Colleen A. Burns is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, LMHC, Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor LADCI, a Certified Integrative Health Coach and Certified Mind-Body Practitioner out of Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Ms. Burns has over 20 years of experience in counseling individuals and families. She is the founder of Restore Body Balance in Brookline, MA, where she guides clients as an Integrative Health Counselor, using tailored whole-health programs to meet the needs of each client. An expert in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Substance Use and Misuse and the Microbiome’s impact on both mental and physical health, Ms. Burns injects emerging research into her practice. Her vast expertise and pivotal methodology of combining traditional psychotherapy with adjunct therapies allows her clients to experience the full breadth of long-lasting changes in their lives.

Ms. Burns earned a Bachelor of Science from Bentley University in Waltham, MA whereby she worked with Human Resource Departments in employee health and wellness. She received a Master’s in Counseling Psychology from Boston College in Chestnut Hill, MA, specializing in co-occurring disorders. She has worked for public and private sector organizations, as well as nonprofit agencies and government-sponsored programs. Ms. Burns was a staff clinician at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. At Bay Cove Treatment Center in Boston, she gained additional graduate-level training in crisis counseling and the dually diagnosed. She went on to earn a secondary licensure as a supervisor in substance abuse and mental health disorders. Ms. Burns has lectured nationally at conferences and co-authored a treatment manual for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), a National Institute on Drug Abuse-(NIDA) funded study. 

Ms. Burns continues to enhance her areas of expertise working for various research projects and providing service training for corporations and college counseling centers. Most recently, she researched the study of nutrition therapy, mindfulness, and meditation. At the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical Teaching School, she received a certification to deliver their world-renowned program for Stress Management And Resiliency Training (SMART™). A Mind Body Program for health and resiliency. The SMART™ Program consists of self-care tools to manage your stress, reduce medical symptoms and enhance your quality of life.  It can help improve many medical conditions including stress, anxiety, asthma and allergies, chronic pain, headaches and migraines and substance use disorders. Here clients learn to recognize their personal response to stress and how to use meditative techniques to help elicit the “Relaxation Response.”  Discovering how to change thought patterns and emotional outlines along with techniques to improve maladaptive thinking, behaving, eating habits, along with improving subtle but ever-important aspects of sleep, nutrition and physical activity.

At the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) in New York City, Ms. Burns learned innovative treatment methods, practical lifestyle management techniques, and over a hundred dietary theories—Ayurveda, gluten-free, paleo, raw, vegan, macrobiotics and everything in between. As a Certified Integrative Health Coach, she came to understand the phrase, food equals mood. As a Certified Gut Health Coach from The Institute For Integrative Nutrition, she learned how to reduce inflammation, boost immunity, and optimize digestion. With nearly 80% of disease being traced back to the gut, it’s deeply connected to our mental, physical, and emotional health. Here she is able to teach her clients to learn to listen to their bodies and honor its cues to address signs of inflammation, intolerances, or other serious conditions. Improvements in gut health allowed her clients to achieve greater balance in all areas of life through diet and lifestyle modifications.

The Institute of Lifestyle Medicine, at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Ms. Burns channeled her passion for nutrition to become certified in Culinary Medicine. As most clients grapple with the challenge of being drivers of their own wellness regimen, a vital part of Restore Body Balance, is looking at how all aspects of their lives are interconnected. Which not only prevents disease, but is integral to the treatment, management (and reversal) of many non-communicable chronic diseases, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, stroke, high cholesterol, many cancers including breast and colon, depression, anxiety, and osteoarthritis.   Clients learn culinary knowledge, skills and strategies to facilitate cooking for improved personal health.

Additional certification in Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia, (CBT-I.) Developed by Dr. Gregg Jacobs’ twenty years of CBT-I research and clinical practice at Harvard Medical School. It’s the only CBT-I program world-wide that includes weekly individualized CBT-I guidelines and feedback from an internationally-recognized insomnia expert and funded by the National Institutes of Health, and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Her experience overseas in China, Indonesia, Nepal, Europe and other places abroad granted time in monasteries, temples and learning from true leaders of alternative therapies. From meditation to delicious recipes from the world’s longest-lived people. She not only taps into the psychology of behavior change but nourishes it with science behind nutrition counseling. Deconstructing states that keep us stuck then learn how to use one’s “Lifestyle as Medicine.™”

Using over twenty years of experience, education, and direct patient contact, Ms. Burns developed wellness modules for clients at Restore Body Balance to not only integrate into her programs but to take home and use for a lifetime. Now these courses are available online as Master Classes and specialized in all areas related to mental and physical well-being. These modules were a necessary complement to Ms. Burns’ psychotherapy practice, where clients wanted more than just talk therapy or medication. They wanted improvement in overall health. Ultimately, it all came together in writing the book, Prescription for Change: Using Your Lifestyle as Medicine™. Here she has trademarked a blueprint for optimal wellness using the unique concept of combining the psychology of the mind, the biology of the body and the habituated brain to enact life changes that stick. 

Ms. Burns is the founder of Restore Body Balance, LLC. in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), Massachusetts Mental Health Counselors Association (MAMHCA), National Association for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors (NAADAC), and the Brookline Chamber of Commerce. Listen to her podcast, Restore Body Balance, on Apple and Anchor by clicking on the menu above.