Juanita Lepage MSW, RSW, BHP

Counselling & Energy Healing (289) 812-8089 Hamilton, Ontario

psychotherapy

New: Helping Psychotherapists Bring Energy Healing Into Their Practice

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One of my favourite things in private practice is when I get to combine energy healing with my psychotherapy skills.  Since 2018, it’s been a journey of discovering the best ways to do just that.

Over the past 6 months I have been exploring how to support other therapists looking to bring their energy healing skills into their private practice.

This post today is for any therapists reading this today.  If you’re not a therapist, but know someone who might benefit from this support, I’d be grateful if you sent it to them.

For All Therapists Who Love Energy Healing

I help Psychotherapists  blend Energy Healing into their private practice with confidence and joy.

Simply put, the world would benefit from more psychotherapists who offer this combination.  Psychotherapists have so much clinical training and can offer trauma-informed care. Energy healers bring intuition & connection & healing beyond the body & mind.  Putting them together is like bringing Beyoncé and Jay-Z together. Both incredible on their own – but together, so much more.

If you’re a psychotherapist and unsure of how you can bridge your energy healing skills into your private practice, then you’re in the right place.

  1. Learn simple ways to bridge your energy healing world into your psychotherapy space
  2. Receive actionable steps that connect to your comfort level – you can be subtle or bold!
  3. Start the journey to becoming a confident psychotherapist & energy healer

Ready To Learn How To Start?

I’ve created a free guide with some creative approaches to get you started. Take a Look here —> 7 Ways to Introduce Energy Healing To Your Clients .   It’s FREE 🙂

Future Workshop

I’m in the process of creating a Free Workshop – 3 Models To Blend Energy Healing Into Your Private Practice.  Psychotherapists have ethical pieces they need to consider as they bring energy healing into their practice. We have Professional Colleges & a variety of things to consider in making this decision.  If the ethics of bringing energy healing into your practice has stopped you from going down this path, or maybe you just don’t know where to start, then:

Email me at juanita@juanitalepage.com to be added to my wait-list for this workshop.

Consultations

If you’re ready to start now, I’ve decided to offer 60 minute consultations to help you take the next steps you need to create the private practice you’re dreaming about. I’ll share the abundance of knowledge I’ve acquired over the past 6 years including:

  • Discovering your unique Counselling & Energy Healing offering
  • Creating a practice that is a right fit for you & your clients
  • Disclaimers to use in your consent form
  • Creating an ethical practice with confidence

Discover the freedom & joy of blending your spiritual side into your clinical world.

Book your Consultation

Questions?

I’m very excited about bringing this new offering into the world.  If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email.

Intentional Gratitude: Helpful Or Over-Rated?

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I’ve had a touch and go relationship with gratitude over the years. Growing up in a Christian community, we practised gratitude mostly through prayer and giving to those who needed money or connection. As I’ve shifted to becoming less religious and more spiritual, the messages I get are often about the importance of having an energetic vibration akin to joy and peace.

I love how gratitude can translate to noticing the bright moments even on those days that seem challenging. I love how gratitude can translate to generosity of spirit.

My struggle with gratitude is when it’s used as a mask or method to deny or minimize pain. I often hear from people, “My life is good – I have so many great things going on in my life – (insert: money, home, health, family etc) and I still feel horrible”.

If you’re a person who minimizes your pain, my challenge today is for you to really look at why having food, clothing, home etc means that you shouldn’t feel pain.

So often gratitude is used to minimize the pain of ourselves or others – “at least you’ve got (insert blank)”, “everything happens for a reason” or “others have it worse than I do, so I shouldn’t complain”.

When you minimize your pain, notice what happens in your body. For me, I can physically start to feel tense inside the core of my body. Scan your body and notice where you hold your tension or pain. Emotionally I can shift to numbness (chakras closing) and sometimes I will disconnect from my body all together. You may notice similar things or you may notice your emotions such as anxiety & anger intensify.

What if you acknowledged both your privilege and your pain?

“I’m really hurting right now”. “I feel incredibly sad and overwhelmed”. “What I’m going through is challenging in so many ways – it makes a lot of sense that I feel what I’m feeling”.

We often find it easier to do this when we have an obvious trauma that happens, for example the loss of family member or dear friend. We’d never say – “Sorry about the loss of your parent, but at least you have a nice house”.

This can be more challenging when it’s difficult to put your finger on exactly what is bothering you right now. Maybe it’s stress, maybe it’s overwhelm and you’re judging yourself because other people don’t seem to be overwhelmed by the same things you are. Many times it’s a subconscious pattern of disregarding our own needs or even acknowledging our own needs leaving us with a feeling of anxiety or anger. Sometimes emotional pain exhibits as physical/somatic pain in your body.

If you don’t know why you’re feeling what you’re feeling, I encourage you to try and simply it acknowledge it without rationalizing it. “I’m feeling like crap today, and I don’t know why”. Imagine giving this place a little room to breathe for 5 minutes or more.

My experience with myself and in helping others, is that allowing space for pain allows it to expand and then release. Allowing pain doesn’t have to deny the capacity for gratitude.

