Areas of specialization

The Enneagram:

The enneagram is a psycho-spiritual map, with ancient roots in the Sufi tradition, highly effective at helping us identify and attain freedom from the psychological patterns we repeat in our lives. Although the enneagram points to nine energies or personality types that we express, it does not limit us by boxing us into one particular expression. In fact, when used correctly, the enneagram helps us to get free of our self-created cages of thoughts and beliefs structures that we already inhabit. The enneagram confronts our ego by revealing the mental and emotional fixations of our personality type; who we have believed we are, and helps us to see ourselves as we actually are (which includes all nine expressions of the model).

We work with the enneagram by helping you to identify your dominant enneagram type and give you specific exercises and self-inquiry practices to bring these habitual habits and deep wounds to the surface of consciousness so that they can be seen into and healed.
When we discover our enneagram type it can be a bitter-sweet process. It is not an easy model that feeds our ego by telling us all the wonderful things about who we are but rather it asks us to get very real with ourselves about our motivations for our behaviour and our deeply held painful and limiting beliefs about ourselves that we would prefer to keep hidden both from ourselves and others. By bringing the ego and all it’s identifications with deficiency (which is what the ego actually is) to the surface, we can begin to make choices rather than simply reacting to our experience. The result is greater freedom, peace and happiness; our natural, non-ego based state.

Discovering our enneagram type and working with it can truly get us free from virtually any place in our lives where we are feeling stuck. Identifying our dominant type exposes the original disconnection from our essential self. This disconnection creates the deep underlying patterns and beliefs that leads to our stuckness.

Examples of what we get stuck in include (but are not limited to):

• Patterns of depression and/or anxiety
• Addictions of all kinds (food, alcohol, drugs, sex, work etc)
• Relationship dysfunction
• Career and vocational confusion
• Disordered eating
• Social isolation
• Spiritual disconnection
• Identification with childhood woundedness
• Meaninglessness

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Depression:

We see depression as a symptom of a system shutting down due to blockages of energy, rather than as a chronic disorder that requires permanent medication.

We will work with you to help return your body, mind and spirit to its natural flow of energy by helping to unblock and integrate depressed material trapped in the nervous system. This is done using a variety of techniques including somatic body-work (focusing on and tracking the conscious experience of the body rather than the mind), breathwork, dreamwork and some cognitive behavioural techniques to address and adjust mind states and mental patterns.

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Anxiety:

The stressful events of our lives can contribute to a state of anxiety in the body causing a variety of dis-ease including panic attacks, sleep disturbance and/or insomnia, a compromised immune system and a variety of physical, mental and emotional problems.

When our system is under stress, our body contracts and holds energy in. This is a basic survival strategy. In a healthy system when the stressor is removed the body expands and relaxes. Unfortunately in our high-paced worlds these stressors are rarely removed resulting in higher and higher levels of anxiety in the body. Trying to live this way is like choosing only to breath in and not out. This state cannot be maintained and will eventually cause dis-ease in the mind and body often leading to the shutting down of the nervous system resulting in a state of depression.

In the same way that we work with depression, we will work with your anxiety to help release energy that is trapped in the nervous system and return the body’s flow of energy to its natural balance of expansion and contraction.

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Loss of Meaning:

A natural process of our development is to question who we are and our purpose for being here. This can be especially true when we are undergoing a difficult experience such as the loss of a partner or loved one, or are letting go of a job or career that we have become strongly identified with. This can often lead to an existential crisis where going through the motions of our daily lives becomes meaningless and monotonous. For us this simply means we are ready or perhaps overdue for the next stage of our development.

We will work with you to help uncover and access your true self or essence. This part of you knows exactly who you are and why you are here and once that source is found, the unfolding becomes effortless.

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Transpersonal Development:

Transpersonal development refers to developing beyond our personality or ego structures to experience our essence or true self. This level of development is not something that our Western culture generally recognizes (which may be a major contributor to the epidemic of mental illness in this part of the world), but has been the basis of many spiritual traditions in the East for eons. Using a variety of practices including breathwork, meditation, dreamwork and self-exploration, we will work with you to bring conscious awareness to that which is unconscious in the mental, emotional and physical bodies.

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Spiritual Awakening:

As the very wise Teilhard de Chardin once said: “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience - we are spiritual beings having a human experience”. 

