My approach is very much heart-centered; I build trust and relationship with the goal of you feeling safe and nurtured. I welcome in any and all emotions you are experiencing, guiding you to acknowledge, contain when overwhelming, process, and cope with whatever comes up in our session together.

 

I will work to attune to you and your unique needs in our therapeutic relationship. Working in a slow and gentle way holding the belief in your innate capacity to heal, weaving in mindfulness and somatic practices and tools. I trust in your path to more health and self-regulation and will walk alongside you guiding you to your own resilience, inner and outer resources.

 

I am a registered social worker and have worked in human services since 2003. I have worked as a public servant in community corrections, social community development, in education doing counselling, group work, and grief and trauma response, in health doing case management and discharge planning, and alongside the police doing mental health crisis interventions. Through all these experiences my goal has always been to hold space for and to walk alongside my clients in some of their darkest times with compassion and a gentle calm.

 

After practicing yoga and somatic practices with the guidance of my teachers since 2002, in 2016 I began the journey of becoming a Somatic Experiencing® practitioner. I have completed 216 hours of this modality and am done all of the other requirements of personal sessions and case consultations (read more about Somatic Experiencing®, trauma, and trauma renegotiation here).  As of May 2021 I am a

Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner.

 

I am also a certified yoga teacher with over 1000 hours of yoga teaching and methodology training. Where and when appropriate in sessions I utilize trauma-informed therapeutic yoga practices such as breath work, mindfulness, gentle movement, restorative resting poses, and/or trauma-informed yoga nidra (yogic sleep).

 

Having had my own experiences of counselling and therapy as a client over the years I know that in the least it helps you feel better when you leave than when you came; it gives you an opportunity to really be heard, seen and validated. The process helps you tap into your own resources, strengths, and resilience. It can make you feel more alive and connected with yourself, all which allows for more ease in your life, work, relationships, and in your body.

 

Counselling is one of the most important investments you can make in yourself.