Cynthia Eisho Morrow
ABOUT
Rev. Cynthia Eisho Morrow, MA, LMFT
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A depth-oriented psychotherapist of 30 years, I have been a close companion to many in their healing journey and search for who they truly are. A wilderness rites of passage guide of 20 years, I have served as midwife to many courageous people ready to die to what no longer serves, so that deeper gifts may be born. Practicing biodynamic craniosacral therapy, I listen for the tidal rhythms that flow through our bodies, that restore us, that created us.
These rhythms are no different from what breathes life in the natural world all around us. Now as an ordained Buddhist priest in the Japanese Tendai lineage, my vow is in the reclaiming of what is sacred, planting seeds of love and wisdom, and supporting our collective awakening and liberation from suffering. Read more
Entering into psychotherapy is a courageous act. It is no small thing to consider trusting someone (your therapist) with your vulnerability, your wounding, as well as your gifts that you might want help developing.
Many people come to therapy wanting to address their depression, anxiety, childhood trauma, relationship issues, addictions, life transitions, gender and sexual issues, etc. I see symptoms not as something to pathologize or get rid of, but as symbolic expressions from the deep psyche wanting to be understood and integrated in a healthy way. Read more
PSYCHOTHERAPY & CONSULTATION
EARTH-BASED PRACTICES
Seeing the world reflected in a single dew-drop on a new spring leaf. Sensing the deep calm after a raging storm that brings the rainbow. Waking to the song of coyotes howling in the star-filled night. Wilderness… wild, awe-inspiring, untamed and often uncomfortable. For many, nature has become a frightening place to be avoided. Yet spending time in the natural world invites us to turn towards a knowing deep in our bones… that we are an inseparable part of the great web of life. Living within walls, viewing much of our lives on screens, we are all participants in forgetting how dynamically related we are with all of life. Earth-based work is how we practice remembering. Read more
Sometimes people are looking for deep support for their inner life, and have already done a lot of psychotherapy. They want to grow spiritually and want guidance that is attuned to their own life path. Though psychotherapy can include spiritual dimensions, and spiritual work often includes psychological dimensions, they are different territories or views. People who seek me out for spiritual counseling may already have some sort of spiritual practice or belief system which expands their sense of themselves beyond their personal struggles, yet includes those very struggles. Support for deep inner work can be held within a container of spiritual counseling. Read more
SPIRITUAL COUNSELING & MENTORSHIP
BIODYNAMIC CRANIOSACRAL
Bringing the light of awareness and the warmth of compassion in contact with the density of holding patterns in the body is an integral part of healing. It is often the body, emotion, and feeling realms that store the most hidden and unresolved suffering, allowing the more functional parts of us to “carry on”. Within the context of psychotherapy or spiritual mentorship, we may decide together to use touch as an adjunct to our work. Biodynamic craniosacral therapy is a non-invasive, gentle, and effective form of bodywork which helps to resolve protective patterns that have become painful or self-limiting. My contact is safe, respectful, and clients are always fully clothed.
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EVENTS
The Great Ballcourt Initiation – Spring Fast
March 20-21, 2026
Eureka Valley, CA
Death is the ultimate agent of transformation—be it a physical death or “the little deaths” encountered throughout life. Indigenous cultures developed rituals to aid and guide people through these stages of change and renewal, utilizing the power of death to enhance and intensify these experiences. For the Mayan people this ceremony was played out on the Great Ballcourt. The court, and the ritual game played upon it, were an enactment of the great transformations: from life to death, from the middleworld to the underworld, from humanity to divinity.
Awakened Earth
Spring – Practice of Emergence
A Day of Contemplation on the Land
April 18, 2026, 9am – 5pm
Open Sky Retreat Space
West Sebastopol, CA
You are invited to a day of contemplation at a beautifully tended sanctuary retreat space on eight acres of private land in West Sebastopol. This is a day of shared practice, presence, and belonging—rooted in relationship with the living Earth. Guided by the mirror of the land and the wisdom of contemplative practice, we will create a container spacious enough to hold the “ten thousand joys and sorrows” of our worldly lives. In difficult times, we can either close down or allow the heart-mind to open. Together, we invite opening and insight to arise through stillness, silence, and the illuminating shared stories of our lives.
