As a registered clinical counsellor and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, I center relationality to support folks with PTSD symptoms, developmental trauma and generational transmission. I integrate over two decades of somatic training, family systems, and anti-racism work across 13 years in non-profit and private practice settings.

My background as a visual artist and my deep connection to the natural and spiritual world led me to explore a more embodied way of living through body-mind practices, movement and dance. My early training in Body-Mind Psychotherapy was an immersion in practices that center the therapist’s embodiment. I received a MA in Counselling Psychology in 2012 and I certified in Somatic Experiencing® in 2016. My training includes Indigenous Cultural Safety; Somatic Abolitionism; Bodynamic Somatic Developmental Psychology; Therapsil’s psychedelic program; Vancouver Island University’s Psychedelic-assisted Therapies Graduate Certificate Program and ongoing mentorship with Ian Macnaughton. I offer harm reduction and integration due to increased public access to psychedelic medicines. My extensive training integrates living-systems theory which builds on similarities to integrate differences. Resonant pacing is uniquely attuned to each person to develop trust in the body for self-support and containment of high energy states during relational trauma work.

My personal work in therapy and my embodied presence remain my greatest resources for self-support and heart-centered care. I am grateful to my family, teachers, mentors, clients and all beings in the natural and spiritual world that have held and inspired me on this path. This sacred work is rooted in my formative connection to the natural world on the unceded ancestral territories where I reside.

When I'm not immersed in creative process, I'm on a shoreline or next to a river, breathing deeply, calling myself home to an unbroken wholeness in relationship to all life.

How I work

Moving at the pace of trust, we begin to identify resources that restore awareness and innate wisdom. The co-creation of relational safety is often tentative and radical in the face of loss, profound early wounding or systemic oppression. Cultural safety is therefore paramount when vulnerability is inherent to this process. When I am grounded in my core awareness, I am centered in my heart to trust intuitive wisdom as I support others in the same endeavor.

As relational trust develops, an internalized experience of safety emerges, which includes body sensations, cognitions, emotions and energy management. My holistic approach places equal emphasis on all these parts. My extensive training integrates living-systems theory which builds on similarities to integrate differences. I work at this interface between biology and culture to support folks to connect more deeply with themselves and their loved ones with renewed focus and direction to move forward. 

I have specialized training in somatic psychotherapy and the interconnected system of body, mind, emotion, energy and interpersonal relationships. I am particularly interested in how stress, including anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress, impacts healthy development, well-being and resilience to stress. I draw on current neuroscience on early development, evolutionary biology and human physiology with practical tools from traditional mindfulness and body-awareness practices to focus on experience in the present moment.

In the here-and-now, we learn to sense the complex interplay between culture, personal and heritable biology, early developmental experiences, and current life situations. This information is expressed implicitly or explicitly through cognitive and somatic information as language, breath, sensation, emotion or movement. As we become more conscious of unconscious material manifesting in the present, we hold this information with compassion for what it took to be here now. This tender process is regenerative and promote innate capacities for integration, healing and resolution.

Working together in a safe and trusting therapeutic environment, we compassionately discover a "developmental edge" between current strengths and challenges. Through emotional attunement and therapeutic practices that emphasize experience in the present moment, clients feel safely supported to reconnect with previously intolerable emotions, thoughts, and body sensations, to process them towards completion. Current research and my experience with clients shows that with increased awareness with body and mind, innate conditions to heal are available to help heal the past and more forward with our lives. As we learn to reconnect and trust a felt sense of wholeness and vitality, we increase resilience to stress, nurture more satisfying interpersonal relationships and inspire hope for the future.

Healing is not linear. We need to return to earlier wounds while being present now. Is this process, time is like a spiral, overlaying events with new capacities and insights to re-organize the past. This process includes:

· Active resonant pacing, uniquely attuned to each person, to co-create attachment security and empower safety as an internalized experience in relationship

· Somatic Experiencing (SE), Bodynamics and family systems offer structure and practices to establish resources in later developmental stages that support earlier deficits

· Tracking sensations and skills development in self-regulation of emotions include ‘presence skills’ for grounding, centering, boundaries and containment of high energy states

· When appropriate and with consent, therapeutic touch offers additional containment and boundary work to support somatic awareness, self-regulation and energy management

· These skills help identify new and current resources for control and resilience which are needed for active trauma processing

· I also offer harm reduction and integration more often due to increased public access to psychedelics

who have explored medicine independently by operationalizing SE principles of titration to integrate innate wisdom and expanded consciousness

It is a privilege and an honour to support folks in pursuing this expansive work to create more ease and connection while working through emotional pain and suffering. Touching what matters most is not for the faint of heart. I respect all folks for the courage it takes to trust me to join them on this path. The collaborative nature of this work deeply enriches my life because it offers faith and evidence in what heals and how we grow and change. Human beings need to feel seen, heard and understood to experience a felt sense of safety and belonging. Only then, can we move forward together.