with words – sometimes it begins with breath, movement, rhythm, and the stories our bodies carry.