by Grace Ross RN MSc Member CAPT

This poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer is my invitation to those who choose to engage in soul-oriented psychotherapy with me. It speaks to the courage required to begin a journey towards wholeness as well as the promise of coming to love one’s own company in the quiet moments.

 The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to
be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can
disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

—By Oriah Mountain Dreamer

From nurse to psychotherapist – a healer’s journey
I grew up in a large, rural immigrant family that was traditional in its awareness and politics, fundamentalist in its religious world and life view and sceptical of spirituality outside of Biblical teachings.

As a child I was told that truth was what was told in church or instructed by parents, that men were more influential and authoritative than women and that fear and guilt are powerful strategies to limit self-expression, self knowing and spiritual discernment.

Somehow, even as a five year old, I questioned this narrow focus, and challenged my family to adopt love, not fear as the basis of their religion. This knowing -that love, compassion and caring can heal became the central tenet of my spiritual awareness from a very early age.

It was in nursing school that I first became aware of a transpersonal caring approach, one where compassion was seen as an essential healing tool, and a place where personal wholeness from a physical, emotional, spiritual paradigm was encouraged.

Unfortunately, the teaching from the Ivory Tower and the lived experience of some wonderful professors did not always match the reality of health care in the field. I quickly learned that cost recovery, inequity in who receives care, authoritarian approaches and political manoeuvrings are prevalent in health care institutions. 

Nowhere did I see a place for active spirituality aside from the requisite call for a chaplain at the deathbed. There was little, if any weight given to assisting patients to achieve personal wholeness, or to engage in a social critique and challenge of hierarchical power structures that my soul knew was needed for healing in a hurting world.

I found myself attracted to community health nursing, where at least the language was one of inclusivity, empowerment, peace building and enabling.

Sadly, after almost thirty years of working within a structure that offered very little embracing of these concepts, I reached a crisis in midlife that served to thrust me outside of the traditional health service..

My own healing journey had woven its threads into my life. At every turn, spiritual opportunities presented themselves, whether through teachers, or life circumstances or a multitude of eye opening books on the soul’s journey. Shortly after graduating, I learned to meditate and through deepening my meditation practice a vast, inner landscape started to grow in my awareness.

I studied yoga, and yogic philosophy. I entered my own journey of healing through Jungian analysis and self study. Each holiday I took yet another course in spirituality, psychological discovery, personal healing and ecotherapy.

I learned about clairvoyance, and energy fields, light bodies and chakras. I found my own gift of sight and the ability to read auric fields. My intuition became honed and sharpened.

My desire to empower people to psycho-spiritual wholeness began to take precedence over my professional orientation to behaviour change through health promotion. I started to feel more and more cut off from my health care training and roots.

The crunch came in 1999, when I had the opportunity to leave Community Health nursing and enter into an apprenticeship with an energy healer. Here at last I found some resonance for the seeds of awareness that had been germinating for so long.

Initially attracted to the physical aspects of energy healing, I soon found myself focussing on healing the emotional body and the psychological beliefs that create such suffering in a disconnected world.

In 2001 I founded the Soulground Centre – initially in Kitchener/Waterloo, but now in Toronto. Over the intervening years, my professional life has become a joyful expression of acting as a soul guide to others who are struggling with issues of meaning, truth, purpose and wholeness.

One day a week I continue to teach community nursing at York University, using this opportunity to plant the seeds of mind, body and spirit wholeness. The rest of the time my practice is a mixture of individual psychotherapy sessions, small groups, weekend workshops and weeklong guided treks into the wilderness for soul and nature retreats and vision quests.

So, What is soul-oriented psychotherapy?
Soul-oriented psychotherapy is a healing approach that makes the assumption that we are "spirit beings in a human body".

This approach is one that fosters an increasing awareness of our essential soul nature as well as our connection to the universe and beyond to our Higher Self, God, or Source.

It allows for an expanded view of the person beyond the physical to the transpersonal, transcendent and awareness of Unity Consciousness.

Like Carl Jung in his theory of the collective unconscious, Soul-oriented psychotherapy starts from the premise that humans are part of a universal field of consciousness - that we are part of an interconnected cosmology and a shared energy field, whether we are cognitively aware of it or not.

This approach believes that much of the pain of our modern existence stems from the sense of disconnection we feel from each other, the natural world and the world of the sacred.  

Pioneers in this approach include Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, David Bohm and among the nursing theorists, Jean Watson and her transpersonal caring-healing model.

We live in a time of crisis and as health care professionals, we need a new response – a kind of Sacred Healing Activism that requires not only a shedding of the filters through which we relate to our world, but a response that comes out of the depths of our longing for wholeness, our passion for justice in seeking wholeness for others and our commitment to healing the earth with whom we are cosmically and inextricably one.

Soul-oriented psychotherapy is by its very nature one that calls forth the deepest levels of compassion and honouring of the individual. It says, “You are important. You matter. You are unique, and the gift you are to the world is unique. Despite whatever wounding you have encountered, you can go on to create a life of passion of purpose and of making a difference in the world.”

Soul oriented psychotherapy offers an invitation to make peace with our past and to recognizing and healing negative beliefs about our self. It is about remembering self-compassion, embracing our soul gifts, and reconnecting to the Sacred through spiritual, nature based or soul-oriented practices.

