Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Atkinson.
Hi Erin, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I graduated from McDaniel College in Maryland with a degree in Psychology, and two weeks later, I moved to Hawaii. I ended up living there for eight years, during which time I completed my Master of Social Work and began my journey as a psychotherapist. My path led me to live for extended periods in other places too: California and Montana. Each of these landscapes shaped me. Hawaii, California, Montana—they all gave me a deep, visceral connection to the natural world that became foundational to how I understand healing.
I started Prism Wellness in 2018 in a tiny office at the Yoga Tree in Hampden (for those who remember that beloved studio!). From the beginning, Prism has been holistically oriented. I’ve always steered away from traditional clinical settings, sensing there was something deeper than what sterile, conventional environments tend to offer.
Through years of client work and ongoing training in somatic therapy, psychedelic-assisted therapy, embodiment practices, integrative medicine, ancestral lineage work, and nature-based approaches, I came to deeply know and understand that healing isn’t just individual. It has to be attended to across multiple dimensions: mind, body, spirit, community, and our relationship with the Earth. When we only address one or two of those layers, we’re missing the holistic tapestry of what it means to be human.
That understanding is what Prism is rooted in now. It’s a space where trauma-informed therapy, somatic wisdom, spiritual exploration, community connection, and earth-based practices can all exist in conversation. We don’t just treat symptoms. We support people in remembering their innate capacity for wholeness and reclaiming their path forward.
Today, Prism has grown into a multi-state holistic and psychedelic therapy practice based in Baltimore, with around 25 therapists and an incredibly skilled team. What started in that tiny office has become a thriving community of practitioners who share this vision of holistic, liberatory healing.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not entirely, but the challenges have been meaningful ones. I didn’t come into this with a business degree. I’m a therapist first, so learning to build and grow a practice has been a journey of growth and stretching in ways I couldn’t foresee in grad school. There’s so much that goes into running a business beyond the clinical work: building systems, supporting a team, creating sustainable infrastructure, understanding finances and operations. As a woman stepping into leadership and entrepreneurship, I’ve had to trust myself in new ways and lean into skills I didn’t know I had. It’s shaped me in ways I’m deeply grateful for.
The deeper challenge has been working within a mental healthcare system that was designed with a very limited concept of what healing is– one that, as we can largely see, hasn’t been working. Insurance models reduce people to diagnoses, prioritize symptom management over transformation, and often overlook the deeper layers of healing that include body, spirit, community, and connection to the earth. At Prism, we do accept insurances because one of our highest values is accessibility. Healing shouldn’t only be available to the wealthy. So staying rooted in what we believe people deserve (holistic care, community, freedom, healing, connection to nature) has become our north star. That commitment guides every decision we make, even when we’re navigating structures that don’t fully align with that vision.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My most meaningful work is as the founder of Prism Wellness, a holistic therapy practice rooted in the understanding that healing doesn’t happen in isolation or in neat categories. We specialize in trauma-informed somatic work and psychedelic-assisted therapy, weaving together what most models keep separate: clinical rigor and spiritual depth, individual transformation and collective healing, evidence-based practice and ancestral wisdom.
What we’re really building is a community of practitioners who understand that the most profound healing happens in the intersections. Our clients aren’t fragmented—they’re whole humans navigating trauma recovery and spiritual awakening, nervous system healing and ancestral patterns, earth-based wisdom and modern psychology. We hold space for all of it. This is what I believe a more elevated future of psychotherapy looks like.
A significant part of my work is training and mentoring therapists who want to specialize in psychedelic medicine, integration, earth-based healing, and a more liberatory approach to mental health. I facilitate Clinician Communities, creating space for clinicians to collaborate, learn, and grow together. We’ve recently become an approved CEU provider organization and will be providing continuing education programs for therapists aligned with the values I have described. Our first courses are launching in early 2026, including the Psychedelic Integration Specialist Certificate program for therapists.
What I’m most proud of is the community we’ve built at Prism Wellness. The clinicians on our team are extraordinarily skilled and knowledgeable, deeply rooted in their values, and genuinely committed to innovative approaches to healing. Every person in our offices, in our therapy rooms, and throughout our Prism community brings their own medicine and shows up with integrity. I learn from our team every day, and it’s a testament to what becomes possible when people are aligned in purpose and vision. When we are empowered as clinicians to work at these intersections, honoring both clinical expertise and spiritual depth, both individual transformation and collective healing, the impact extends far beyond the therapy room. It shifts how entire communities understand what healing can be. That’s the paradigm shift we’re cultivating together.
What matters most to you?
What matters most to me is the healing and wholeness of all people, accessibility to that healing, and our reconnection to the earth. These aren’t separate concerns—they’re actually deeply interwoven.
I believe we’ve strayed far off path as a society. We’ve been taught to see ourselves as separate from each other, from our bodies, from the natural world. We’ve built systems that prioritize profit over people, that limit access to healing based on wealth, that treat the earth as a resource to extract rather than a living intelligence we’re in relationship with. The consequences of that disconnection are everywhere: in our collective mental health crisis, in the destruction of ecosystems and the living world, in the loneliness epidemic, in the ways we’ve forgotten that we do belong to something greater than ourselves. But I also feel that people are waking up to this. There’s a readiness for change and a return to the wisdom that has been forgotten.
The work I’m doing is my offering toward a more beautiful world, not just for my children, but for their children’s children. I believe healing as a collective is possible. I believe that re-weaving belonging is possible. And I hope to build spaces and places where that can happen.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.prism-wellness.com
- Instagram: prismwellness.us
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PrismWellnessUS
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prism-wellness/
