Discover how Internal Family Systems therapy uses neuroscience to create transformational change. Understand your inner world, heal trauma, and connect with your authentic Self through this groundbreaking approach.
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a breakthrough therapy that targets trauma at its deepest level, reorienting brain pathways to help clients move past painful memories. This gentle, neuroscience-based approach helps with PTSD, anxiety, and feelings of being “stuck.”
Somatic Therapy, a body-based approach to healing, taps into the mind-body connection to release stress, anxiety, and trauma stored in our physical self. Discover how somatic experiencing can help you find calm and reconnect with your body in Toronto.
Recognized for its effectiveness in treating conditions like PTSD, anxiety, and depression, EMDR therapy is an empowering path to break free from emotional pain and reclaim a sense of self. Here’s a closer look at how EMDR works, the neuroscience behind it, and why so many people in Toronto are turning to EMDR for deep healing.
With roots in ancient healing practices, breathwork is not just about breathing; it’s about unlocking the mind-body connection to release trauma, relieve stress, and empower personal growth. But how exactly does breathwork work, and why is it so effective? Explore how breathwork can release trauma, reduce anxiety, and calm the mind.
In the realm of mental health, the word “trauma” can invoke a lot of different ideas and associations. There tends to be a general consensus around what is sometime referred to as “Big T” trauma, while there is somewhat less agreement in the realm of “small t” trauma. The difficulty with categorization provides a clue as to how the premise of the question might be flawed.
Shock is a physiological and neurochemical process that is always present at the “moment of impact” of trauma or emotional wounding. Unfortunately, it is notoriously difficult to treat, and often acts as a barrier to healing. When the shock of trauma, loss or deep emotional pain is untreated, the injury is unable to heal and the experience remains unprocessed.
Attachment is a biological imperative. As mammals, connection is not a ‘nice to have,’ it’s survival. A lone wolf is a sick wolf. We need each other, which is why acceptance and belonging are among our most basic needs.
We are formed in and through our connections, and we heal in and are transformed by our connections.
Relational psychotherapy is rooted in psychodynamics, attachment theory, object-relations theory and the principles of human development. Understanding that our behavioural patterns, personality, and identity are developed and shaped by early experiences, relational psychotherapy brings to light the implicit memories and unconscious processes from the past that are influencing the present.
Mindfulness is the capacity to be present for this life - to be with the fullness of the human experience, with all its pleasure and pain, gain and loss, love and heartache.
Mindfulness is the gateway through which we can truly experience our life and everything it means to be in this human condition.
It is through mindfulness that we come fully and wholly into ourselves and our experience.
It is in Wholeness that we are at ease, and it is in fragmentation that all suffering lives. Such fragmentation occurs because the totality was too much; too overwhelming, too painful, too threatening. Disconnection from that which is too much protects us. And it divides us.
One of the pervasive myths in the fields of human experience is the division of mind and body. While this dualistic framework has been deeply entrenched in Western conceptualizations of the psyche, this is another case of reductionistic frameworks gone awry. Modern neuroscience is once again confirming what would have been intuitive to our ancestors; that the mind and body is indivisible. They co-occur in relationship with each other.
The mind is embodied. ‘Muscle memory’ isn’t limited to things like how to walk or write. Our histories are written into our physical being, and our physical coauthors our histories. Biography becomes physiology, and physiology becomes biography.
We all have different "parts" of ourselves. We all know this intuitively. If we didn’t have different parts, we could never be in conflict with ourselves. No one would ever have failed at a diet, because there would only be one self, and that self wanted to be healthy. No one would ever procrastinate, because there would only be one self, and that self wanted to get stuff done. But of course we know that’s not true. Some part of me wants to be healthy, and some part wants to live on cookies and ice cream. Some part of me wants to get things done, and some part wants to binge watch my favourite show.
When we are faced with overwhelming emotional distress or trauma, our brain's ability to make sense of our experience is greatly diminished.
Our brain could be thought of as a computer who’s job it is to take the inputs - all the information our senses are picking up from the world - and organize them into one cohesive output - our experience of the world.
Trauma could be thought of as anything that overwhelms our brain’s computing powers.
Any threat that overwhelms our ability to keep ourselves safe is inherently traumatizing to our nervous system.
Whether such a threat is real or perceived, whether it is physical, mental or emotional, makes no difference. Our nervous system does not discriminate between physical annihilation and annihilation of the self. Such situations directly conflict with our primary biological imperative: to survive. And when such a visceral drive is undermined, it has profound and lasting impact on our mind and body.
Trauma fundamentally changes the brain.
Discover how Internal Family Systems therapy uses neuroscience to create transformational change. Understand your inner world, heal trauma, and connect with your authentic Self through this groundbreaking approach.
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a breakthrough therapy that targets trauma at its deepest level, reorienting brain pathways to help clients move past painful memories. This gentle, neuroscience-based approach helps with PTSD, anxiety, and feelings of being “stuck.”
Somatic Therapy, a body-based approach to healing, taps into the mind-body connection to release stress, anxiety, and trauma stored in our physical self. Discover how somatic experiencing can help you find calm and reconnect with your body in Toronto.
Recognized for its effectiveness in treating conditions like PTSD, anxiety, and depression, EMDR therapy is an empowering path to break free from emotional pain and reclaim a sense of self. Here’s a closer look at how EMDR works, the neuroscience behind it, and why so many people in Toronto are turning to EMDR for deep healing.
With roots in ancient healing practices, breathwork is not just about breathing; it’s about unlocking the mind-body connection to release trauma, relieve stress, and empower personal growth. But how exactly does breathwork work, and why is it so effective? Explore how breathwork can release trauma, reduce anxiety, and calm the mind.
Imagine our brain as a room with one giant filing cabinet in the centre of it. The filing cabinet is made up of many drawers (representing memory networks), which are filled with many files (representing brain cells). At birth, most of these files are strewn about the room haphazardly, with relatively few being stored in the filing cabinet. During the course of our life, the files in the room are gradually organized into drawers of the filing cabinet.
