My Story

The Pain That Changed Everything

In my twenties, I developed a chronic pain condition following an autoimmune reaction. What started as acute pain became something that reorganized my entire life. My sleep, my mood, my ability to concentrate, my willingness to make plans. Like many people living with persistent pain, I cycled through doctors, treatments, and diagnoses looking for the fix that would finally make it stop.

Nothing worked. Not in the way I needed it to.

A Different Understanding of Pain

Everything shifted when I encountered the neuroscience of chronic pain. The research showing that most persistent pain is generated by learned neural pathways in the brain, not by ongoing tissue damage. This wasn't about the pain being "in my head." It was about the brain having learned to produce pain signals even after the original injury had healed.

Understanding this changed my relationship with pain entirely. And when I began working with Pain Reprocessing Therapy, a structured approach to helping the brain unlearn these pain pathways, I experienced a dramatic reduction in my own symptoms.

Nearly 29 Years of Mind-Body Practice

Long before I trained as a psychologist, I had spent nearly 29 years developing a deep meditation and Tai Chi practice. I've been teaching this practice for over 10 years in Calgary. Those decades of somatic awareness gave me an intimate understanding of how the body holds stress, tension, and pain, and how mindful attention can begin to shift those patterns.

This foundation shapes everything I do in therapy. I am highly skilled at my own regulation and have trained mind-body connectivity using a formal and time-honoured system. Whether I'm using Brainspotting to access deep brain processing, ACT to build psychological flexibility, or clinical hypnosis to calm the nervous system, I can be a trusted anchor during emotional and somatic processing.

How I Work

I integrate Brainspotting with Pain Reprocessing Therapy. My PRT certification, combined with current professional development through Howard Schubiner's Freedom from Chronic Pain group, keeps me at the leading edge of this work.

I am able to help clients see beyond fear and doubt, which are major obstacles in the chronic pain recovery journey. My own experience of chronic pain provides recognition and normalization of the obstacles clients face, along with genuine encouragement for overcoming them.

Why I Built The Neuroplastic Pain Institute

I built the Institute because I wanted a practice built entirely around the people I'm best equipped to help: those living with chronic pain who haven't found relief through conventional approaches, those carrying trauma that shows up in their bodies, and those caught in anxiety patterns that feel impossible to break.

I know what it's like to doubt whether recovery is possible. I know what it's like to wonder if you'll always be managing symptoms instead of actually getting better. And I know, from personal experience and clinical training, that the brain can change. Pain can resolve. Recovery is real.

Credentials & Training

• M.A. in Counselling Psychology
• Registered Psychologist, College of Alberta Psychologists
• Certified Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) Practitioner
• Howard Schubiner's Freedom from Chronic Pain (current)
• Trained in Brainspotting (Phase 1 & 2)
• Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) / Relational Frame Theory
• Clinical Hypnosis
• Nearly 29 years meditation and Tai Chi practice, 10+ years teaching