contemplative counsel
Psychotherapy must remain an obstinate attempt of two people to arrive at a recovery of the wholeness of being human through the relationship between them.
– R.D.Laing
Although trained in Counselling, Psychodynamic and Gestalt Therapy, and Perinatal Psychology, the core of my work comes from nearly three decades of personal practice and apprenticeship (now supervision) with psychotherapist Andrew Feldmár, who studied with the radical Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing. My academic research, inspired by Laing and the Italian innovative psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, came full circle when I met Feldmár in 1996 after moving to Canada.
Through this apprenticeship, I came to realize that formal training often overlooks the horizontality of the relational field. There are no true experts on the human mind/heart, just as there is no blueprint for what is considered “normal.” My real training, therefore, emerged through lived experience and through gradually leaving academic techniques behind.
In practice, I support clients in reconnecting with the sacredness of everyday life through authentic, living relationships—recovering the wholeness of being human with all its joys and sorrows. I do not “help” in the conventional sense, nor focus on “healing,” as both imply something is lacking or broken. This work is fundamentally, as Laing quote says, a recovery of human relations. What is essential unfolds spontaneously, and each session is a moment-to-moment dance for both client and counsellor. For this reason, I call my practice contemplative counsel.
I approach this space with the conviction that wisdom does not need to be fabricated, but emerges, as it is already there in the deepest fabric of our being. Through attentive presence and authentic engagement, what is already there reveals itself. At the heart of this unfolding lies our fundamental longing for love.
More details of my work are described in the text below.
Price: $155 /hr (tax included)*
First session is always 90 min long.
Note that payment in e-transfer, is due before the session.
I practice inclusion. If, after the initial session, money is the only obstacle to continuing counselling, please inquire in person, and the fees can be re-negotiated. Bellow, read my attending and cancellation policy.
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
~ R.D.Laing
My work is rooted in interpersonal social phenomenology and somatic awareness. I am less interested in identifying where someone “needs help” and more curious about what a person is living through—and in what kind of world they are being asked to survive.
Distress is not an inner defect. It is a sane response to an insane situation.
For this reason, I am cautious with the language of “trauma” when it comes to the mind and heart. The term, used by S. Freud, literally means a “puncture” or a “wound.” What many people live through when the ground of trust collapses—when the world is no longer experienced as safe or innocent—is closer to the magnitude of a disaster. Wounds may heal, but disasters change landscapes. What has been lost cannot be restored- only processed and integrated- so that clarity, dignity, and agency may gradually emerge. And even then, the path of grieving what happened to us is not linear. What is needed, then, is not so much healing as courage.
Recovery can only take place within the context of relationships. It cannot occur in isolation."
~ J.L. Herman
Artist: Alex Gray; Subtle Body
Yin-Yang, neither one nor separate.
Psycho-somatic and spiritual Emancipation
One might ask: if we are not inherently broken, and not in need of healing in the conventional sense, then what is the purpose of contemplative counsel?
A familiar question asks, “Is there life after death?” Feldmár offers a cheeky inversion: “Is there life before death?” I take this question daily as a koan- not as a mental exercise, but as an embodied, lived inquiry.
One could argue that much of human suffering arises from a deep fear of our own mind- or, as R. D. Laing put it, a fear of the psyche coming alive.
This inquiry brings us to a fork in the road: two ways of orienting to life. One is shaped by the false self, organized around survival. The other arises from the true, authentic self, oriented toward thriving. Both paths involve uncertainty. In the first, I am caught in ambiguity, trying to stay alive while being tossed by life’s unpredictability. In the second, uncertainty remains, but I meet it with willingness to be with the wave, even when it carries me under.
From this perspective, transformation is about befriending the psyche—mind, soulfulness, and the spirit that lives us. It is no coincidence that spirit, etymologically, means breath (in-spira). What emerges is a felt sense of aliveness, not a mental project.
Across traditions, this metanoia is symbolized as sacred union: Jung’s Hieros Gamos, Taoism’s Yin–Yang, or realization of Yam-Yum in Ati Yoga. Each points to inner coherence of non dual.
From a radical phenomenological perspective, this work can be understood as emancipation: a freeing from internalized imprints of oppression, and inherited narratives.
Such change does not occur in isolation, nor through self-improvement alone. As Judith L. Herman reminds us, it emerges relationally—through connection rooted in commitment to nonviolence and actions of love.
Inspirations:
Poem by Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.
The Depression Confession – Andrew Feldmár
Leonard Cohen – brief interview.
Chemical Imbalance Myth– Joanna Moncrieff
*all prices include GST
No Refund, Exchange or Transfer of sessions.
I require all my sessions to be paid 24 hr in advance, except the intake (first)session, when I require payment to be sent two business days in advance in order to secure your spot.
Please, do not come if you have any symptoms.
If you are scheduled in-person and have symptoms, the sessions will automatically be changed for on-line instead, unless cancelled in time.
My regular hours are Mon-Fri 9-4 p.m.
The only Holliday closure is on Christmas day, unless specified.
Note that a minimum of my 2 business days (48 hr Mon-Fr) is required in writing, for changing or cancellation of your scheduled appointment, otherwise the full amount will be charged.
The cause of missing an appointment is of no consequence. If you give me less than required notice, and I succeed in finding someone to take your appointment, your fee will be waived.
This policy is not punitive; it is to cushion me from the vicissitudes of your life.
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