About my Practice

Every session and every client is different.

Like nature, we are diverse and dynamic and ever growing and changing, requiring a unique formula and format, and delicately sensitive to all threads of the web of our ecology.

Coming together in a therapeutic session is a creative act in which we engage in a cooperative relationship of exploration, discovery and co-creation.

A therapist is like a very special friend, in which the agreements are extremely clear. 
A therapist is there for you, unconditionally, to care for the “whole” of you.

As a Therapist and a mentor, I am informed and trained under specific lineages and models. Yet, the framework I work with is dynamic, creative, and subject to the needs of the moment.

Healing the sickness of disconnection:

One of my teachers teaches that the greatest illness of our time is the illness of “disconnection.”  Let me explain.

Imagine living a life deeply connected to nature, to your community and family, all living in one place, deeply connected to the land and traditions and woven into the culture of that place, caretaking the land, your people, and subsequently being held in that container of place and culture, your personal life path fitting within that context of culture, nature, and ecology, as well as ancestry.

Notice, this is probably feeling pretty lofty and far out, and likely brings up some sadness or anger to consider.

This is because this is a natural birthright, in a sense, to be a functioning part of human and natural family, and to belong.

And yet, this is not the world we live in.

Whether this way of life has been altered for you in the past 100-600 or couple thousand of years, we have been “disconnected” from our natural ecology, and from that place of loss we suffer, and make actions that cause further suffering.

There is an old phrase, “Seek not to live the way the Ancestor’s lived, but rather seek what the Ancestor’s sought.”

Due to industrial civilization and colonial expansion, the world looks a lot different than it once did. And yet, the principles of life are the same as they have ever been. We eat, breathe, cry when we feel pain, rejoice when we feel love. Earth, water, plants, animals, sky, stone, sea. Oh, and of course, there’s people. Community and family. 

Though we function through industrial civilization’s means of production, we remain part of the Earth, a descendent of the one’s who came before us, and part of a living human community.

Therapy based in natural principle:

When we come together in a therapeutic relationship, we come in a way to honour life and a primary principle inherent in all of life, the principle of healing.

All things heal, unless obstructed.

Cuts close when clean, people expand around grief learning to hold more of the realness of life, challenges and trauma transform into gifts that help us to generate love and protection forward into the future.

Because wounding is a part of life, healing is a principle that restores and grows life.

“Doing without doing, nothing is left undone.”– Taoist teaching, translated by Zhi Cheng Shifu.

In a therapeutic session, we honour that life has all that it needs to live, if we are able to give life the space and healing to move. A lot of our doing involved in healing has to do with “Not doing,” and “Allowing” what is to be, so that we may move from where we are, and thus actually get where we are going, as opposed to being stuck while always trying to be where we are not.

Translating into a therapeutic container, I hold space honouring and acknowledging the inherent wisdom of our coming together, of your inherent capacity to solve your own problems, assuring there is space for the obstacles to be moved through and the way forward to become evermore clear.

Deep Nature Connection;
Facing the problems of our time and living a good life anyway:

People may worry about needing therapy.

What I often tell my clients is a little adage I’ve developed. “You’d have to be crazy not to be crazy in this crazy world.”

Frankly, we live in uncertain times and the way we’ve been doing things over the last decades (and maybe even centuries) doesn’t seem to be leading us into more health and happiness. And still, there are the normal challenges of life needing tending amidst the great turnings of the world and the futures we may not know how to plan for.

Where does this place us? Within an Ecology! An ecology of self, culture, and nature. Where we’ve always been for time immemorial.

Life is and has always been made of relationships.

When our relationships are healthy, we are healthy. When our relationships are connected, they function and feel nourishing.

Developing health in our relationships can be greatly informed and tended through having relationships with different aspects of the natural world.

This type of “deep” connection to nature requires mentoring.

Mentoring, in this way, is a disappearing component in our modern world of a healthy cultural framework that is so desperately needed. Supporting relationship development and maintenance through mentoring expands our sense of self, develops empathy, and promotes vitality and health and well being.

An ecology survives and adapts because of the interconnectivity of its parts. Disconnection is an indication that the system is degenerative. Connection is a natural byproduct of a functioning social and cultural system.

Living in 2 stories, and 2 intersecting worlds:

We live inside at least two stories: The big story of our world and what is happening collectively, globally, culturally, etc… And the little story, which is our own little life with all its challenges and triumphs.

As a therapist, I understand this dynamic of relationship between our big story and our little story, that they are both integral to a healthy and happy life. We need tending of both our big story and our little story. When these two stories are in healthy coherence, we find our natural and innate place in the web of life, which is the place of our innate giftedness. When we live from this place of coherence, our place of belonging, life is fulfilling and we have health.

An Acknowledgment:
I honour my teachers and their teachers, who are many,  over the years that have helped me immeasurably and continue to help me on my own journey and have made way for me to come into my own to be in a place to help and support others. Some of these people include Sal Gencarelle, Bobbe Branch, Zhi Cheng Shifu, Jon Young creator of the 512/ 8 Shields Map, the Wilderness Awareness School, Brad and Hillary Keeney, The Orca Institute, The Woptura Family Lineage and many other mentors and mentees along the way who have taught me and supported my growing sense of fulfillment through responsibility to passing it forward in Service To Life.

I also acknowledge in deep gratitude the local indigenous nations whose territories I live upon and within. I acknowledge the W̱SÁNEĆ and Quw’utsun peoples for their awe-inspiring generosity and resiliency, considering always the ongoing and complex story of colonization. I strive as a practitioner and educator, as well as a participant in this ongoing cultural story, to act with a commitment to appropriate relationship building, to awareness, and to righting the wrongs for the generations to come.