About Richelle
Welcome!
Who am I? I’ve been asked this question at networking events and always find it difficult to answer. First and foremost, I’m a fellow human on this journey called life. I don’t like to put myself in boxes for too long, and sometimes different labels can help name parts of my way of being and who I am in the world. Some of the labels I might use include… highly sensitive, socially awkward, seeker, deep thinker, homebody, creative, growth oriented. And by growth, I don’t mean the kind of bro personal development growth that’s loud, fast, constantly striving, and kinda obnoxious. No, the kind of growth I’m into has roots that reach down, down, down into the earth. Where we meet all parts of ourselves in the shadows of descent. I like to go deep and I like to take my time, honouring the pace of the nervous system and the soul. No quick fixes or spiritual bypassing here.
The flip side of that coin is that I like joy, gratitude, pleasure and excitement too. I believe anchoring in these experiences that open our hearts and soften us are an important part of the healing journey too.
I’ve been called quiet all my life, and I now see that as part of my gifts. In my quietness is observation, attunement and curiosity. I’ve always resisted calling myself a healer. I don’t like to position myself above my clients. I am someone who’s been on, and is on, the lifelong journey of healing. I do not heal you, but use my skills to hold space for your journey, while pointing you towards your own inner capacity for healing.
I’m an aspiring writer. And also resist calling myself one. I like coffee and tea. We don’t need to polarize here. I’m all for the both/and while holding space for nuance and am continuously practicing this. I don’t consider myself an expert. I will always be a student.
My relationship with food and my body began my journey of self-discovery and healing. It’s not a unique journey, and it might be similar to yours. I struggled with various eating disorders and along my path of healing realized how disconnected I was from my body and how much I struggled to feel my emotions. I learned that my eating disorder behaviours were often attempts to regulate my inner state. I also saw how the body dysmorphia I struggled with, was often because I was projecting my big inner experience onto my body. This gave me something I could attempt to control and manage, while I couldn’t do that with my inner state. Of course, this never really worked long term.
Some of the hunger that drove my eating disorder was also a soul hunger. No amount of food or eating could satiate that. It was through deeper embodiment that I met my soul and learned what satiated this aspect of my being.
I also realized how challenging relationships were for me and as I became more embodied I began to feel both my fear of intimacy, as well as my deep longing for connection. As I grew my inner sense of security, the desire for more intimacy in all of my relationships grew too.
There have been many therapist, coaches, healers and teachers who’ve supported me on my path and I’m deeply grateful for. I continue to work with practitioners to support me and seek out mentors to provide feedback and supervision on my work with clients.
In early 2022 my mom died. I share this, because that experience, and the continued experience of grieving, also informs my work. Death is one of the most spiritual things I’ve experienced, and at the same time one of the most painfully human experiences. Being with someone as they are dying is a liminal space where all the fluff and distractions fall away. Only what’s most important is left and for me that was the close relationships in my life and living a more soul led life.
We are after all, relational beings wired for connection. It’s just that many of us didn’t learn how to relate in healthy ways. I see relationship as a path to deeper healing and growth. It’s the ultimate path home to ourselves. What a gift it is to be in the dance of relating to someone who is so different and to find our way to curiosity, trust, positive regard and collaboration, while meeting ourselves over and over again.
“Cry so that the clay that makes up your body softens and does not harden.”
~Ellen.Itzel.Mena
I have found that loss and times of transition lead us to a deeper Soul journey, if we’re open to it. A Dark Nights of the Soul, a descent, an incubator. I believe grief is a large part of the healing journey and that grief itself, is often medicine for a frozen heart.
Micheal Meade says of the soul; “Something deep in the human soul awakens as things falls apart. Something in the soul knows that everything in this world can become lost. And something in the soul knows how to survive periods of devastation, disorientation and loss. Descent and falling is the way of the soul from its beginning.”
Grief is a doorway to finding soul.”
~Jeffrey Kiehl
I did my first coach training and mentorship in 2016 and another 400hr coach certification in 2018. My early education focused on supporting humans who struggled with disordered eating and body image. My clients have been a big influence in my journey as well. When I first started coaching, I was initially taught we needed to feel to heal, but quickly realized I didn’t have the skills to support my clients in being with their inner experience. This led to me studying the Autonomic Nervous System, Somatics, Parts Work and Relationships. You can see more about my most relevant education that informs my work below, and what qualifies me to support you. More than anything though, I'm a human who is walking this path and although I don't believe all of our journeys will be the same, perhaps my work is one of the steps on your journey.
I'm a nature lover and specifically the mountains and forests feed my soul. I grew up with the Canadian Rocky Mountains in my backyard and spent a lot of time camping, hiking, backpacking and cross country skiing with my family. I appreciate finding soulfulness in the mundane and simple moments of life. Nature has always been a place that I find this easy to access.
My maternal grandparents immigrated here from Holland. My maternal grandfather was Dutch and my maternal grandmother was Dutch and Indonesian. My paternal grandfather’s family settled in America from Austria, now known as Germany. My paternal grandmother was Metis.