The kinds of people who seek out soul-oriented psychotherapy often:

• are struggling to bring peace to their past  and want to let go of old ways of seeing themselves that no longer serve them
• Often they are questioning their life purpose and meaning
• They may be experiencing physical or emotional challenges and are seeking healing that is grounded in a spiritual paradigm
• Others are experiencing the challenges of life transitions: leaving home, marriage, separation, career changes or retirement and want to live authentically through the changes, not from an old reactive place
• Still others are motivated by a desire to save the planet and want to reconnect more deeply with the sacredness of life and nature
• Many come because they are seeking awareness of and surrender to some greater source beyond their everyday lived experience

So, how do I engage with people in Soul-oriented Psychotherapy?
As one of the tools for initiating soul-oriented psychotherapy with people, I often begin by exploring with them the psycho-spiritual qualities of the chakras and the subtle energy bodies.

The concept of the chakras emerged from the Vedic traditions of the Indian subcontinent over 2000 years ago. The qualities and descriptions of the chakras have been depicted with often surprising coherence among widely differing cultures and religious traditions through the ages. I find the chakras to be a wonderful paradigm through which to discuss those issues that arise for all of us in the course of living.

During my first session with a client I usually offer to do an intuitive and clairvoyant scan of their energy field. During this time I  mirror to them how I see the psycho-spiritual qualities of the chakras showing up for them, as well as any blocks, psycho- spiritual issues or intuitive awareness of pain that I may perceive.

This scan then offers a rubric or template for healing that builds on a client’s capacity for growth and return to wholeness.

For example, in describing the root chakra I might offer feedback that empowers a client to:        
Celebrate their connection to earth and deepen their sense of security and safety. I may teach them to connect to the sacred consciousness of the Mother in the earth. I may take them on an “underworld journey”, to uncover unconscious aspects of themselves, their shadow and their gifts. I explore with them ways that the earth can teach us through engagement with the natural world, vision quests and times of solitude in nature. Together we may engage in ways to heal body based fear.

For blockage and wounding in the Sacral Chakra, I may teach them to celebrate and heal their passion and ability to be in intimate relationships. I may address healing sexual wounds, or re-teach an ability to trust and become emotionally intimate. We might enact forgiveness or grief rituals for relationships, family and community

For blockage or wounding in the Solar Plexus we explore the questions: Who are you? and what is the balance of ego and spiritual purpose in you? We address issues of egotism or lack of worth, and call forth courage to live who we are meant to be.

For Heart wounding we may address blocks to compassion that are caused by holding on to past hurts and resentments. We explore spiritual surrender - allowing our hearts to become the “Heart of God”. Together we explore the idea of breaking your heart to find it - the value of grief and sorrowful empathy for the planet and her inhabitants.

Our work together in the High Heart is about creating and supporting a lifelong spiritual practice. For those looking for spiritual healing we talk about falling in love with God - the ecstatic use of chanting and thankfulness meditations.

For blockage or wounding in the Throat Chakra we engage in a process of learning to speak the full truth and to express all that we can be in the world. We identify ways that as humans we hide out behind non-expression, or have learned to suppress our truth for fear of being chastised, humiliated or attacked. Together we find creative outlets for expression. For those who suffer from anger issues we employ the practice of “right speech” through non-violent communication methodology


In the Third Eye we heal blocks to insight, intuition and wisdom. I suggest ways to hone clairvoyance and intuitive sight. We work with wisdom energy and the power to affect healing. We spend time exploring the visionary Self

For healing in the Crown Chakra I encourage and teach living connected to the Source  through Meditation, compassionate practice, prayer, solitude and journaling. We explore the idea of living life as if it were terminal – (which it is!) and support the completion of unfinished business - the idea that preparing for death is preparing for life

Prerequisites for a nurse who is exploring her vocation as a soul-oriented psychotherapist:

• Do your own healing work, therapy, analyses and self exploration
• Engage in your personal shadow work (the unconscious places from which we all live)
• Study psychodynamic therapeutic approaches, Jungian theory, ecopsychology and energy healing. Become eclectic in your reading and wisdom gathering
• Seek out training in enhancing your clairvoyance, intuition and inner vision.
• explore training through non-traditional methodologies or practitioners such as Indigenous people, shamans, spiritual teachers, ecotherapists, and healers.
• Discern the authenticity of any books and  teachers - ascertaining their own level of spiritual development is key.

Some spiritual/soul-based approaches to psychotherapy:

• Guided visualization, imagery and symbolic process,
• shamanic journeying
• energy healing work
• working with spirit guides and soul guides
• dream work
• teaching prayer, meditation and solitude to open to spiritual awareness
• expressive arts – dance, poetry, artwork, journaling for spiritual clarity
• eco-therapy (nature based approaches such as vision quests)
• Working with Depression and Existential Hopelessness -Learn to intuitively and respectfully respond to client’s spiritually centred concerns including spiritual “dark night of the soul”, spiritual awakening
• Helping clients to understand aspects of the paranormal and discriminate psychoses.
• Working with Dark energies and Shadow

It’s important to discriminate what issues are related to past trauma and the place of the wounded ego, and what is coming from a soulful place.

Cautions and  Clarity:

• Understand issues such as identifying projections, therapeutic boundaries, transference and counter-transference.
• Learn to recognize therapeutic burn-out, energetic invasion, and exhaustion.
• How to discriminate a spirit centred therapeutic response: the value and dangers of the therapist ego. Guide vs Authority; teacher vs. Guru

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
~ Derek Walcott