about
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I value openness, autonomy, curiosity, and expression.
I provide: * Individual Counselling: Adults * Group Therapy: Topic-focussed * Relationship, Couple & Marriage Counselling: Couples, friendships, polyamorous relationships, families, teams * Family Counselling: All family scenarios For: Anxiety, depression, anger, family dysfunction, relationships, transitions, work place stress, internal pain and suffering, sexual matters, etc. Psychotherapy: My personal approach to psychotherapy draws on a delicate balance of formal knowledge and informal knowledge from a diversified education-set, rich personal experience, and well-honed intuitive capacity. I apply a creative and integrative approach that combines experiential (present focus), family-systems, and attachment lenses. I believe that each therapy participant and each set of circumstances require a tailored approach. You are placed at the centre of a safe and collaborative space. Art therapy: Throughout my life, beginning consciously in my adolescence, I have found ways to make sense of the world and its circumstances via the conduit of creative expression. This way of being extends to the way I work with others in a therapeutic context with a recurring order of: 1) noticing the act of creation unfold, 2) pausing, 3) reflecting, and lastly, 4) dialoguing about meaning and noticing the threads that appear. My strength is in helping others to see the threads. For me, this way of working allows revelations to surface and permits aspects of the self to be unearthed in surprising ways. Breathwork: I became a student of breathwork when I attended workshops held by Krista Reid (Ottawa) and Melanie Ollivier (Thunder Bay), two distinct breathwork healers. After these introductions I was hooked! I recently completed levels 1-4 with David Elliot, a known breathwork healer, to deepen my experience in this realm and to have the groundwork needed to offer this to my clients. I am committed to being a lifelong student of breathwork. Psychotherapy is a gateway to the internal world where people hold their circumstances in terms of memories, patterns, narratives, and core beliefs that serve to benefit or to bring harm to the psyche. It is a place to truly connect in an authentic way - for some, perhaps for the first time. It is a place where safe relationships are formed as a model for how to be with others and eventually, not tolerate any less. After the important work of intellectualizing and expressing our human experience, understanding relationships and making sense of it all, what is left? A funny question keeps popping up in my world, “Okay, I told my story, and I’ve figured out my harmful patterns. So, why do I still feel like shit!?” When I discovered breathwork, I found it to be a gateway into the body and into the soul. It is next level healing. It is the thing we can actively DO as an act of self-love in between thinking to feel better in general. It attends to the body and for some, it is a spiritual practice that is accessible to people who have struggled with more passive spiritual practices, like meditation, for example. This particular way of breathing first activates the ego before it can surrender and bypass the cognitive processing so that pain and memories can be released from the body. By engaging in this practice, the benefits show up as a greater feeling of wellness, abundance, creative energy, and clear headedness. For some, addictions fall by the wayside because the anxiety that was feeding the addiction lifts. Who doesn’t need more oxygen! Ask me about breathwork if you would like to supplement your healing in this way. |
Michelle April
Psychotherapist Art Therapist Independent Practitioner and Associate of Capital Choice Counselling Group (CCCG)
visit http://capitalchoicecounselling.com for more information about CCCG Under the direct supervision of Martin Rovers, PhD, Psychologist, Marriage and Family Therapist Education:
Memberships: *College of Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) *Canadian Art Therapy Association (CATA) *Académie des naturopaths et naturothérapeutes |
