Valerie Law, RTC #3474

Yes, I do.

I offer a limited number of sliding scale spots for folks who would not be able to attend counselling otherwise. If this reflects your financial situation please email me at valerie@ecosomacounselling.ca to inquire whether I currently have space within my sliding scale.

Somatic therapy is a form of counselling that works with the body as an essential part of healing. Instead of focusing only on thoughts or stories, we pay attention to what’s happening underneath—your breath, tension patterns, impulses, emotions, and the subtle cues your nervous system sends.

For many people, insight alone isn't enough to create real change. Somatic therapy helps bridge that gap. We can gain deeper insight into what you are experiencing by paying attention to the body and can support nervous system regulation.

In session, we slow down and notice what your body is communicating in the moment. These signals often reflect old protective strategies—ways your system learned to keep you safe. By meeting these patterns gently and at your pace, your body can begin to unwind them. Over time, this creates more capacity, steadiness, and choice in your day-to-day life.

Somatic therapy isn’t dramatic or forceful. It’s subtle, collaborative, and deeply regulating. Many clients find that working with the body allows them to feel grounded, clear, and connected in a way talk-focused therapy alone never reached.

Compassionate Inquiry® is a psychotherapeutic approach created by Dr. Gabor Maté over several decades while working with both patients and retreat participants. It was further developed into a training program by Sat Dharam Kaur ND.

This approach gently uncovers and releases the layers of childhood trauma, constriction and suppressed emotion embedded in the body, that are at the root of mental and physical illness and addiction.

When clients perceive the therapeutic relationship as a safe container, compassion and curiosity allow them to acknowledge and examine the traumatic events that happened to them as children, recognize the beliefs they internalized, and feel the emotions they suppressed. This contributes to the healing process.

Using Compassionate Inquiry®, both the individual and therapist unveil the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories and body states that form the real message that words both express and conceal.

When we can release ourselves from the hold of these stories, a new way of being emerges, leading to spontaneity, choice, expansion and freedom.

I draw from Compassionate Inquiry within my practice informed by the year long-professional training I participated in. You can learn more at: compassionateinquiry.com