Profile Carrie Heller, circus arts therapist

Does your life feel like a circus? Visit Atlanta’s Carrie Heller. Her combination of traditional therapy and the circus arts will have you juggling life’s problems in no time.

How did you get started in your career?

As a child, I grew up doing circus stuff, so I have a background as a circus person. I actually did not have the intention of using it as a career. I got a masters degree planning to be a full-time therapist and then when I came to Atlanta I ended up teaching a class and it turned out to be very popular. I started seeing the therapeutic benefits of using the circus as a play therapy tool with kids and families so that’s when I began developing the concept that I could use circus in the therapy room.

You said you grew up around circus arts, tell me more about that.

When I was a child my parents sent me to a summer camp called camp Keystone and they had a circus rig set up at camp keystone and the circus rig was set up by the student of Florida state university flying high circus. Before I learned the circus my parents had sent me to dance class and acrobatics class so I had a little background already and then I saw the trapeze and pretty much fell in love with it and I spent all my time at that camp doing circus stuff, I learned everything.