Sometimes there are fears that arise around feeling pain – “What if it overwhelms me? What if it takes over and I never feel joy?” With psychotherapy we can explore what your fears are about feeling your pain and take a path that allows you to experience your pain at a pace that’s respectful to you. Energy healing too can help a person ground and reconnect with one’s body and emotions.

So What About Gratitude?

Gratitude has its place in all of this, and my encouragement is to see if you can BOTH acknowledge those areas of gratitude and also those areas of pain and shift away from an either/or attitude.

I’ve found that starting my day with 3 things I’m grateful for can be a beautiful way to shift my energy to be more connected with the present. Or even the intention of doing one thing that I enjoy today and being specific about it – play a game on my phone, go for a walk, eat something delicious, read a chapter of good book. Genuine gratitude feels really good. It has also helped me look beyond myself and give to others – whether that be a family member or friend or a charity.

I’ve found that seeing a therapist has been a great way for me to acknowledge my pain. I grew up learning to be at adept at disregarding my own needs and it took me a good while to really acknowledge and be present with my own pain. As I practice intentionally allowing my pain & struggles, I’ve found more peace and connection with myself & others. When I allow my pain, it often passes a lot more quickly than I had anticipated.

What are your rituals to feel your gratitude, and how do you give yourself space to feel your pain?

The Art of Letting Shit Go

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I’ve been rereading Michael Singer’s book, The Untethered Soul. I love the simplicity and clarity of this book and I’ve also been frustrated with the simplicity too. After his recommended step of opening one’s heart chakra no matter the circumstance, he then writes about “letting stuff go”.

I have struggled with this recommendation for years. God, wouldn’t you just love to let shit go? Set your intention to “let go” and voila! When I hear this phrase I think of someone coming over and just turning a switch off on me. “Here Juanita, You’ll never have to feel that emotional about that situation again, I found the let go switch!”. Well, wouldn’t that be nice? It’s never been that easy for me and I’m guessing it hasn’t for you either.

Through conversations with others I found that “letting go” actually means being fully present with whatever emotions are present and even embracing them. When I’m fully present with uncomfortable emotions, the intensity of them lessens and then I get closer to that feeling of letting something go.

For some triggers in my life, I find it impossible to fully let it go, because these reactions were learned early in childhood. And just when I think I have let it go, a situation arises and I realize that there’s another layer of emotion that needs my presence.

In the meditation world, this presence is often given to oneself by cultivating the witness/observer part of your Self as you feel an emotion and want to react to it. Meditation can teach us to watch ourselves instead of react. Sometimes we can see an emotion rise and fall if we sit with it long enough and our minds don’t take over.

In the counselling world, there are many psychotherapeutic techniques that can help a person cultivate the wise self watching all the emotions and other parts of themselves engage with the world. But perhaps the most helpful things psychotherapy can offer is the act of presence with another as they feel their uncomfortable emotions. It can be very powerful to have another person anchoring & present as feel the depths of our pains & struggles.

I’ve often found that the only way I can be present with certain uncomfortable emotions is with my own therapist. I’ve paid that person to be with me for an hour and while I could end the session early, I won’t because I’ve paid and that often helps me commit to the act of fully being present with my emotions and even embracing them. This process is closest one I’ve found to actually letting shit go.

With energy healing, presence is also a valuable gift to give to others and to ourselves - fully being present as a chakra opens or shifts. Energy healing also offers techniques to help clear the blockages in our chakras which lessens the emotional intensity. Often an integrated session of both psychotherapy & energy healing can help you integrate and process things with more ease.

What things have you found to be helpful or unhelpful as you try and let go of things?

New Hamilton Location

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It is always bittersweet to change locations. I have enjoyed my time at 16McMurray street in Dundas, and I will especially miss the fish tank and the Dundas locale. That being said, I am excited to share my new location as of June 17 at 430 York Blvd in Hamilton at the Hamilton Centre for Personal Development. It is a beautiful space that I’m looking forward to sharing with you.

I will be keeping my Thursday Burlington location for now.

The new space is located at the corner of Locke street and York Blvd in Hamilton. The parking entrance is off of Locke Street, and there is free street parking too.  It has easy access to the 403, being just minutes away.

The building is shared with De La Sol Yoga Studio, Studio Zee Pilates, and so much more. My entrance is located on the York Blvd side. Just go up the one set of stairs and I’m there. If you need wheelchair accessibility, please let me know and I will share the details.

I will continue to be available Mondays and Wednesdays. See the link for hours and details.

Hamilton Centre for Personal Development Open House

If you want to see the new space or anything else that is offered in the building, there will be an open house on June 14 from 6-9pm called the Night of Light.

The Authentic Self Is The Soul Made Visible.

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While sifting through many quotes today, I found this quote that resonated with me about authenticity. One of the benefits of psychotherapy is helping you connect to the deeper parts of yourself, perhaps to a place that can feel lost, hazy, or buried. Many problems can occur in our lives when we lose connection with this part of ourselves.

Have you listened to that deeper part of yourself recently?

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