YOU ARE Pawsitively Amazing!
Healing through Pet Therapy & Play
SOLUNA Wellness Medical Centre is pleased and proud to expand our programming and staff—both human and canine. We have a breadth of interdisciplinary experience: Psychiatry, Psychology, and Nursing. Our canine therapist is growing into a beautiful addition to our team.
Our goal is to creatively address the unmet needs of individuals who are willing to take on the challenge of healing trauma. To do so, we offer financially accessible, evidence-based, professionally delivered group therapy to educate and empower our participants in the healing process and provide tools that can be used anytime.
The natural next step was to introduce play and creativity. Visual, creative, and expressive arts can engage all of our brain and being in a new way, leading to increased problem solving and self-esteem. Play has been shown to be a part of healthy adult living, especially when healing and learning new things. No artistic talent is required!
Feeling safe and connecting with our social engagement systems is vital to healing trauma, so we now offer Pet Therapy in our group programming. Our canine therapist is a bridge between someone (therapist) who might be safe but doesn’t feel like it to our participants yet. Our dog greets participants as they arrive, so they begin to feel at home and welcome. She is a safe and friendly creature that can be touched and played with because of the calm and protective energy she exhibits through her size and presence.
Understanding what it means to have courage and vulnerability while healing relational trauma requires a contemporary understanding of trauma, which focuses less on the event and more on the effects of the event on the individual and their ability to cope and recover. Our groups take an intra-personal focus. Attention is drawn to each individual and their process of connecting with themselves, rather than talking about the content of the trauma. We do this to minimize the risks of vicarious traumatization and maximize the potential for vicarious learning and healing.
An individual can be more vulnerable than another by virtue of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, ability, socioeconomics, or authority. Any form of othering may mean an individual lacks the resources or resilience needed to recover from added relational trauma. The existence of othering creates power imbalances that could be considered a form of societal trauma.
When hurt, abuse, or neglect happens in relationships with a pre-existing power imbalance, healing is complicated. Societal systems (health, educational, legal, economic, political) that demand a trauma victim not only to have courage and vulnerability but to heal in a space or with people that resemble the trauma lack systemic accountability. Sometimes it is important to choose a healer or therapist based on personal experience with similar othering.
Fortunately, trauma-informed therapists and therapy spaces are evolving to help become safe spaces for healing trauma. Our professionally led team is trauma-informed with an eclectic blend of therapeutic modalities. We were the first therapists in Edmonton to become trained in Accelerated Resolution Therapy (TM). This therapy uses back-and-forth eye movements to process the somatic and emotional content of trauma and uses creative visualizations to voluntarily change distressing images associated with trauma.
Our groups are also inspired by Indigenous sharing circles to create a safe and sacred space for this healing to occur. We acknowledge with gratitude that our clinic serves both settlers and Indigenous peoples living on and located on the traditional land of the Cree, Blackfoot, Metis, Nakota, Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibway, Sulteaux, and Anishinaabe Nations—land now known as Treaty 6, 7, and 8. We respect the sovereignty, lands, histories, languages, knowledge systems, and cultures of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit People.
Continuing to educate ourselves in trauma healing and practical tools to support the healing process allows us to empower people to feel their feelings, identify their needs, and be intimately involved in their healing process. It is an honor to be part of this process.
Above all, we want to convey how truly amazing and inspiring all our participants are, and how pawsitively excited our canine therapist is to play with you!
Dr. Jane Carr, MD FRCP(C)
Psychiatrist
Rita Balanko, MA
Registered Psychologist
Megan Sabroe, RN
SOLUNA Wellness Medical Centre
www.solunawellnesscentre.com
