Erik Johnston

Spirituality is complex. It lives in how we experience life in its highs and lows, spirit carries us in to heavens and below in the depths. Its my work to ground your spiritual self with your body and to find it's integration your life. Without grounding spirits run too high or too low. When grounded within integration our spirit becomes a fountain of life giving energy and purpose.

I work with relationships starting with each person's relationship to themselves. From here we look outward the relationships held in ones outer world. I cannot and do not promise success in ones relationship, what i can promise is that in our work we will seek to find a you, in your relationships, that you are proud and glad to be. And it is my experience that by addressing yourself first that your outside relationships will be transformed.

In my decade of experience in mental health counseling I have worked with 3-13 year olds, tweens and teens, midlife as well as legacy work in the later stages of life. These stages are developmental. Yet, in trauma, growth can becomes stunted an we can become stuck. Repeating cycles of the body and emotions, repetitive thoughts. These "symptoms" can become moralized and shame begins to grow into what we can and cannot do because of our trauma.

A healthy attachment is neither forced to be near nor forced to be away. Secure attachment comes from the security and safety to be in relationship and be ourselves in a way that is successful to our lives and honers the life of our relationships. Healthy attachment doesn't ask us to compromise ourselves or our others. It is the ability to hold with others and our selves. Education and knowing your tendencies in attachment will empower productivity in your relationships and avoid your triggers.

Movement and play is the foundation of integration between our spirit and minds. The body gives a specific place for us to experience our lives and selves. We were given our bodies and despite the bumps, dips and trips it is our bodies that bring us to expeirncing our lives more fully and naturally. The body can be incorporated into our work in many ways: through physical movement; play, dream body experiences; body awareness; and internal "parts work".

Sand Tray Therapy is a wonderful therapy I have seen support every age with a great many of issues and wants. On a technical level Sand Tray Therapy is the best mode of helping find greater meaning, resources and new ways forward to life's issues. This is because it is the chance to allow your creativity - whether you feel its there or not - to find the problem as it lives in your personally and form there builds the bridges to solutions and a more integrated life.

I am a depth therapist. I didn't know this when I first became a therapist but soon found that my tendency to bring into the room deeper ways of knowing, ways of feeling, deeper ways of being ourselves. I ran to learn then about Psychoanalytic therapies, dream work therapies and any therapy that expanded the meaning of our lives both as we live in the body and through self/life stories. I bring my learning and natural pull into depth into my work now. Therapy with me will make more vibrant your