Sara Taffel, LMSW

Sara is a relational, psychodynamically oriented therapist who integrates mindfulness techniques into her work. She helps clients find relief from current challenges while listening for underlying patterns shaped by past experience, supporting deeper self-understanding and change.

Before becoming a therapist, Sara was a professional athlete and world champion fencer. She works with athletes and individuals in high-performance environments and understands sport and high-pressure spaces as sites where deeper fears, anxieties, and desires are intensified and played out.

Sara pays close attention to how social, cultural, and historical contexts shape who we are. As a biracial, second-generation Asian American, she brings a personal understanding of the tensions and complexities of immigration, diaspora, and assimilation. She is particularly passionate about working with couples navigating differences in background, culture, and identity, and sees therapy as a space to move from disconnection toward a fuller understanding of one another.

Sara understands how difficult it can be to open up and share vulnerably. She creates a warm, collaborative space where a trusting therapeutic relationship can develop through compassion, authenticity, and non-pathologizing curiosity.

Sara holds a Master of Social Work from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and a Bachelor of Arts in Gender Studies and Psychology from Barnard College, Columbia University. She sees clients virtually and in person at the 8th Avenue and Keap Street offices.