My Education.
Professional Credentials
I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor and hold a Masters of Arts degree in Counselling Psychology from the University of Victoria, a post-baccalaureate diploma from the University of British Columbia in Guidance Studies and a Bachelor of Arts from Simon Fraser University. Currently, I am a part-time PhD student at the University of Victoria in Leadership Studies. I was the recipient of the Don Knowles Memorial Scholarship at the University of Victoria in 2003. My Masters research was a qualitative inquiry that focused on women's identity entitled, Becoming, Being and Belonging to the Womanhood - A Qualitative Inquiry with Voluntary Childfree Women. In my PhD research I will be looking at how our connection to the land inspires or invites the sacred within to move people into sustainable living and social action.
I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and have continued with post-advanced study as well as assisting trainings in Victoria, Vancouver, San Diego and Estes Park, Colorado. This three-year training certification programme developed by Dr. Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger) is a specialized approach to the resolution of trauma which addresses the physiological responses of the nervous system to traumatic events. In trusting our body's innate capacity to heal and following the body's own story, together we can renegotiate and integrate traumatic responses that are held in the nervous system and impact everyday living. For more information on Somatic Experiencing, go to my links page.
I have also been training in Somatic Transformation, a two year programme developed by Dr. Sharon Stanley, and will begin teaching this programme in the fall of 2008. Somatic Transformation is a highly creative therapeutic approach to elicit the wisdom of the body and facilitate transformational change which combines research in the fields of attachment, empathy, brain development, autonomic regulation of the nervous system, trauma studies and ancient practices of healing. This approach builds on the use of the principles of positive psychology and insights gleaned from neurobiology to attend to the subtle, right brain injuries of insecure and disorganized attachment. For more information on Somatic Transformation, go to my links page.