Leslieville Psychologist – Dr. Stacy Thomas

Articles Tagged with: Leslieville Psychologist

Listen to Drake’s Advice: If you want to Get Together with her, focus on doing the little things.

Leave it to Drake to make sound relationship advice cool. I first loved this song for the great house beat. But then I listened to the lyrics and loved it more. Believe it or not, research on how couples keep romance alive suggests that “the little things” like, expressing appreciation, taking the initiative to take some tasks off her plate (particularly those around the house no one particularly loves doing), and letting her know randomly that you are thinking of her, no matter where you are, are the most important things you can do to put her in the mood and keep romance alive. So whether you are in a new relationship or one that has lasted several years, take Drizzy’s advice and see for yourselves how she gives more of her love to you.

You’re Welcome

Dr. Stacy.

Dr. Stacy’s Design Your Life Clinic, opening soon at suite 209, 321 Carlaw Ave

I am moving again. Don’t worry…nothing is wrong. It’s all good. So good actually. This is not a moving away, but a moving towards something even better. After spending two years renting from established places with spaces that are great in their own right, I am now preparing to move into a space of my very own and I can hardly wait.

Like much of my journey as an entrepreneur thus far, I have been learning as I go. Before I had a physical space to work out of, I built a virtual space on line with my website, a place where I defined my mission for myself and others and created a space to connect. I had no idea where I was going to actually see clients, but I was confident that I would figure it out.

I literally stumbled on my first location at Magenta Health Family Medicine Clinic as a result of following my attraction to the building. The facade drew me in and as I stepped in, I not only liked what I saw, but how I felt in the space. It was clean, bright, modern and embraced technology in a way that was functional and easy from a user perspective. It was clear, thoughtful, and…cool.

That first impression compelled me to learn more. It was while exploring the Magenta Health website that I learned that they rent out their space to other health professionals. Hmmmm… I contacted them, and two of the owners of the company invited me to come in to meet face-to-face. We immediately clicked.

Interestingly, just as I had connected with the design of their space, they connected with the feel and look of my website. And when we met in person, it became clear that our connection went beyond the mutual convenience of me becoming their tenant. Our connection reflected shared values and a way of doing things that broke with convention and embraced the importance of connection not only for those who would receive their services but for those who were there to provide them as well.

This is what made the clinic feel like home, a place where I would actually enjoy working. As a result, I felt naturally inclined to take care of it and the people who worked there. My focus early on was on seeing how I could be of service to the doctors. So I introduced myself with yummy treats (of course) along with information I have shared with other doctors in education settings that could be of use to them in their practice. They gave to me by referring their patients. I credit the doctors at Magenta Health for playing a large part in helping my practice get off the ground and grow to the point where maintaining its own property is not only economically feasible, but a more economically sound option for it to continue to thrive.

The Chi Junky Yoga and Wellness Studio, where I spent my afternoons and Fridays was another home for my business that seemed to magically appear at the time I needed it. You can read about how this came about in my previous blog post. The level of zen you experience when you walk in the doors is off the charts. It is beautiful. A true gem in the city. And the feeling you have when you walk in has as much to do with the design as it does with the owner and the level of attention given to ensuring anyone entering the space is immediately able to leave the outside world behind the heavy metal doors upon entry.

I feel truly blessed to have had the opportunity to work in such a beautiful space with other gifted practitioners. And as I begin the process of designing a space of my own, I will take with me all of the qualities that I appreciated about my former homes.

The Design Your Life centre, will be modern and clean, but also warm and welcoming. It will be a place that will always invite each person to find that inner calm. It will be quiet. It will be private. A place where mental health is approached holistically, with the understanding that not everyone resonates with the same thing. Sometimes we need to talk. Sometimes we need to write. Sometimes we need to move. Sometimes we need to feel a vibrational tone that opens us up to a new understanding. It will be a place where there will be different levels of service, with a focus on making the information and experience accessible to as many people as possible. There will be more workshops and groups, movie nights, and curated discussions.

This is the future of my practice. This is the future of mental health. And I am completely confident it will happen…because it’s needed.

This new space will allow for all of these possibilities and more, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you.

For those design enthusiasts who are interested in building and design, I invite you to follow me on instagram (@drstacytoronto) and Facebook where I will post pictures of the process as it unfolds.

And I will be sure to let you all know about the grand opening. It will be a party that you will not want to miss.

Dr. Stacy

YEARNING

The spot, my spot, my refuge in the city.
The place I have gone on the same day, at the same time for the past year
Is now fenced off due to “Hazardous Conditions”.

The waters have risen so high that it has almost become completely submerged
The landing becoming visible only briefly as the waves recede.

