I am a seasoned psychotherapist with over 25 years of experience in therapeutic settings, guiding individuals, couples, and groups. I have been developing psychotherapeutic work in collaboration with horses, wild-kin and landscapes for over 15 years.
I can help you through personal transitions, pivotal times, and challenging experiences in your life, including anything related to relationships, family, parenting, patterns of protection, anxiety, trauma, disconnection, addictions, stress, grief and loss. I am passionate about good relations and whole-human development, with a commitment to cultivating awareness, connection to humanity and the natural world, and finding elegant ways through complex personal, relational, and collective issues.
My early training is rooted in science, the school of medicine, and mental health, and I have now been immersed in wisdom teachings, somatic and depth work for nearly 20 years. At that time, I was seeking new models and attended a 3-year, full-time MA in Counselling program where meditation was an integral part of the curriculum, and the teachers were experienced meditators and mature psychotherapists themselves -- they taught me how to get into my body, loosen my grip, and be present with body, speech and mind. I learned about basic goodness and basic sanity, groundlessness, unconditional friendliness, and bravery in meeting our wild humanness in the here and now.
All of this was good medicine at a time when I needed more awareness, depth and skillful means, personally and professionally. When we moved back to Canada, I had the great honour of working and living alongside the people of Tsilhqot'in Nation, whose lifeworlds necessitated nature-based work and direct engagement in social action and justice. I committed to deepening my relationship with horses at this time, and found mentors and teachers in horsemanship, land and ritual.
Over the past 10+ years, Roshi Diane Musho Hamilton has been my master teacher in the Soto Zen lineage. I have been opened to the vast and timeless nature of our being, and have deepened my meditation practice and appreciation for beauty, precision, and navigating complexity in our inner and outer worlds.
And the horses? They have been a powerful, consistent and inspiring force of embodied presence and care in my life. Horses have a way of inviting us into our fluid, natural, instinctual selves, without apology or judgment. I am indebted to horses in particular for challenging me to deconstruct a human-centric view, explore and orient to my body's depth and capacity, make friends with my human awkwardnesses, and be in awe of our fundamental interconnectedness and belonging.
I hold a Bachelor of Science in Rehabilitation Medicine (OT) from UBC, a Master's in Transpersonal Counselling Psychology from Naropa University in Colorado, along with professional certifications in Integral Facilitation, Gestalt Equine Psychotherapy and Group therapy, couples therapy, and trauma therapies, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy (IFOT) for complex trauma. My early work as an Occupational Therapist in mental health provides expertise for working with the whole person across the spectrum of mental health/illness, as well as a foundation in neuroscience and training in well-known evidence-based modalities such as CBT and DBT.
I am a mother of 3 grown adventurous boys, with a long-term committed partner of 28 years. I am a lover of horses, and I am passionate about all things nature, the psyche, the unseen and unknowable.
I love Gestalt therapy for its no-nonsense, here-and-now focus on the body, aliveness, nature, contact theory, relationship, human development, and direct experience. My journey into Gestalt Therapy in collaboration with horses began with my long-time mentor, Duey Freeman, a teacher at Naropa University at the time, and a founder of both the Gestalt Institute of the Rockies (GIR) and the Gestalt Equine Institute of the Rockies (GEIR) in Colorado, where I now have the pleasure of teaching students. Living in Boulder, CO, allowed me to deepen my professional training in Gestalt therapy at Naropa University, GIR, and GEIR. I continue to receive mentorship and supervision from my beloved Gestalt teachers to this day.
I was ordained as a Zen monk in 2025. With sincerity, I live into the names I have been given in both the Indigenous and Zen lineages: Sugwelthan, which is Tsilhqot’in for “she who leaves things in the right place,” and Mukyo, meaning “emptiness abode”.
