We are uninvited settlers occupying the stolen, territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Qayqayt, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) peoples. Our relationship with these lands dictates our commitment to understanding the ongoing impacts of colonization and decolonizing our practices in and out of the counselling room.
You are multidimensional and complex. The brain, body, consciousness, unconsciousness, and relational lives are connected to each other in ways that we are just starting to understand. Research proves that your body and relationships have a significantly larger influence over your conscious brain than your conscious brain has over your body and connectedness. Try it now: can you talk your body into not freezing when surprised? Can you reason with your heartbeat so it stays stable when you're in danger?
Simply focusing on talk therapy is like only allowing yourself to use one arm when swimming. You can do it, and you'd probably get to shore if you need to, but it sure makes it a lot harder than it has to be! Keep reading to learn about how each beyond the talk discipline can support you in your wellness.
EMDR is an evidence-based therapy that draws on the neurobiology of the brain. By engaging in specific cadences of bilateral stimulation, EMDR helps to process the "stuck" memories that are causing distress. It accesses the neuropathways that are keeping your internal alarm active beyond what's adaptive and works to help you build the neural networks that will actually work for you.
Most clients find EMDR to be beneficial because it doesn't require the traumatic retelling of events and its effects are often seen within a shorter amount of time when compared to traditional talk therapy. EMDR can be used for a wide range of issues and is not limited to what is traditionally quantified as "PTSD" or "Trauma".
For more information about EMDR and how it can benefit you, check out these links below:
Experiencing EMDR Therapy - the 8 Phases of EMDR
Watch leading neurobiologist, Dr. Andrew Huberman, explain why EMDR works
Connect with our EMDR practitioners:
Art Therapy relaxes the nervous system by engaging all your senses. Through the process of art-making, you experience a shift from your sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system; this is what helps your body self-regulate, reduce anxiety, regain control, integrate acceptance of self and turn your executive functioning back online.
The most important thing to remember about art-based practices in therapy is that it's not about the artwork itself. There's no skill level required to engage in art-based practices, in fact, the more organic the piece is the better! By combining the creative process and psychotherapy, art helps you self-explore through a level of unconscious meaning-making that inaccessible through talk therapy alone. The best thing, art-based practices are beneficial for any problem you might be experiencing!
For more information about Art-Based Practices and how they can benefit you, check out these links below:
A Brief Guide to the Basic Fundamentals
Recent Research about Art-Based Practices
Connect with our expressive arts practitioners:
In-Person, Nature-Based Therapy is an enriching alternative to online sessions, especially if your home is not necessarily secure enough for fully immersive online sessions. Nature as a healing practice is not a new idea - science has just caught up with the knowledge that Indigenous folks have been fighting for, for centuries. To honor the knowledge of and in response to the ongoing and attempted genocide of Indigenous folks, all of Venturous' proceeds from Walk & Talk sessions are redistributed to Indigenous organizing efforts.
Besides being an alternative setting to deepen your inner work, it has been shown that movement with nature-based therapy helps to quiet the part of our brain responsible for producing ruminative and negative thoughts while promoting quantifiable health indicators. The beneficial effects include reducing depression, anxiety, and stress while enhancing mood and focus. It also triggers the areas of the brain associated with empathy and compassion and works with your body to get unstuck when confronting difficult issues. When we integrate the mind, body, and nature into the work while engaging in a multi-sensory experience, our nervous system is calmed and we are able to come to more creative, deeper ways of thinking.
Simply put, movement propels us forward - literally and figuratively! It is a similar process to the science behind why EMDR works so well. It allows us to process our emotions and inner narratives through our body, our mind, and our spirit.
In-Person, Nature-Based Therapy can be a standalone practice or engaged in conjunction with virtual services. All In-Person, Nature-Based sessions are located in Burnaby or in a private, natural space in South Surrey.
Connect with our nature-based practitioners:
“The body is the first geography for the stories we tell.”
Traditional psychotherapy and various “gold standard” therapeutic models focus only on the mind’s ability to define your choices, your emotions, and your reactions. The fundamental flaw of that logic? You are not just your mind, and while your mind is essential for you to communicate and understand what might be going on for you and to make different choices, the body is what really holds the wisdom and power over your actions.
That’s why we have such a large focus on somatic and sensorimotor psychotherapy. We welcome and center the body as an integral source of information; there’s a change that can only happen through engaging in bodywork, adjusting our body postures, and consciously shifting the way emotions are held in our bodies. By doing so we’re able to coordinate all facets of us to move uniformly towards growth, leading to a more integrated, and holistic self as we move through the world.
All our practitioners incorporate somatic-based approaches to our work. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to book a free consult with one of our therapists!
Connect with our somatic + sensorimotor practitioners:
Relationship counselling supports all relationships, including romantic partners, friendships and family members. People often begin relationship counselling to resolve interpersonal issues related to trust, intimacy, communication and conflicting points of view. People may also seek relationship counselling to explore ways to best support each other through difficult challenges that might be showing up in life. Whatever the prompt for seeking it, relationship counselling can help each person understand the other/s in a deeper way, and feel more expressed, emotionally held, and aligned with one another.
Relationship counselling emphasizes the dynamics between the people in the relationship. For this reason, the beginning sessions focus on exploring the relationship goals that each person has, in addition to working together to co-create an environment that feels safe enough for each person in the room. People may also choose to engage in relationship counselling and individual counselling at the same time, and may find this to be a very complimentary and supportive.
Connect with our relationship counselling practitioners:
Empathy is limited by what you know…
…the level of monolithic stories you’ve had access to;
…the development of critique and analysis of systemic injustice;
…the amount of time you’ve spent unlearning the default indoctrination of oppression
Counsellors, social support agencies, and businesses are being called to critique and transform the colonial and oppressive practices that underpin the development of our professions. In addition to helping practitioners unlearn oppressive practices and gain insight into how their identity, biases, and worldviews can influence their work, justice-oriented clinical supervision and business consulting can help us stay accountable to our ethics.
By engaging in justice-oriented clinical supervision, individuals and teams can gain the practical and theoretical skills to guide practices and conversations that challenge oppressive systems and examine the power dynamics within work, life, and community settings. Our justice-oriented clinical supervisors in Vancouver offer an external perspective and guidance as you seek to foundationally integrate your ethics of equity and justice into your work. Meanwhile, business consulting can also support you in creating sustainable practices and improve upon policies and procedures to ensure that ethical decisions and actions are taken.
You don’t know what you don’t know. Generative exploration in ethical critique can support you in maintaining alignment and developing a practice that is grounded in justice-doing. Click below to access business consulting and clinical supervision in Vancouver. All services are offered virtually unless otherwise specified.
Looking to join a like-minded community to unlearn systemic oppression together? Want to connect and learn through resource guides and structured courses? Abby, our clinical supervisor founded Reflecting on Justice, an educational community for therapists to unlearn systemic oppression in and out of our therapy rooms. Reflecting on Justice has an extensive array of free resources and comprehensive courses to support your learning.
Click below to find out more about Reflecting on Justice or book an individualized consult to get one-on-one clinical supervision and business consultation through a justice-oriented lens. You don't have to figure this out on your own.
