Mentor the Soul
A Sanctuary for Healing and Growth
Our Story
We, Ed Tick PhD and Kate Dahlstedt MA, are a married couple who have each devoted our working lives to alleviating human suffering and restoring soulfulness to our lives . Since the 1980s we have developed a holistic, non-medical, inclusive and psycho-spiritual-cultural approach to individual and collective trauma healing. We work with individuals, couples and groups as well as lead workshops, trainings and overseas journeys.
Dr. Tick’s book War and the Soul was published in 2005 and flooded us with requests for help from the military, veterans and their families. We founded our non-profit Soldier’s Heart to foster and develope this unique healing work.
We focus on the moral injury and soul wounding to individuals and societies inherent in all trauma. We foster deep growth in order to resolve symptoms and suffering, considering trauma a portal for transformation.
Through Soldier's Heart throuogh 2019 we ran free retreats, workshops, trainings, and overseas healing journeys to Viet Nam for veterans, family members, the military, activists and healers. Our work is showcased in interviews, lectures, videos, journals, articles and books.
We now offer our clinical, educational and creative work nationally and internationally through teleconferencing.
Our Mission
Our mission is to help people reclaim a deep connection to their inner lives, to their souls, to strive to be the best human beings they can be to themselves, their loved ones, and the entire community. We believe each person has a unique destiny and strive to open the paths to fulfilling it. We work to uncover and heal wounds and blocks that have developed over time and to promote deep inner growth in order to reclaim the authentic self and liberate our creativity.
We specialized in this work with the military and veteran communities through our non-profit Soldier's Heart from 2006-2019 and developed the Soldier's Heart Model, now applied to all forms of trauma and taught extensively. We continue this work privately and offer our model to all wounded populations of all sizes, from individuals to nations.
Our Philosophy
We affirm that human beings are deep, complex and complicated and that the life journey is difficult to navigate. This is especially so for an authentic and creative one. We agree with Buddha that life is suffering and avoid pathologizing and diagnosing. Rather we listen deeply to unfold the whole person and the “story behind the story,” those hidden levels of experience that influence how we live our lives.
Psyche means soul. We work with the soul at all its levels and manifestations. We utilize the arts and humanities, community and and social involvementt and activism, cross-cultural and international practices, all to explore the deepest dimensions of our living and seek to set people on the path to unfolding their destinies and finding their unique places and contributions to our world.
New Article
Dr. Edward Tick: Pioneering Healing and Transformation
Written by Petar Vojinovic | Updated On August 11, 2023 • MysticMag
Dr. Edward Tick is a prolific nonfiction writer, poet, and holistic healer whose transformative journey encompasses a diverse array of roles, from educator and consultant to international journey guide. With a steadfast dedication spanning over four decades, Dr. Tick has pioneered the healing of invisible wounds inflicted by war and violence. His groundbreaking work, exemplified by the award-winning book “War and the Soul,” has revolutionized spiritual, holistic, and community-based healing for veterans and survivors struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and moral injury.
An internationally recognized expert, Dr. Tick’s influence extends across the realms of military studies, PTSD, and global trauma. Through training, retreats, and workshops worldwide, he has touched lives within Department of Defense and Veteran Administration facilities, educational institutions, and communities. As a co-founder of Soldier’s Heart, Inc., and an advocate for healing, Dr. Tick’s recent endeavors include the poignant poetry collection “Coming Home in Viet Nam” and the profound exploration of ancient Greek healing traditions in “Soul Medicine: Healing Through Dreams, Visions, Oracles and Pilgrimages.” His extensive body of work, encompassing books, poetry, and scholarly writings, positions Dr. Edward Tick as a guiding light in the realms of holistic well-being and compassionate healing...
Featured Video
Double Book Release
SOUL MEDICINE &
COMING HOME IN VIET NAM
Amherst, MA, February 2023
Testimonials
"Dr. Tick,
The body of your work has given me a profound understanding of what happened in my life. This is something that no one else provided... a model of understanding.
I often think how amazing it is that you followed the threads of war to learn, understand, experience, awaken, and share with others.
It took someone outside of the deep wounds to be embedded with war experience...
Someone willing to brush up against it and have their soul expanded and shaped by the experience.
Someone willing to hold ground sacred against the myriad sights, sounds, and images of shared war experience.
Thank you,
Floyd Striegel
Vietnam 1969-1970"
"Ed Tick has devoted his life to listening and healing, with a particular call to the plight of veterans. His many books have reclaimed what it means to be a healer in the modern world. After decades of healing journeys to Viet Nam, this major poetry collection speaks to the braid of courage and compassion that waits in each of us. Journey with this wise healer and it will heal something deep in you.