Awakened Earth
Flowering of Renewal
Half-Day Contemplative Gathering
May 16, 2026, 9am – 12:30pm
Sugarloaf Ridge State Park
Kenwood, CA
Join us at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, the ancestral homeland- past, present, and future- of the Wappo people. Here, rolling hills and spring wildflower blooms offer a living mirror for our own inner nature. Together, we step out of the pace of daily life and into a shared field of presence, grounded in relationship with the living Earth. The abundance of new growth and blossoming life invites reflection on the cycles of renewal within our own inner landscape. Here, the land invites us into embodied presence—remembering how renewal arises through patience, tending, and rooted belonging.
Dying as a Rite of Passage
June 13-20, 2026
Inyo Mountains
Big Pine, CA
For millennia, indigenous people of all our bloodlines have known “how to die”, with the natural world as our teacher from the beginning of time. Cycles of dying and rebirth are seen everywhere: the setting and rising of the sun, the turning of the seasons, the death of the elderly alongside the birth of a new generation. Ceremonial rites of passage emerged pan-culturally as a means of supporting, guiding and witnessing this natural process. These rites have supported individuals in letting go of one stage of life—the little deaths—in order to be reborn into the next. They help us to fully embrace our ever-changing lives, while preparing us for the final transition, the big Death that awaits us all.
Awakened Earth
Meeting the Waves of Change
Half-Day Contemplative Gathering
July 18, 2026, 9am – 12:30pm
North Salmon Creek Beach
Sonoma Coast, CA
Join us at the Sonoma Coast, the ancestral homeland, past and present, of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo peoples. Here, the vastness and rhythm of the ocean offer a timeless mirror for our own inner nature. Together, we step out of the pace of daily life and into a shared field of presence, grounded in relationship with the living Earth. The ocean waves—their power, impermanence, and deep inner stillness—invite reflection on our own changing inner landscape. Here, the ocean invites us to practice meeting change with openness, and to rest in the vast awareness that remains when we let go.
Wild Roots, Sky Mind
August 20-23, 2026
Bohemian Ecological Preserve
West Sonoma County, CA
Join us on a beautiful 1,000-acre protected preserve in the western hills of Sonoma County, the ancestral homeland of the Pomo and Coast Miwok people. Over four days and three nights, this land of old-growth forests, oak woodlands, coastal meadows, and sweeping vistas will serve as both setting and mirror—reflecting the depth, resilience, and expansiveness of our own inner nature. Drawing together core teachings from wilderness rites of passage and the Dharma, we will explore four qualities of the awakened heart-mind: Loving-kindness, Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity.
Awakened Earth
Fall – Practice of Letting Go
A Day of Contemplation on the Land
September 19, 2026, 9am–5pm
Open Sky Retreat Space
West Sebastopol, CA
You are invited to a day of contemplation at a beautifully tended sanctuary retreat space on eight acres of private land in West Sebastopol. This is a day of shared practice, presence, and belonging—rooted in relationship with the living Earth. Guided by the mirror of the land and the wisdom of contemplative practice, we will create a container spacious enough to hold the “ten thousand joys and sorrows” of our worldly lives. In difficult times, we can either close down or allow the heart-mind to open. Together, we invite opening and insight to arise through stillness, silence, and the illuminating shared stories of our lives.
Honoring Those Who Have Walked Before
October 24-26, 2026, 9am–5pm
Open Sky Retreat Space
West Sebastopol, CA
Deepening into fall, we enter a season of remembrance—a threshold time for honoring those who have walked before us. As the days shorten and the energy of the earth returns to its roots, we are invited to pause and listen to what the past continues to offer. Remembering the gifts and shadows of those who came before helps cultivate discernment as we dream our way into the future. Who were our ancestors, near and far— whose shoulders do we stand upon? How did they live, and how did they die?
CA Women’s Vision Fast
November 3-14, 2026
Death Valley, CA
Like the waxing and waning of the moon, our inner essence is reflected in the creative forces of nature, in the continual movement of light and dark. Throughout the stages of our lives, we flow between the stages of birth, death and re-birth. You know in your bones the ancient practice of rites of passage. This is a time to go out alone, be held by the earth and the spacious desert. For four days and four nights, there is space to remember your wholeness, sink into your dreams, and release what no longer serves.
