About Me
Doctor of Education (EdD) – Counselling Psychology, University of Toronto
Master of Education (MEd) – Counselling Psychology, University of Toronto
Registered Psychotherapist (RP) (College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario)
Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC) (Canadian Counselling & Psychotherapy Association)
Other degrees:
Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) – Film Production, Concordia University
Bachelor of Arts (BA) – Philosophy & Sociology (minors), University of Toronto
My graduate and doctoral coursework, clinical practica and internships in psychology included process experiential emotion-focused (PE/EFT), relational (e.g. interpersonal, intersubjectivity, and relational-cultural) approaches to psychotherapy in general, mixed psychotherapeutic approaches to working through complex (relational) trauma in particular, and theory and practice of clinical supervision.
My clinical practica and internships have taken place in hospital, community health care, and post-secondary settings.
My doctoral research focused on counsellor (therapist) development and the dynamics of power and intersubjectivity in clinical supervision relationships. My doctoral dissertation is entitled: Who Lives in Us and How? How Beginning Counsellors Experience Internal Representations of People who were Significant to their Clinical Development.
Select Extra-curricular Training & Development
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Affect Dysregulation, Survival Defenses & Traumatic Memory (SP – level one)
Advanced Training in Complex Trauma & Dissociation (current)
Narrative Therapy
Narrative Therapy (certification) – Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto
Responding to Trauma – Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto
Yoga
I have been formally studying yoga since 2012. I have received training in pranayama (focus on breath work), pratyahara, and nada yoga (yoga of sound) from Toronto-based registered yoga teachers who studied in the Sivananda Vedanta tradition. For the past 7 years, I have also received regular one-on-one instruction as part of my own yoga therapy from Toronto-based certified yoga therapists who studied in the direct lineage of T.K.V. Desikachar. I bring this knowledge to the ways in which I listen in therapy, to the somatic resources I develop with clients, and to help identify and understand somatic countertransference as part of the clinical supervision I offer.
Ongoing Development:
- Biweekly clinical consultation in relational psychotherapy
- Monthly trauma-focused group clinical supervision
- Monthly webinars, workshops and discussion boards with sensorimotor psychotherapy community (Applied SP)
- Year long practices for Restorative Yoga Teacher Training
In addition, I am part of a consultative network and referral base of queer and trans therapists in private practice.
I was born to mixed parentage (my father is Black/of African descent; my mother is East Indian), raised in Trinidad and migrated to Toronto in the early 1990s. I quickly immersed in campus life at the University of Toronto and for the next decades I volunteered and worked in student activist, direct (social) service organizations and arts service organizations supporting women, queer and trans youth, Black, South Asian and other racialized communities in various cities. There are many winding yet continuous paths throughout my story. Threading through all my years of social justice involvement was my love for artists, writers and writing, poetry, spoken word and later, film production. My emphasis on experiential process, or felt sense as a way of knowing, and as a path to recovery and resilience, stems from this. Through these years too were many turns in my own personal journey. I transitioned mind, heart and body. I created family with others doing the same. With and through them, I have learned many kinds and qualities of love, companionship, intimacy and struggle. I also learned about illness, advocacy, and tremendous loss. Finally, over these years I have returned again and again to spiritual practice. I was raised in a religious and spiritual Caribbean Catholic community. I knew little of the Hindu and Presbyterian roots on my mother’s side growing up. I have returned to non-institutional Catholic (e.g mystic) and yogic (Vedantic) spirituality over the last 10 years, bridging, reconciling and enriching these through my beloved friends and family in Trinidad and Canada, and the many nuances and layers of who I am.