—Mark Nepo, author of The Book of Awakening and More Together Than Alone
~~~
I’ve always had mentors throughout my 25+ year career as a psychotherapist, ancient wisdom teacher, healer and author. It is my belief that those who are teaching and healing need to always have elders to learn from. Synchronicity brought Ed Tick and I together as I was searching for the location of a cave in the mountains of Greece. During our first conversation, I immediately knew I needed Ed for a mentor. I felt the depth of his wisdom, the tenderness of his heart, and the fierceness of his authentic power. Ed Tick is humble, vulnerable and wise. He is a philosopher and a scholar who has helped me reached new depths and new heights within my personal and professional life. We share a passion for ancient wisdom, philosophy, mythology, and healing; a rare chance to find such an intuitive match. Ed not only shares his poetic words of wisdom, he penetrates your soul and brakes your heart wide open. I am truly blessed to have Ed for a mentor, colleague and spiritual friend.”
— Melanie Ryan, LCSW
Psychotherapist | Mystic
~~~
We recently partnered with Dr. Edward Tick to provide vital education for our network of volunteer health providers so they can better understand moral injury, wounds of the soul, and how important it is for the community to come together to help our veterans heal and recover. His research, stories, and experiences working with our nation's veterans and families are poignant and emotional. Dr. Tick will transform your perspective of military trauma and help you have a more comprehensive view of our veteran warriors and how we can help assist with reintegration and ease their suffering.
—Bethany A. WalmsleyExecutive DirectorReturning Veterans Project
~~~
I would give them 10 stars! This organization is a one-of-a-kind, all heart & soul. They are there in a vet's darkest hours and turn it around. I love them!
—Estephania LeBaron-Papanicoulauo
~~~
I felt embraced by a loving community who knew the agony of loss, the horrors of war, who received each other’s different experiences as precious gems of truth and courage. We melded together in mutual respect and compassion for one another.
—Family of Pfc. Keith Moore
~~~
Kate is a wonderful person and has great experience in helping veterans. If you are a partner to a veteran, I'm bayou to recommend that you check her out."
—Irene Beltzer
"I highly recommend Ed Tick, both personally and professionally. Ed is highly educated, committed to understanding the human dilemma, and the ever present need for personal, family, community, national, and multi-cultural healing. Deeply steeped in historical facts and mythic overlays, with a compassionate heart and the fire of spirit holding his vision as a guiding light. You would do well to know this man and engage in the body of his work."
—Floyd Striegel, Cultural Bridge Foundation
Thank you for your steadfast love, care and support for us. Just knowing that you were available to us during this last deployment if we had any emergency or an urgent situation was a wonderful safety net for us and we appreciate it very much. Thank you for your service to our country and for caring about mothers and sisters of soldiers.
—Debbie & Jessica I.
Ed is a wealth of unique perspectives about our culture and how it relates to the amount of trauma we have in this country. I interviewed him: https://thefamilyrecoverysolution.com/2019/10/23/ed-tick/"
—Jeff Jones, The Family Recovery Solution
Our community
Our community extends nationally and internationally to people and institutions committed to:
holistic and psycho-spiritual growth and healing
resolution of individual and collective trauma, our universal wound
international friendship and reconciliation
restoration of ancient healing practices
We work with individuals and groups, institutions and organizations throughout the US. We specialize in working in Viet Nam and Greece and elsewhere in Europe.
Soldier's Heart
Since closing our non-profit Soldier's Heart in 2019, we have continued our work with veterans and their families privately as well as through the national organization Freedom Alliance and the California non-profit Mil-Tree.
The mission of our Soldier's Heart program is to transform the emotional, moral, and spiritual wounds that often result from war and military service. We have developed a proven holistic, community-based, psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural method of healing that goes beyond conventional treatment methods. We incorporate what we have learned from intensive study and experience of world-wide spiritual traditions, indigenous cultures, mythology, and warrior traditions.
Through our Soldier’s Heart programming, we offer genuine
homecoming, reintegration, and a path for post-traumatic growth and spiritual development. We also empower and equip families, care providers, individuals, and communities to support our troops and veterans as they work to establish new identities.
We offer retreat intensives that create a safe place for veterans and active-duty service men and women to share their military experiences, explore the impact it has had on their lives and transform their identities into lifelong Spiritual Warriors. We also offer family member retreats, workshops, trainings, educational programs, and lectures on topics critical to understanding and healing from the experience of war.
In addition to our retreats, we offer therapeutic journeys to Viet Nam. By returning to old battlefields, practicing rituals of grief and honor, meeting former enemies and offering philanthropic gifts of restoration our veterans make huge leaps in their PTSD healing.
Countless veterans and members of the military have experienced significant and lasting healing after working with us. Thousands of chaplains and behavioral health professionals from the U.S. Army, Air Force, National Guard, and Special Operations forces have received healing and training from our Soldier's Heart programs.
Friends and Allies
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are blessed to live in an old, restored farmhouse on an acre at the edge of the Quabbin wilderness in central Massachusetts. We are further blessed to work from this home. With respect, humility and shared grief, we acknowledge that the Nipmuc people were the original stewards of this land. Quabbin is a Nipmuc name meaning Place of Many Waters. We treat this land as sacred and honor the Nipmuc people, their spirits, ancestors, culture and history.
