Healing for Personal Growth, Empowerment, and Self-Discovery

There is a vast field of professionals who help facilitate personal healing and growth. This can include coaches, healers, therapists, counsellors, and other wellness practitioners.  Sessions can incorporate different types of therapies, techniques, and modalities depending on the education and training of the therapist.

While the path to achieving your goals can vary, for many, the process is just as important as the result.  Choosing who you work with is important.

My approach is varied, eclectic, and integrates psychotherapy, neuroscience, counselling, energy work, and coaching.  The foundation, while based on talk therapy, includes evidence-based therapies and experiential exercises and other modalities to support healing and transformation on a deeper level.

Here is some information about what I offer in my practice.

Psychotherapy

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"Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional."

Psychotherapy - also known as talk therapy - helps you to understand yourself better. It offers a safe, nonjudgmental space where you can explore, identify, and examine barriers standing between you and your personal fulfillment, develop skills for healthy relationships to improve the quality of your life, to become a happier and more balanced person.  

People seek the support of a therapist for many reasons, either to deal with life-long issues or new challenging ones.  Remember though, your therapist cannot do the work for you. In order for therapy to be successful and for change to occur you must be a willing participant and apply your learning into everyday life.

Body/Somatic Therapy

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"The body is the unconscious. The motor actions are the conscious.
When you go into the sensations, a person goes into the unconscious material of the body." ~ Peter Levine

Experience begins in our bodies.  Western or allopathic medicine separates the physical from the emotional and spiritual aspects of human experience. Once you understand that we do not have a single feeling, thought, or behaviour that is not mediated by the physical body you can no longer make this separation.  Somatic psychotherapy combines the psyche (mind) and the body (soma).  Life is foremost a somatic experience. 

Frequently, talking and insight alone do not produce the changes we are looking for. Most talk-therapy is left-brain centered, and depends on an accessible or conscious narrative (the client's story) for progress. However, sometimes a narrative is not available as the story may be partly or entirely unconscious.  Or, even though we may understand a behaviour or symptom intellectually, we may still feel stuck. Inquiring with and engaging the body incorporates the right brain in the process and can be extremely helpful in creating movement, a shift, to allow for deep, lasting healing.  

​As a somatic practitioner, I encourage clients to access feelings & sensations in the body. In trauma (of any type big or small, from childhood or adulthood) our nervous system can become dysregulated and as a result, the body continues to respond as if it is still under threat. Unresolved trauma can lead to larger mental and physical health concerns, such as post-traumatic stress (PTSD), sleep problems, mood swings, immune system problems, and other chronic health issues.

We can use several techniques of somatic psychotherapy such as somatic experiencing, focusing, art, guided imagery, dream analysis, journalling, body psychotherapy and EFT/Tapping (Emotional Freedom/Field Technique). 

EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique / Tapping

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"The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption
in the body's energy system." ~ Gary Craig

What is EFT/PTT and how can it benefit you?

EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique/Tapping is a simple & painless tapping on the acupressure/acupuncture points of the meridian system and is combined with modern psychology. It also draws on NLP - neuro linguistic programming, energy psychology/medicine, and Thought Field Therapy (TFT).  It uses the subconscious mind which is the control center of all behaviour.

EFT helps to rewire the brain, calm the amygdala's fight or flight response, reduce stress, find and change your sub-unconscious/negative limiting beliefs, reduce anxiety and PTSD, reduce/eliminate cravings, fears & phobias (e.g. flying, spiders), change eating behaviours, change financial beliefs and increase prosperity, improve the quality of your life, etc. 

As a science-based technique and due to its effectiveness, EFT is the primary technique used in the United States Veteran PTSD program.

PTT - Picture Tapping Therapy incorporates drawing/art with tapping.  It is extremely efficient because it brings resolutions fast and without even having to talk about the issue being worked on. Many people like the fact that they don’t have to talk about the problem. The reason you don’t have to talk about the problem is that instead of telling what the problem seems to be, the client simply draws on a piece of paper with crayons or coloured markers how this particular problem makes you feel at this very moment.  As with all healing, we work with the emotions.

Experiential Therapy

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Only from the heart
Can you touch the sky
​~ Rumi

We can tell a good story about what happened to us and who we think we are. And easily, we can get caught into believing that we are our thoughts and our stories.  

While it's important to talk about and share our issues and frustrations, with a safe person, there are many benefits to incorporating experiential therapy in sessions.  It allows what is unconscious to become conscious, what is covert to become overt, thereby bringing us new awareness, clarity, and other insights which leads to healing and inner shifts.

Experiential therapy is facilitated through exercises such as left-hand right-hand dialogue, drawing, art, mandalas, writing, mirror play, focusing, empty chair/2 chair dialogue, role playing and other methods.

Energy Therapy

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Chakra Balancing, Energy Transfer, Reiki, Sound, EFT/Tapping
​The universe is not responding to your language
It is responding to your vibration
And your vibration is about the way you feel
~ Abraham-Hicks


Energy therapies are based on the principle that we are energy beings. Imbalances can show up in various ways causing physical, mental and emotional issues.

The benefits of being balanced include:
  • Better health, well-being, feeling energized & revitalized
  • Increased awareness of your higher self & Mindfulness
  • Mental and emotional clarity
  • Reduced anxiety & stress relief
  • Release of negative energy affecting the body
  • Release of physical or emotional trauma
  • Heightened sense of creativity
  • Overall balance (which may improve anything in your life from your health, relationships, career, lifestyle, etc.)

Meditation & Mindfulness

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Meditate anywhere anytime ..
Meditation is not about thinking about nothing as we cannot block thought and emotion ..
Make friends with monkey mind and give it a job ..
Be aware of your breath ... simple.
~ Buddhist Master

​Meditation and Mindfulness can be a source of frustration for many as they battle with their Monkey Mind - the ongoing chatter and distractions of thoughts.

Mindfulness recognizes that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one that hears it.

In the space of paying attention to your emotions and bringing yourself to the present moment, we can learn to sidestep the mental habits that lead to despair, including rumination and self-blame, so you can face life's challenges with greater resilience.

"One of the best ways to clear yourself regularly throughout the day is to just take a minute or two to close your eyes and be in silence. You don’t have to meditate or focus on something if you don’t want to. These moments are more about coming back into contact with yourself." ~ Lee Harris

Coaching

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"Coaching is about creating an action plan that moves you forward, from where you are to where you want to be."
~ James Mitchell

Coaching can help to establish clear, specific, measurable goals. Once these goals are established, we can identify what new skills and competencies might be required. Then, we create and implement a plan that involves taking specific actions towards achieving those goals.

Coaching can be incorporated for clients with any goals and can provide accountability to keeping on target. It can also be useful in specific areas where goals involve weight issues, sports performance, developing specific skills, as well as help with those elusive New Year's resolutions.

Personal Development

Aware Within Therapy | Personal Development

Personal Reflection & Exploration, Development & Growth
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​"Personal development is a lifelong process. It's a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize their potential.  It covers activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations."

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