bio & credentials
In 1995, Ms. Walker began her career as a professional mental health counselor working with all ages. Her specialties are trauma recovery and developing each individual’s strengths. 
Aura Walker has a master’s degree in transpersonal counseling, psychology and art therapy, from the alternative Naropa University formerly the Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado. She has an undergraduate in liberal arts and fine arts with a concentration in painting from Parsons School of Art and Design and the New School for Social Research both in NYC. Aura believes that creativity in daily life is important to one’s sense of fulfillment.
Aura Walker was born in a French region of India to diverse parents of mixed heritage. Her parents were global thinkers and world travelers who instilled in her a sense of internationalism. Her family traveled throughout Asia before she moved to the U.S., to Washington D.C. at the age of eight. When she was ten they moved to lower Manhattan where she grew up and assimilated into the diverse downtown New York art culture.
In New York, Aura was exposed to some of the greatest museums in the world and there she attended the United Nations high school and later received an undergraduate in fine arts and liberal arts from Parsons School of Art and Design and the New School for Social Research. Her experiences there were exciting and gave her an even greater understanding of cultural diversity and of the arts. She became fascinated with the connections between spirituality, mysticism and pure artistic expression.
After college, Ms. Walker traveled the country researching American Indian tribes and their traditional spiritual practices. Thereafter, she lived in the Southwest for five years including Santa Fe, New Mexico and then Colorado, before moving to Minneapolis. She bonded with the Native American Indian communities in all three states, discovering that in the US, American Indian men have the highest rate of alcoholism of any other population. Miss Walker researched the direct link to over 500 years of social oppression and disenfranchisement. She found that art-making was a useful nonthreatening tool, and a cultural bridge to open the door for American Indian men (and later women) to express their deeply wounded selves, and to gain some relief.
Attending graduate school in both New Mexico and Colorado, she wrote her graduate thesis on self-esteem and focused her topic on Art-making as a Tool for Raising the Self-esteem of American Indian Men in Substance Abuse Recovery. She received her master's degree in transpersonal counseling and psychology and art therapy at the Buddhist-based Naropa University formerly the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Ms. Walker developed her own consulting business in Minneapolis running group workshops for non-profits and corporations for several years in the Twin Cities. She co-founded Expressive Arts Services, Ltd. or EASL, with Melina Weir, former president of the Minnesota Art Therapy Association, and fellow alumnus from the Naropa Institute where they met in graduate school. Together they pioneered art-making workshops with therapy-based goals throughout Twin Cities agencies. Their workshops were held at schools, retirement homes, battered women shelters local government agencies, and other nonprofit organizations, as well as for profit corporations.
Shortly after, Aura moved to Los Angeles. In 2006 she became licensed as a clinical Hypnotherapist from the renowned Hypnosis Motivational Institute in Tarzana California. Ms. Walker now lives in Los Angeles and is currently developing her private practice as a hypnotherapist. She has consulted for the Psychological Trauma Center at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. She has worked with people of all ages including parents, teachers (grades 1-12), children, teens, adults in substance abuse recovery, adults and children with persistent emotional and mental illness, and the elderly. Aura welcomes the opportunity to use all of her varied and developed skills towards helping others gain greater clarity, self-awareness, joy, success and creativity in their lives.
• MA in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology and Art Therapy, 1998
• Certified Mental Health Counselor, Current since 2006
• Hypnotherapist's Union Local 472, Member since 2005
• American Hypnosis Association Member - AHA, Member since 2006
• Hypnosis Motivation Institute
For a confidential, Clinical Hypnotherapy appointment with Aura Walker, please call (310) 382-6313.