Mind-Body Psychotherapy
Offered virtually in Ontario
with Jazmine Juarez, RSW, MSW
A relational, somatic approach to therapy that honours your body, your story, and your capacity for change.
•
A relational, somatic approach to therapy that honours your body, your story, and your capacity for change. •
You have spent a long time being the person who holds it together.
At work, at home, in the relationships that matter most to you. You show up. You manage. You anticipate what is needed before anyone has to ask. And somewhere along the way, the cost of all that holding has begun to catch up with you.
Most of it, no one can see. Which does not make it smaller. It makes it lonelier. The tension you carry in your shoulders and chest. The sleep that does not restore you the way it once did. The low hum of anxiety that is there even when nothing is actually wrong. The sense that you cannot fully relax no matter how much you try. Then the signals get louder and harder to ignore. The digestive issues. The back that gave out at the worst possible time. Symptoms a doctor has looked at and attributed to stress. Accurate, perhaps. But not quite the whole picture.
Your mind has been keeping pace with all of it. The list that runs even when you are still. The conversation you replay, wondering how it landed. The scanning ahead, anticipating what could go wrong and what someone might need before they know they need it. And underneath, a quieter commentary. That you should be handling this better. That other people manage more with less.
For a while, that is where it stays. You hold it, the way you always have, and it holds. Until it costs more than you have to give. Then it starts to show. The irritability that you once managed to contain is surfacing in places you cannot as easily explain away. A reaction at work that lingered. Something you said to someone you love that you wished you could take back. Or the tears that have started arriving without warning, in a conversation, at your desk, somewhere you would never have expected them. For someone who has always been the composed one, that loss of control can feel as alarming as everything else combined.
Underneath all of it is something quieter. A recognition that the way you have been living is costing more than it should.
It may feel like you are falling apart. It may feel like you are nearing your enough point, or that you passed it a while ago. Whichever it is, this is what it looks like when something in you is finally ready to be heard.
Psychotherapy here is a space to begin listening more closely, and to build on the awareness you already have. Some of that awareness is quick and articulate, and you are likely very good at it, tracing where things came from, explaining yourself accurately, arriving at conclusions that hold up. Some of it is slower. It involves pausing, not knowing quite what to call something, staying with a sensation long enough for it to tell you something. Both matter, though the slower kind is where more of our attention goes here. It is less familiar, probably, and less comfortable at first. It is also more embodied. It is where mind and body meet, and where choice becomes available instead of the familiar pattern taking over.
My approach
What grounds my approach to mind-body psychotherapy
The way I am in the room matters more than any technique I bring to it. There is time, and there is room, and what surfaces is met with curiosity rather than interpretation. That includes the parts of you that have been most guarded, most critical, or hardest to admit to. Nothing you bring here is too much, and none of it needs to be tidied first.
Recognizing what someone needs, and knowing how to meet it, is informed by several clinical modalities, theories, and frameworks. Most centrally, these are Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and Parts Work reflection, Applied Polyvagal Theory, Attachment Theory, and Somatic Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (S-CBT). Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), Psychodynamic Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) inform this further. Each offers a different way of understanding what you are carrying. What matters is that they are held together rather than applied separately, and that they adapt as what you need becomes clearer.
A somatic and experiential dimension runs through everything, drawing from therapeutic yoga, mindfulness-based approaches, and the Mind-Body Coaching Model, each adapted for clinical settings. A shift in your breath, a thought that keeps returning, a sensation that arrives before words do. Each of these tells us something. The shape it takes depends on who is in the room.
Mind-body psychotherapy may be a good fit if:
You are relied on heavily by others. Emotionally, you are attuned to what everyone else is feeling and are often the one they come to. Mentally, you tend to be the one keeping track of everything for everyone. Your own needs are somewhere on that list too, though they rarely make it to the top.
Your body has been making itself known. The jaw you find clenched, the stomach that knots before a conversation you have been putting off, the illness you keep catching when things finally slow down. You may have been told it is stress-related, which explains it, and leaves you no clearer on what to do next.
You struggle with setting boundaries. You can see clearly when one is needed, and you still find yourself saying yes, taking on what you do not have room for, and absorbing the cost privately rather than letting anyone down.
You are carrying trauma. It may have a clear beginning, or it may be the accumulation of years of holding things that were too much at the time. Your body has held onto it either way, and what began as protection has become the way you respond before you have had a chance to choose.
Your nervous system rarely settles. For some that means staying revved, scanning, on alert, the anxiety of treating a work email or an unreadable tone as though something is wrong. For others it goes the other way, into flatness and fog that can look like depression from the outside, where you are functioning but not quite here. Neither one is rest, and either way it uses more than you have to spare.
