Category: Practice Areas

Retreat!

 

There was something so lovely for me about the bioenergetic retreat at Belcourt Center on Prince Edward Island  this year.  I know it was the last of 24 years worth of retreats.  I know that it was my tenth year to participate.   I expected to feel sad and somewhat bereft about that.  However, I didn’t.  What I noticed was my ability to enjoy the moment had increased.   Instead of looking about me and thinking things like “this is the last time I’ll do this…” I was able to look about me and enjoy the experience.   It wasn’t even particularly heightened by knowing it was the last time.  It was just a lovely opportunity to be present and to stay open to whatever would be coming into my awareness.

 

Retreat:    the word itself suggests going away from something, moving back.  In some ways, I guess, we retreat from the stressors and pressures of our everyday lives to spend time with ourselves, with our inner spirits, with our bodies and our experiences.   I wonder if it is really necessary to go away to do that?

How can I make a retreat for myself without having to head off to Prince Edward Island, or wherever is different from HERE?  Perhaps rather than thinking about what I want to retreat FROM, I could think about what it is I would like to retreat TO…in other words, what am I turning towards in my life?

Retreat can also be a turning toward something….where is this stream going? Where am I going?

 

  • Toward…greater self awareness
  • Toward…equanimity and inner peacefulness
  • Toward…..an ability to be with all of my feelings, no matter how uncomfortable, or how much I would prefer not to experience them, or what my thoughts about them might be
  • Toward….health, relaxation,  and wholeness

Creating space to listen to my inner voice, remembering and committing to my mindfulness practice, eating nourishing food in a nourishing way, embracing relationships with a commitment to be present to whatever comes up….those are ways I can retreat toward my identified goals.    I can try to “retreat” on a daily basis when I sit in the morning, when I take a “mindfulness moment” to be fully present, when I move my body to check in on my inner experience.

It seems possible to make a space for all of that in my everyday life.   What about you?  What would you turn toward in a retreat?   How could you make that happen in your life?  Drop me a note about how you can “retreat” to being more in the world this week.

 

Thanks to Lee Ann McPherson for the stream photo;  to Government of PEI for the lupins, and to an unknown but appreciated photographer for the lovely pile of rounded stones;  inukshuk of sorts.

 

Counseling or psychotherapy?

What’s the difference between counseling and therapy?  Often these two terms are used interchangeably.  However, I like to make a distinction between them.  Counseling is mostly about solving problems in the here-and-now, talking about concerns and getting another perspective on them.   If your issues are really situational and of brief duration, counseling might be best for you.  Psychotherapy, in contrast, helps you to look at your patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.  It helps you to identify and then to develop ways to change the defenses that you may have had in place for a very long time.  If you have been chronically anxious, unhappy, or in trouble, or if you have a history of depression or anxiety, or you have a history of stress, trauma, or loss, then psychotherapy may be appropriate for you.

What I do in my practice…..

Beside the fact that I am trained as a bioenergetic therapist, I am also a licensed psychologist.  There are some problems in everyday life that I would especially like to help you with.

I am particularly interested in working with concerns around reproduction, especially from a woman’s point of view.    That would include fertility concerns, pregnancy loss, postpartum stress, adoption, and infertility treatment, just to start.

I also work with people who have traumatic histories.  Many reproductive issues are, in fact, traumatic, but other traumatic events can generate problems for people.

A third area of my practice is working with children ages six and under with a parent, who have experienced trauma or attachment disruption.  This model is called Child-Parent Psychotherapy, and is largely a home-based model of support, education, and intervention to support attachment between the parent and child and help both to resolve trauma.

Sometimes people just want to get more out of life.   Maybe this is you.  Everything in your life looks like it is fine but deep inside, you feel like you are missing something, or that the way things look is NOT the way that things are for you.  Therapy, especially body-mind therapy, can help with that.

Is there something I can help you with?  Some issue you want to talk about, or some concern that keeps coming up in your life?

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