I live, work and play in Edmonton, Alberta, which is located in Treaty 6, the traditional territory and meeting grounds of Metis (Metis Nation Regional Zone 4) and First Nations people including Cree, Assiniboine, Salteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Nakota Sioux and Chipeewyan. I live with my partner of 10 years and our 2 fur babies, a Blue Heeler named Jewel and a creamy Tabby named Acorn.
EDUCATION & MENTORSHIP:
September 2023: Unshaming Addictions & Addictive Tendencies: Radical Paradigms for Healing the Patterns that Rule You. Masterclass with David Bedrick.
June 2023- February 2024: Somatic Experiencing Beginning I, II and III. I plan to continue with the intermediate and advanced levels, which is a three year process to receive the title of Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I will complete this in February 2026. SE is a body based approach to trauma healing, which acknowledges that stress from traumatic experiences can live in the body, manifesting physiologically, long after the experience.
May 2023: Relationship Coach Level 1, The Relationship School. This training gave me the hands on skills and tools to navigate relationships, as well as help my clients more deeply in this realm. I received training in Present Centered Relationship Coaching and Interpersonal Intelligence, which are both maps developed by the founder of RCT, Jayson Gaddis. This is the only coach training I’ve taken that’s touched on the concept of coach entanglement (countertransference), which is vital to understand when working relationally with others.
August 2022: Integrative Somatic Parts Work with Fran Booth, 75hr Certificate, The Embody Lab. This program integrates the methodology of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and other trauma-informed models to support in healing underlying past trauma and pain. IFS is grounded on the idea that our inner world consists of parts (or sub-personalities) and that together these parts form an inner system. In an attempt to protect us from pain, from time to time, our various parts conflict with each other and act in unhelpful and dysfunctional ways. This is a comprehensive therapeutic paradigm, which views the multiplicity of the mind as our natural state. And our parts as sub-personalities that may be healed and transformed by allowing Self to emerge as leader of the inner system.
April- September 2021: Mentorship with Thais Sky. I invested in 6 months of mentorship and supervision with Thais Sky, because I do deep work, and remaining ethical in that work is important to me. I also deeply value the growth and learning I get from feedback. Working with Thais supported me in deepening into the relational aspect between myself and my clients and how to work with these patterns that show up in our relationship.
May 2021: 50hr Intuitive Somatic Yin with Mallory Buoy of Homebody Healing. Intuitive Somatic Yin is a practice geared towards comfort, which supports movement towards the ventral vagal complex of the autonomic nervous system and developing our interoceptive capacities. This practice supports in shifting from a chronic stress physiology to accessing more of an inner state of wellbeing.
January 2021: Traumatic Stress & The Breath course with Jane Clapp and Jennifer Snowden
December 2020: Inner Activism with Mallory Buoy of Homebody Healing. 300hr, 6 month long Embodied Living & Leadership Training. This training amalgamates anti-racism education & colonial awareness in Canada, the physiology of oppression, race & disability justice and dismantling white body supremacy, alongside traditional indigenous epistemology & somatic practices. I continued working with Mallory for another 6 months in a program called Burn it Down in May of 2021.
2020: The Science, Psychology & Social Context of Body Image Masterclass with Bo Forbes
August 2020: Practitioner of MindBody Therapy, 300hr year long MindBody Therapy Certification through Embodied Philosophy. I got the privilege of learning live from teachers on the faculty that included: Dr. Scott Lyons, Dr. Rae Johnson, Dr. Christine Caldwell, Dr. Albert Wong, Dr. Maureen Gallagher, Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. Judith Blackstone, Jay Early, David Weinstock and more. This program drew on Somatic/Embodied Psychology, Contemplative Therapy, Mindfulness, Transpersonal/Eastern Psychology, Internal Family System (parts work), Somatic Experiencing, Somatic Stress Release, Humanistic and Strength based therapy, Gestalt therapy, Social Activism, Focusing Technique, Mind Body Medicine, Body Mind Centering, The Realization Process, Attachment Theory (embodied approach), Non-Violent Communication and more. MindBody Therapy recognizes and utilizes the synergistic relationship between all the ways we experience ourselves and the world - to approach healing, transformation, and well-being. Inherent in this approach is the recognition that each person is intrinsically whole- and the role of the practitioner is to help the client clear the debris that is obstructing a person from living from that place of wholeness, ease, and flow. Practitioners in MindBody therapy support others in accessing more awareness and experience of themselves, enhancing inner attunement to sensations and feelings, and through that inner communication helping them to discover that are the agent of their own healing and transformation.
June 2019: Somatic Stress Release Level 1 25 HRS, Dr. Scott Lyons. Dr. Lyons now offers this training through The Embody Lab. This training introduced me to the window of tolerance (resilience) and gave me a trauma informed lense for embodiment and feeling our emotions.
2017: 200hr Yoga Teacher Training through Empowered Yoga with Michele Theoret and Danielle Murray. I also did a 25hrs Movement Medicine (Intelligence of sequencing) and 25hrs PTSD & Trauma Informed Yoga with Tiffany Rose. This is where I was first introduced to deepening the connection with the body, cultural appropriation, consent, spiritual bypassing and the importance of becoming trauma informed.
What People Are Saying
“and I said to my body, softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath, and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.”
~Rupi Kaur