You are experiencing burnout. The kind that comes from over-functioning for years rather than from any single breaking point. It has been stacking up for a long time, and it has reached the point where you can no longer set it aside.
You do not quite recognize yourself right now. You are moving through a significant life transition, and while you can name what is changing, feeling like yourself again has been harder to reach.
You may have started to wonder whether change is actually available to you. You have read the books, done the reflecting, perhaps sat in therapy before and found it genuinely useful. And still, what you most wanted to shift has remained stuck.
If you recognized yourself in any of these, this is what our sessions often look like, and where they tend to lead.
Session details
A glimpse into our sessions together
Sessions are 55 minutes in length and offered virtually across Ontario.
What a session holds
There is a gentle container to our time together. Within it, we follow you. Each session begins with attention, noticing how you are arriving and what feels most present today, before picking up the thread of what we have been exploring together.
From there, my role is to track what is actually happening with you in real time, whatever form that takes. That might involve talking something through, and it might involve staying with a sensation, an image, or a feeling as it is happening. Often both are present in the same session, moving in and out of each other rather than following a set order. Somatic practices, mindfulness, and therapeutic yoga may enter as part of that, offered as invitations rather than exercises to complete. How much or how little depends entirely on you.
Sessions close the way they open, with attention and intention. We notice what surfaced and what is staying with you, and from there, something small to carry into the week. A practice, a noticing, something that belongs to you rather than adding to what you are already managing. Less about doing it right, more about trying it on.
How therapy unfolds over time
Early sessions are about getting to know you. What is happening in your relationships, at your job, in the wider systems you move through. What you have already tried, and what happened when you did. This is often where the patterns start to become visible, sometimes for the first time.
Once those patterns are visible, our time together takes its shape around what you are hoping for, and sessions begin to slow down and become more experiential. What tends to shift first is timing. You catch the tightening earlier. You notice the pull to say yes before you have already said it. The reaction still arrives, but there is a little more space around it than there was.
With enough repetition, that space is where the change becomes possible. Your own needs start registering as information rather than an inconvenience. The signals your body has been sending become something you can read rather than manage around. And you are more present in your own life, and with the people in it, and with yourself, which may be the part that has been missing longest.
The length of therapy depends on what you are bringing. A single concern moves differently from several layers that have accumulated over years. However long it takes, some clients reach a point where what brought them to therapy feels resolved, and choose to conclude our sessions. Others prefer to continue at a reduced frequency, using the space to maintain what they have built. That decision is yours to make, and you are welcome to explore what that transition might look like with me, whenever it arises.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Individual therapy sessions are $190 for 55 minutes. Payment is by e-transfer. Psychotherapy provided by a Registered Social Worker is exempt from HST.
-
I hold a limited number of sliding scale spots. These are currently full, though this changes from time to time. You are welcome to ask about availability when you reach out.
-
Social work counselling is not covered by OHIP, but it is often partially or fully covered under private health plans and employee benefits. Coverage varies, so it is worth checking your plan directly, including whether a physician's letter or referral is required and what details your receipts need to show.
-
No. You pay at the time of session and receive a receipt to submit to your insurer. I do not keep insurance information on file or process claims. Keep your receipts for your benefit plan or for income tax purposes, if applicable.
-
Most people begin weekly, then move to every other week as things settle. This varies depending on what you are bringing and what feels sustainable for you.
-
My practice is fully online. Sessions are held by secure video through Practice Better, a platform that meets PHIPA and PIPEDA privacy requirements, with encrypted connections throughout. There is nothing to download. You will set up a client portal account before your first session, and after that you simply log in when it is time to meet.
-
I am registered in Ontario and can only provide psychotherapy to Ontario residents.
-
I ask for 48 hours' notice to cancel or reschedule a session. Without that notice, the full fee applies. Exceptions may be made for extenuating circumstances, though not for scheduling errors, shifting priorities, or work commitments.
-
Yes, there is currently no waitlist.
FAQs
Let’s begin
When you feel ready
If something on this page resonated, that matters.
You do not need to arrive with the right words, or a clear sense of what you want to explore. You can come feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, shut down, or aware that something needs attention. Whatever you bring is enough to begin.
A consultation is simply a conversation. A chance to share a little about what is bringing you to therapy, to ask any questions you have, and to get a sense of whether my approach and this space feel like the right fit for you. There is no obligation and no pressure to decide anything in that moment.
Sometimes the most important thing is knowing that a space like this exists. That there is somewhere to bring what you have been carrying, at whatever pace feels right for you.
Whenever you feel ready, I am here.