How Counselling Can Help with Anxiety: Easing the Storm Within
How counselling can help with anxiety and support you to find a way to live in harmony and experience a more peaceful and satisfying life.
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What are the Benefits of Meditation?
In our last post, we talked about the critical voice that can come up when you try to meditate and in previous posts we have looked at our reactions to meditation, and what to expect when trying to meditate. Now, we are going to look at why we would consider trying it at all!
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Meditation & The Critical Voice
Mingyur Rinpoche, a Buddhist Monk, taught a simple meditation training in our last post. As you might have noticed, he is not the same monk who coined the idea of the puppy mind I mentioned in our first blog post on mediation. Mingyur uses the term ‘monkey mind’ to describe the all over the place, and into everything way our mind wanders in the same way that the Vancouver monk I worked with used the idea of a puppy mind. Both monkeys and puppies have a playfulness about them. There is a lightness to them.
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The Monkey Puppy Mind
Thanks for joining us again to learn more about meditation. Last post, we talked about the most common stumbling block of developing a mediation practice, which is how uncomfortable and unbearable it can feel when your mind is all over. It is at this moment that you’re actually doing it, just as it was intended.
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What happens if I hate Meditation?
Maybe you’ve meditated before, maybe you’ve wanted to meditate, but didn’t know where to begin, or maybe you think meditation is some hippy, woo-woo, granola thing and you’ve rolled your eyes at it.
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What Makes Sex Good
As a psychotherapist who specializes in sexuality, I have spent much time contemplating what is happening– emotionally, physically, spiritually, relationally– when our sex lives are thriving. Through my research, I have also talked to both men and women who have embraced their sexuality as an essential aspect of who they are.
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Self Care Re-Defined
The message that we ‘should’ all engage in self care is everywhere. This can leave self care feeling like one more thing to put on our to do lists. At every turn – be it magazine covers or blog posts – we’re promised happiness and contentment if we simply follow “these 4 simple steps”.
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Committed to Destigmatizing Mental Health Challenges
Stay Gold is defined by the Urban Dictionary as “being true to yourself, innocent, uncorrupted, unblemished”. Lavender Counselling is honoured to introduce the Stay Gold Ju Jitsu and Fitness Academy where they are deeply committed to destigmatizing mental health challenges and to helping those who train there ‘Stay Gold’.
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How to choose a trauma therapist?
If you’ve had one significant traumatic event, or several traumatic events occur in your life, finding a skilled trauma therapist is essential. This past week I have had the privilege of working with first-responder/military couples, in group format, where one partner has a PTSD diagnosis.
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Settling In
Snow is like a weighted blanket, silencing the clutter of daily life. In this part of the world, we settle in to wait it out. Schools close. Groceries wait. Sports pause. Meetings cancel. In the stillness of the storm, we may lack stillness inside ourselves.
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Trauma Informed Teaching
Teachers have an innate desire to help and support. We are specifically trained to give ourselves to others, to consider how others learn best, to be mindful of how others might be experiencing things, and to figure out what others need to move forward. We guide others to cultivate knowledge; we bolster others as they find their best selves; we offer stability and healthy relationships.
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