Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrea Shipley.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My path has been anything but straight, and I’ve come to appreciate that about it.
I started out thinking I’d be an artist. I went to graphic design school, then changed majors when I realized I didn’t want to spend my career selling things in a corporate setting. From there I found my way into wellness as a massage therapist. Eventually, my curiosity about the deeper layers of human experience led me to become a licensed professional counselor.
That curiosity took a more specific shape when I discovered transpersonal psychology, which is the study of consciousness, spirituality, and human experience beyond the everyday personality. My therapeutic work now centers on helping people explore and integrate spiritual and existential experiences that don’t fit neatly into mainstream conversations. Things like integrating profound awakenings, processing traumatic experiences, or adjusting to moments when life suddenly stops making sense even though it looks fine from the outside.
Along the way, I spent time in wilderness therapy settings, which deepened my understanding of addiction recovery and what it means to heal in relationship with nature. That love of nature eventually shaped the way I work. I renovated a school bus into a traveling home office with help from my retired father (a wild, meaningful project), and built a telehealth practice that lets me serve clients well from wherever I am.
I also do lifestyle design coaching under my online wellness center, Alive Explorations, helping other helpers, healers, and purpose-driven professionals clarify and pursue the life changes they’ve been putting off. It’s where psychology meets creativity and real-world strategy.
I have two great dogs (the 13-year-old one just finished cancer treatment and is doing well), love time on public lands and with people I care about, and try to live in alignment with my values as much as I can.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not even a little.
I grew up with DIY parents, which gave me real grit and resourcefulness. The flip side is that I learned to do everything myself and struggled to ask for or receive help at times. Building a business, especially as an introvert with an aversion to selling things, has been a personal stretch that I’ve reluctantly embraced. Obviously, I have to sell what I offer and create, or there’s no business.
I started dealing with depression and anxiety as a teenager. That experience is a big part of what pointed me toward mental health work. The struggle came with a silver lining: genuine empathy and a real understanding of what it feels like to face hard things from the inside.
The DIY streak has led me down some interesting roads. I sold my own house in Richmond, VA without a realtor. I renovated a school bus into a traveling home office alongside my dad, which was one of the best experiences of my life and also one of the more challenging ones. Living nomadically means something is always broken, always needs troubleshooting, and patience isn’t optional.
Running a telehealth practice and a coaching business mostly solo, in a stretched economy, is its own kind of hard. There have been seasons where growth felt invisible. But I keep coming back to a student mindset: what can I learn from this? That question has gotten me through more than I expected.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Alive Explorations LLC is my online wellness center, and it holds two distinct paths.
Soul Explorations, LLC is my licensed counseling practice, serving people in Virginia and Florida through telehealth. I specialize in spiritual integration therapy. That means I work with purpose-driven professionals (often therapists, nurses, non-profit professionals, and other helpers) who’ve had a profound spiritual or existential shift and are trying to figure out who they are now and what comes next. Or perhaps they’re processing traumatic events or managing anxiety. They’re still functioning. Something just feels off at a core level.
I use approaches like EMDR, mindfulness-based therapy, somatic work, and Internal Family Systems, along with a transpersonal lens that treats the whole person, including the parts of experience that mainstream therapy doesn’t always have language for.
What sets this work apart is the combination of clinical depth, lived experience, and comfort with the harder-to-talk-about aspects of life. I’m a licensed professional counselor with an eclectic practice. And I’m also someone who has navigated my own meaningful, complicated journey. Both things matter in this work.
On the coaching side, my signature program is Lifestyle Design Mastery, a structured process for service-based professionals who feel restless and unfulfilled despite real accomplishments. They know they need to make sustainable changes but aren’t sure where to start. It helps people stop postponing the life they actually want and start building it with intention and a clear roadmap.
I also provide mini-courses and 1:1 coaching.
I built all of this while also learning to live and work nomadically. That’s still something I’m proud of: creating a practice and a business that can travel with me, without sacrificing the quality of care I offer clients.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a pretty introverted kid who spent most of my time at home in the woods or in my imagination.
I was more likely to have several close friends from totally different social circles than to belong to a group. The exception was high school theater. Getting involved in one-act play competitions gave me the most team spirit I’ve ever felt, and I’ll never forget the experience of working, winning, losing, and celebrating together.
The visual arts were where I felt most visible. I was recognized for my artwork in ways I didn’t always feel seen elsewhere. I was kind of the angsty, artsy kid. Shy and self-conscious, though I’ve since learned people often experienced me as outspoken. That gap between how I felt on the inside and how I came across has been interesting to sit with over the years.
At 13, I learned about factory farming and immediately went vegan. I stayed that way for the next 11 years. That’s probably a fair window into who I was: idealistic, values-driven, and willing to make real sacrifices to live in alignment with what I believed.
I’ve always loved animals and nature but found humans genuinely baffling. I think that’s part of what eventually drew me to psychology. I wanted to understand myself and others a little better. Still working on it.
Pricing:
- Private pay: $250 per session for Counseling (Virginia and Florida, telehealth only). Limited insurance accepted
- Lifestyle Design Mastery: $1,500 (course only) or $5,000 (all-inclusive with 1:1 support)
- 1:1 coaching sessions: $300/session
- Mini-courses: $72–$97
- Monthly mastermind group: $495/month
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.aliveexplorations.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aliveexplorations
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aliveexplorations
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-shipley-lpc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aliveexplorations
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/alive-explorations-ashland-2
Image Credits
Anne Renee LaPlante
Candace Morgan Small
Andrea Shipley