On other days it was an island with rocks spaced in a way that tempted me to try to
take a leap to try to traverse the gap.
I laugh at how my mind tries to find ways to go back
In spite of the natural and man made barriers that prevent my return.

I need to find a new place.

So I start my search.
I choose a day other than the one when I typically do this run to begin my exploration. When doing an exercise to be present, I don’t want to feel like I am floundering to find my place.

The first option seemed like a good idea; another look out point among the trees. Until four legged friends and the balls they were chasing proved to be too incongruous to the sanctuary I was seeking.

The next week I went a little further to the boat house. A look out point away from the boardwalk that juts out into the lake. It was rocky but there were some flat rocks should I choose to sit. There were even kindred spirits doing yoga on the beach close by and amazing pebbles and polished glass on my mindful walk back to the path that I collected in my back pocket.

It was a great option and yet…

Today I didn’t go there. I had to check on my spot, my place, my refuge in the city. The waters seemed to be receding elsewhere. Maybe it will be OK.

I stopped there today. The barricades were still there. But I know I could have made it onto the landing with just a little skip from the closest rock. I laugh again at how attached I have become.

Today I don’t run to the other good option just a few minutes away. Instead, I find a way to sit cross legged on the large log that found its way to the beach right beside the now hazardous site.

I focus on being present there and its good.

As I run back to where I started, I laugh again at how attached I have become to the spot, my spot, my refuge in the city.

I know that I need to let go of my attachment to allow myself the ability to fully enjoy other options that are magnificent in their own way. But to be honest, part of me doesn’t want to. And so I yearn. And I am comfortable with that. Because that place meant something to me. It was special. And I am not ready to let it go.

This was not my home. I was not born there. I did not have family there. I didn’t find my purpose there. I did not create a lifetime of memories there.

It was just the spot, my spot, my refuge in the city.

As I get ready to go on with my day, my heart has grown a bit bigger, my empathy more profound for all those in this world, who have been displaced by natural or man made barriers, making their spot, their refuge, their home a hazardous place.

I can only imagine. Can you?

Dr. Stacy

The MUSE Headband: The One Piece of Tech I Let My Son “Play” with As Much As He Wants

A few months ago, while immersed in creating curricula to assist families incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives, I realized that I was becoming the caricature of the acclaimed architect who leaves her own house unfinished. The fact is, that while I was focused on guiding and encouraging others to find ways of integrating meditation as a mindful practice, I was not doing the same for the people nearest and dearest to me – my own family.

And so one day during dinner, I decided to announce my hope that we would all start a regular meditation practice. The reason I gave my audience, made up of my husband, my 2 year old daughter and 6 year old son, was that it is a practice that essentially gives us super powers.

Meditation is like doing push ups for your brain. It literally makes the part of your brain that is in charge of controlling your emotions, your behaviour and your creativity, bigger. The stronger it becomes, the better you are at focusing your attention, which is important for performing your best at whatever you want to do. It also feels good to do it and it is a tool that you can use to calm down when needed. Dealing with challenges without feeling overwhelmed, leads to better decisions, and ultimately allows us to lead happier lives.

I am telling you, I sold it well. Everyone was on board. The sell was easy. As for the implementation…? Well, that did not go as smoothly.

To be clear, it’s not that my children are completely new to meditation. I have incorporated some kind of guided meditation in their bedtime routines for years. However, I felt it was time to up the ante a bit and make it a more conscious process, so that it could become a go-to strategy they could use in their waking lives.

My initial idea was for all of us to get in the habit of doing a breath meditation for 2 minutes when we got home as a way of transitioning from the activity of the day to time together at home. Sounds good in theory, doesn’t it? But the reality was that, for my son, 2 minutes of quiet focus was up against the lure of LEGO, toys, TV or whatever it was he had his heart set on doing.

Soon, the enthusiasm he had for the idea in the abstract, quickly became the barrier to fun in reality. It was something that had to be done in order to get to the good stuff of being home; something that had to be done to appease Mom. This was definitely not the vibe I had intended nor was it conducive to the practice itself.

And so I retreated and recognized that the answer to getting my family to buy into adopting a meditation practice lay within the core of the resistance I faced. I had to find a way to make it fun.

As if in direct response to my quest, the Universe answered in the form of an Instagram post by my colleagues at the Integrative Health Institute featuring the MUSE Headband. Bingo! I had my answer.

