FAQs

1. What’s the difference between the work you do and a “typical” therapist (ie talk therapy?)

2. How is mindfulness integrated into therapy? Will we practice mindfulness or meditate every session?

3. What will our first session be like? What if I’ve never meditated before? What if I’ve been practicing for a long time or I work in the mindfulness sector?

4. Is there any “homework” in between sessions?

5. What’s your definition of mindfulness? Will it help me relax?

6. Do I already have to know how to meditate or have a mindfulness practice?

7. How would you name the interface of mindfulness and therapy?

8. Do you take insurance?

9. What are your fees?

10. Do you work with a sliding scale?

11. What is your cancellation policy?

My approach harnesses the skill-sets developed by a mindfulness practice such as the ability to stop, calm, and rest, or the development of attention, concentration, and insight, as well as the cultivation of joy, equanimity, kindness and compassion (to name a few) and puts them to use in the therapeutic space.

I am equally concerned with a practitioner’s development of the aforementioned skill-sets and with creating a space where the sharing of deeply held beliefs, habits of mind, transgenerational inheritance and complex physical, mental and emotional material can surface. This is because I know that the former can generate the right conditions to deal with the latter in a more encompassing and nourishing way.

There are two main “houses” that I’ll work with to support the space: Eastern and Western understandings and approaches to human psychology. Having been a practitioner of both for the past 15 years I have discovered significant points of correspondence and differentiation that have been helpful in my own process of self-knowing. We’ll go back and forth between these main houses based on what's needed.

Mindfulness is a tool I use implicitly throughout our sessions, as well as a multifaceted skill set for your own exploration beyond our time together. In time and with practice, mindfulness can help you create a container to learn to get intimate with your experience and an oar to propel you in new directions.  

Every client – and every session – is different. We sit together and notice what arises in the space, we move from listening to open-conversation and silence depending on what is needed. We co-create a space where -in time- the areas of self that need to be explored become apparent and then we nudge them with patience and care.

Our first session will be dedicated to exploring the underpinnings of your need for a space such as this one. You will be received in a warm and comfy environment where we will explore what brings you to this work. We will use your current experience as a reliable point of departure, every time.

We all need a space to retreat and gain perspective on the work we are doing, as well as the support of practitioners in the field. Hence if you work in the mindfulness sector or any other helping profession this might also be the right space for you.

To some extent and depending on the client.

Explorations in your day-to-day interactions with self, and others, as well as the eco and ethno-systems that you are a part of can be suggested as experiments to try out. However, it is ultimately up to you to decide to bring them to life. You will be invited to commit to the process again and again, intentionally and non-judgmentally.

Developing a personal meditation practice outside of this setting is encouraged.

The Sanskrit word for mindfulness, smriti, means ‘to remember’. You may wonder at this point, what is it that we need to remember? We need to remember to come back to the elusive present moment of our ever-unfolding experience. Now and now is the whole practice!

Thich Nhat Hanh explains that stopping, calming and resting are pre-conditions to healing, yet in our busy lives, we tend to find little to no time to practice this.

At first, mindfulness can be thought of as a constellation of practices to help us halt, slow down, rest and come closer to our experience, thus cultivating the conditions necessary for insight and then healing to happen of their own accord. In time and with practice mindfulness can become a tool and a skill through which to investigate the many fleeting aspects of who we are, as well as the sociocultural and political constructs that shape us in a present-centred, intentional and non-judgemental manner.

While the goal of mindfulness is not necessarily to help you relax but to support you in the process of entering your experience fully, slowing down and arriving at calm states of mind can be one of the by-products of a steady mindfulness practice.

No, in fact, if you have a mindfulness practice I suggest that you hang it at the door, and just come as you are. The practice of months and years accumulates and let go of the practice of months and years.

Sometimes when patterns of behaviour repeat themselves enough times, a person’s curiosity is perked and they will seek to depen their understanding.

From a mindfulness perspective, the exploration of the pattern, as would occur in most therapies, is only a start. At root, the practitioner must find a way to acknowledge, name and accept the inherent sense of lack, inadequacy, stuckness, frustration or incompleteness they are presently experiencing as part and parcel of the full human experience.

While maintaining openness and curiosity amid -not immediately understandable- emotional material or experiences is both a meditative and a psychoanalytical process; Mindfulness goes a step further by cultivating the practitioner’s capacity to not only explore what they are experiencing but also to understand how they are relating to the experience itself.

This awareness tends to liberate much energy that gets exhausted in accepting, rejecting or numbing any given experience and helps the practitioner recover the capacity for feeling that may have been lost in the process.

One of the gifts of this renewed capacity, brought about by the interweaving of these approaches is the ability to know one’s own emotional, physical and intellectual habits without having to act on them or be acted upon by them. Thus liberating the practitioner to respond to life in new ways.

I am not covered by insurance as I am not practicing under the umbrella of an institution such as CPO or CRPO. Having said this, I do work with a sliding scale. You can find more about the use of the sliding scale as a tool for economic justice in the FAQs below.

I charge $135.00 + HST per session.

Because of current conditions, ongoing economic inequity and work precarity, I’m meeting with those interested in doing this work at reduced rates. Please read the ‘sliding scale as a tool for economic justice’ section below and contact me to ask any questions.

Psychoanalysts deserve to get paid and analysands deserve spaces that recognize the multiple realities of economic access and privilege that exist.

Offering a sliding scale is a tool for economic justice and comes from a desire to create multiple access points that reflect the manifold economic realities of those wanting to work with me.

To learn more about the difference between sacrifice and hardship, deepen your understanding of class and access, and determine your eligibility for a sliding scale please click HERE.

Cancelling with at least 24 hours notice involves no charge when an alternative time within the week can be found. Cancelling with less than 24 hours notice involves full payment.

Payment is expected at the time of service and is accepted in the form of cash, check, or e-transfer.