Tuesday October 10, 2023 – 12:00pm to 1:00pm MT
October 10 is World Mental Health Day; an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma.
Join us as these experts discuss the specific needs of IBPOC artists + creatives, and provide practical ways for us to empower our mental health.
PANELISTS
Reena Samra | Founder & Owner, BIPOC Healing & Wellness Centre
Reena (she/her) is the founder and owner of BIPOC Healing and Wellness Centre, a culturally-informed private counselling centre in Edmonton that specializes in therapy for BIPOC grief and racial trauma, and is committed to addressing race and culture in the therapy room. Reena graduated from the University of Calgary with a Master’s degree in Social Work with a Clinical Specialization in Trauma-Informed Practice. Reena is a settler on this land, as a child of immigrants from Punjab, India, who holds multiple intersecting identities of privilege and oppression. As a BIPOC therapist, she has been working for the past decade to center BIPOC mental health, through her commitment to bringing decolonization, anti-racism, intersectional feminism and social justice into her therapy supports for her community. Reena is an activist and advocate for the BIPOC community, through starting spaces for BIPOC grief healing and for support and psychoeducation for newcomer, immigrant and refugee survivors of trauma and sexual violence. She was recognized with Edify Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 2021 Award for her work with immigrant and racialized folks. Reena is currently pursuing a Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) through California Southern University, studying the impacts of racism, racial trauma, and racial grief on mental health. Reena is also a faculty member of the Trauma-Informed Yoga Psychology School through Canmore Counselling, and utilizes trauma-informed yoga and meditation to decolonize therapy. Reena is passionate about deepening people’s connections to their mind, body, soul, spirit, and emotions, and thus is holistic and collaborative in her practice. In addition to her specialties in racial grief and trauma, immigration and culturally sensitive counseling; she also specializes in working with sexual violence survivors, childhood abuse survivors, and other complex trauma and PTSD.
Sherani Sivakumar | Registered Provisional Psychologist
Sherani is a Registered Provisional Psychologist with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Alberta and a Master of Counselling in Counselling Psychology from Athabasca University. She understands how difficult it may be to exist in spaces where people feel they can’t bring their authentic self. Whether it is because it hasn’t felt safe for them or because they are exploring their identity, navigating life transitions, or managing mental health concerns might impact their ability to do so. She strives to create a therapy space that invites, embraces, and uplifts all parts – mind, body, heart, and spirit to show up authentically. Sherani also shows up as her authentic self in her work – gentle, warm, collaborative, and compassionate. She practices with a culturally responsive and socially just lens, which means she considers how cultural identity, values/beliefs, worldview, and positioning influence overall well-being and interact within the therapy space. Sherani holds various intersectional identities, such as being Tamil and a daughter of immigrants. These intersections and her lived experience impact her passion for supporting BIPOC communities to heal from culturally diverse challenges. Her hope for her clients is to be seen, heard, and supported in accessing culturally responsive therapy services. She embraces cultural humility and a relational stance so therapy can be a safe(r) space to process life’s difficulties in a way that prioritizes trauma-informed, equitable, anti-oppressive and decolonial values. She works from an integrative-eclectic approach drawing from Narrative Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Attachment-Based Therapy and Somatic Based-Therapies. She has been involved in the mental health field for the past decade in various roles, working with children, youth, adults, and families. My experience includes supporting children and youth’s development in a school, group, and community setting, anti-sexual violence advocacy work, supporting survivors of sexual violence and working with other professions to support young people who have experienced marginalization and abuse/neglect.
Nasim Switzer | Certified Canadian Counsellor (CCC)
Nasim is a mixed-race Certified Canadian Counsellor (CCC) who works from a culturally informed, neurodiversity-affirming, and intersectional lens. She specializes in working with folks who have anxiety, who have experienced trauma, or are struggling with interpersonal relationships in their lives. Nasim is honoured to support her clients and she enjoys supporting parents, whether that is during the perinatal period or later. A lot of her clients come to her because they would like to break inter-generational cycles and they want to show up in a different way for their own children. She creates a safe space for gentle healing, where people can be their authentic self, where their strengths can be noticed and celebrated, their difficulties witnessed, and where the cultural factors of their circumstances are understood and an important part of our work. Together, she works with her clients to feel safe and empowered in the world again, connected to themself, their values, and their goals. Nasim has training in perinatal mental health, compassion-focused therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as well as couples therapy. She also incorporates evidence-based practices, including somatic experiencing, narrative therapy, family systems, and acceptance and commitment therapy.
Soni Dasmohapatra | Consultant, Educator & Arts Practitioner
Soni is a passionate consultant, educator and arts practitioner who uses yoga and somatics as pathways of self discovery, healing and artistic creation. Soni has built her career for over twenty years in the sectors of government, higher learning, non-profit, public education and philanthropy, across Canada and Internationally. Currently she is a sessional instructor at MacEwan University, Arts and Cultural Management Department. Soni, has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Alberta, a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Victoria and a certificate in gender studies and human rights from Oxford University, UK. Soni, has been involved in the Alberta arts, cultural and Heritage sector since she was a child. She is a trained classical Indian Kathak dancer and yoga teacher. She has been a cultural administrator in the areas of Canadian Heritage and Arts in Alberta and Ontario. Check out her UNESCO article on Arts Education in a Post National State.