Perhaps because for the most part our culture in the West does not recognize this axiom, when we do begin to awaken to our true nature and begin to discover that we are not who or what we thought we were, crisis can often ensue. We will work to support you through your awakening, wherever you are on the journey, by providing tools such as breathing exercises and meditations and by witnessing, validating and helping to make sense of your experience.

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Life Transitions:

Life transitions can take many forms and bring on various degrees of chaos and instability. Events such as the loss of a loved one, divorce, a difficult or terminal illness, career changes or retirement, can cause us to lose our sense of identity and bring us up against difficult mental, emotional and spiritual barriers. We will work to support you during this period of crisis by helping you to face the difficult questions and emotions that may arise. Our experience working with cancer patients and their families as well as our broad experience helping people navigate crisis, has equipped us with a variety of skills and tools to help you to reconnect to your essential self which holds within it an unlimited source of strength and wisdom.

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Trauma Healing:

A “traumatic experience” can be any event where we feel that our life is in physical danger. What is important is not whether or not the threat was real but that at the time it was interpreted by our mind and body to be life threatening. This can include a broad range of things such as physical, emotional or sexual abuse, motor vehicle accidents, or even a cancer diagnosis.

When the trauma occurs, a strong burst of life energy for our survival is released and often becomes trapped in the nervous system. In extreme cases such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, we may continually re-experience the trauma in the form of dreams, visions and/or obsessive thoughts, or we may experience symptoms of trauma in less obvious ways such as addictive patterns of behaviour, fears and phobias, and general anxiety.

We will assist you to heal your trauma using a variety of techniques including hypnotherapy and somatic bodywork to gently integrate the traumatic material held in the body in a way that does not overwhelm the mind and nervous system.

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Couples and Relationship Counselling:

One of our favorite things about doing counselling work is the opportunity to work with the complex dynamics of human relationships. Human beings are complicated enough on their own and when we add another to the mix we get a whole new dynamic! We believe human relationships offer the greatest opportunity we have in this experience to know ourselves outside of our illusion of separateness and to see, accept and love ourselves through the mirror of another.

We will work with you individually and/or as a couple to help you identify the healthy and unhealthy patterns of your relationship and offer a variety of tools to improve communication and understanding, ultimately strengthening and deepening your connection with yourself and with each other.

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Dreamwork:

Our dreamtime is a very powerful source of personal and global information.  Recording your dreams, even the smallest fragments, can help you recall more and more vividly this otherworldly information -- whether viewed as information from your sub/unconscious or from spiritual sources.

We will support you to understand your dream imagery and experiences to more fully know who you are.  Facing and understanding your nightmares can also release you from years of fear and uncertainty.

Click on the image to read about Edward's email, phone and internet Skype dream support services.

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Spiritual Emergence & Emergency:

Edward is a therapist member of the Spiritual Emergence Service Canada, supporting individuals whose experiences transcend societal and personal norms. Both Edward and Kira have personally experienced numerous spiritual emergence and emergency states.

Spiritual Emergence has been defined as: "the movement of an individual to a more expanded way of being that involves enhanced emotional and psychosomatic health, greater freedom of personal choices, and a sense of deeper connection with other people, nature, and the cosmos. An important part of this development is an increasing awareness of the spiritual dimension in one's life and in the universal scheme of things." (Grof & Grof, 1990)

When Spiritual Emergence is very rapid and dramatic this natural process can become a crisis, and Spiritual Emergence becomes Spiritual Emergency. This has also been called transpersonal crisis, acute psychosis with a positive outcome, positive disintegration and extreme states. There is no sharp division between Emergence and Emergency, however distinguishing criteria include:-

    a) an 'Emergency' generally has more depth and intensity
    b) an 'Emergence' is more fluid and less overwhelming/traumatic
    c) during an 'Emergency' it is very difficult to function in everyday life

Spiritual Emergencies could also be defined as critical and experientially difficult stages of a profound psychological transformation that involves one's entire being. These are crisis points within the transformational process of Emergence. They take the form of non-ordinary states of consciousness and involve intense emotions, visions and other sensory changes, Kundalini/energy rushes in the body, and unusual thoughts, as well as various physical manifestations. These episodes will often revolve around spiritual themes.

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