The Muse Brain Sensing Headband essentially reads your brain waves as you engage in a meditation session and gives you feedback in the form of a change in the sounds you are hearing to let you know when you have drifted away from focusing on your breath to reviewing the to do list, replaying a scene from the day, or the million other random things that pop up when the monkey mind is in full swing. When you are in a calm meditative state, you hear soft rippling waves on the beach. When you maintain that calm state for a while, birds start chirping. When you drift, you hear the low rumbling of thunder, like a storm approaching from the distance. This is the cue to just come back and refocus on the breath. Brilliant!

Even cooler, is that once your session is done, you get to see your own data: the percentage of time your brain was actually in a calm vs. neutral or active state, and a graph of exactly when those different brain states happened over the course of the meditation.

And for those with a healthy sense of competition, there are extra points you can earn based on the amount of time spent in the calm zone, recognition for high levels of performance and the ability to advance to a higher level once you have demonstrated mastery.

Whoever developed this device clearly knew their stuff when it comes to both brain science and how to foster motivation. Not surprisingly, a quick perusal of the team behind the product confirmed that none other than Dr. Norman Doidge, Toronto psychiatrist, and bestselling author of The Brain’s Way of Healing and The Brain That Changes Itself is on the advisory board among other top researchers and tech developers. Enough said.

So now, with the help of the MUSE, we are playing “the meditation game”. My son not only loves it, but like many children, he is a natural Zen Master. And he is curious to see how he will do as he advances to the next level and meets new challenges. Mission accomplished.

Just as going to exercise classes with me from the age of 3 months to 3 years helped to imprint exercise as a fun game he loves to play vs. something he “should do”, my hope is that playing the meditation game as a family and cheering each other on as we progress to higher levels using the MUSE will help ingrain this practice as part of a healthy lifestyle that will be maintained for years to come.

In the meantime, I am curious to know what you might have tried to integrate meditation into your family life? What has worked? What have been the challenges? I’d love to hear about your experience, so please share your thoughts and experiences. We can all benefit from learning from each other.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Dr. Stacy

Order the Muse Headband on the D.Y.L. Shop!

New Year, New Location: The Chi Junky Yoga & Wellness Studio

How I came to work in this chic, Zen oasis in the heart of Leslieville is a story onto itself. I was literally sitting in the Dark Horse Espresso Bar, thinking about the need for a new location when Rachelle Wintzen, owner of the Chi junky Yoga and Wellness Studio walked in and gave me the opportunity to work in the office of my dreams.

I recognized Rachelle from a wellness networking event I attended in the summer that was organized by my former high school. Rachelle was one of 5 panelists who spoke about her journey to finding her passion for wellness and how she turned that passion into a business. The honesty with which she shared her story of going from party girl to a wellness professional and owner of a boutique studio was both engaging and inspiring. The fact that she created a studio where class sizes were limited to ensure that each participant received individual attention really stood out to me as something special. That it also happened to be located just a few blocks from where I worked at Magenta Health prompted me to make a mental note to reach out to her to see what and how we might join forces.

Even though it was several months later, I instantly recognized her when she walked in wearing the chi junky logo and waited for an opportunity to introduce myself. Thirty minutes later, after talking to her about my practice and my aspirations for it, she invited me to take a look at her studio to see if I would be interested in renting space there. It was as easy as that.

Those of you more mystically inclined might say that I manifest this opportunity. I am a bit on the fence when it comes to that theory. What I do believe is that having a clear vision of what you want, and being willing to put your self out there by sharing your vision and acting on your gut instinct to go towards those people/places/things that you feel pulled towards vs. giving into the excuses that keep us in the same place is how dreams become reality. And when the process that follows unfolds easily, and is such a good fit, well there is your confirmation that you are on the right path, and that maybe it was meant to be.

And when I say good fit, I am not just talking about the aesthetics of the space. For the bulk of my career I have collaborated with other health professionals as part of various multidisciplinary teams to help clients achieve their goals. This kind of team approach is, hands down, the most powerful way to provide any kind of treatment and is why I chose to situate myself within a family medicine practice. As much as my access to the family doctors has been invaluable, there was more that I felt was possible that I had yet to see offered when it comes to the concept of helping people Design Their Lives. What I was yearning for was the ability to collaborate with professionals with a range of expertise who were all about helping people take their lives to the next level. Professionals focused, like I am on helping people move past surviving life’s challenges and to a place where they are truly thriving. I knew instantly, that this was the place where I could make this happen. And I did.

I have come to refer to them as The Design Your Life Dream Team. They are focused, they are at the top of their game, and they are dedicated to bringing you a level of service typically out of reach for most people. You deserve nothing less and I am so excited to be able to bring this to you.

I have assembled the team. My question to you is, are you ready to get serious about Designing Your Life?

What are you waiting for?

Let’s get to work.

Dr. Stacy