MUSINGS
Meditation on the Earth
Cynthia Eisho Morrow
July 2025
It is just past the summer solstice, and we are fully immersed in summer’s expansion… long days of light, travel, social events, and the vigorous ripening of all that grows. This is also a time when as we tune into the news of our world, we might find a hundred reasons each day for our heart to break open. And a hundred more reasons to get angry, or to fear for ourselves, our families, friends, and the well-being of all who live on this precious earth of ours, our home.
How do we stay present to the truth of our world when it is all too easy to choose to check out in the myriad ways that we do? How do we find peace within ourselves when all around we are faced with a poly-crisis (climate catastrophe, war, economic disparity, race and gender oppression, environmental destruction, the list goes on…)? Staying with ourselves is easier said than done when “the ten thousand things” are continuously drawing our attention outside of ourselves. Intellectually, we might know that finding true peace is an inside job, yet it takes courage, patience, and perseverance to let things be as they are and meet ourselves just as we are. Yes, peace must begin here, in the chaos.
Tadaima!
(Japanese for “I’m home now!”)
Cynthia Eisho Morrow
September 2023
It’s April 24th, 2023, and I’m nervously sitting in a chair at a barber shop just south of Kyoto Station in Japan. An adorable, young Japanese woman takes the electric razor up against the side of my head… bzzzzz…. bzzzzz…. I watch as thick, long clumps of curly tresses fall to the floor. Gazing in the mirror, I start to dissociate. “Be here for this!!”, I tell myself, drawing my attention back to my midline. My breath deepens as I observe in the mirror this radical act. After about 10 minutes, she beams at my newly bald head and proclaims, “Kawaii!”, which means, “Cute!”. The next day, I arrive at the monastery gates high on a mountain for my 60-day initiation to become a Tendai priest.
Mottainai
Life is Precious—Don’t Waste It!
by Cynthia Eisho Morrow
January 2022
As a way to connect with my Japanese bloodline, I’ve been slowly learning my mother’s native tongue. Ten years of studying Japanese language has been sometimes tedious, mostly fun and engaging, and occasionally revelatory. One of the revelatory expressions that has rocked my world is mottainai.
Mottainai (もったいない or 勿体無い, pronounced mot-tie-nye) is a common expression in any Japanese household. Often associated with food, which is how I first heard it, mottainai conveys a sense of regret in wasting something needlessly. In many eras in Japan, food has been a precious resource, at times quite scarce. People have had to be mindful with food, to not let it go bad, not throw it away. Even a single grain of rice is worth preserving and consuming with appreciation for its capacity to nourish. By today’s American standards, where we have such enormous food waste, this can be a radical idea. According to one statistic, in 2021 we Americans wasted 108 billion pounds of food, or 40% of all food. Not wasting food is a mindfulness practice, in and of itself.
Vision Fasting with a World on Fire
by Cynthia Eisho Morrow
September 2020
Sitting on a mountain perch at 8000 feet, I have come to the Inyos to fast. Longing to see my brilliant, beloved Sierras to the west, today, they are not visible at all. The smoke from the relentless fires of the American West has totally obscured them. Heavy-hearted with climate grief, I gaze out and see only a grey-blue sea of sky-cloud-smoke—endless, seamless, where once there were mountains.
There is a dying. The adult life as I’ve known it thus far is dying, has to die. Not unlike those mountains. The Sierras have been there my entire life, witnessing my entire life. Now, gone. They are cloud, smoke, mirage, illusion, empty. My old life is composting, and yes there are seeds planted in that rich soil. What will emerge?
CONTACT
Rev. Cynthia Eisho Morrow, LMFT
Phone: 415-221-6373
Email: eisho@cynthiamorrow.com
Office: 818 Cherry St.
Santa Rosa, CA 95404
Please note, I am currently not taking new clients for psychotherapy. However, if you are interested in the possibility of doing some spiritual counseling or mentorship, feel free to call or email me. We can discuss availability, fees, and whether we might be a good fit. I offer sessions in person in my Santa Rosa office, over video, or by phone.