About Tara

 My work as a psychotherapist and yoga therapist has been shaped by decades of clinical training, embodied practice, leadership, and deep personal inquiry. It is grounded not only in theory, but in lived experience — of relationship, rupture, repair, embodiment, and transformation.

Before entering the field of psychotherapy, I spent many years working closely with youth in wilderness and community-based settings, guiding extended canoe expeditions in Northern Ontario and Quebec and working in residential and camp-based programs. These early experiences taught me something essential that continues to guide my work today: healing unfolds through relationship, rhythm, attuned presence, and direct engagement with the inner world — not through insight alone.

After completing undergraduate studies in Women’s Studies and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, I worked in frontline social service settings supporting youth, women, and families impacted by trauma, instability, and major life transitions. This included work in youth shelters, transition houses, and community programs where I witnessed firsthand how early relational wounds, systemic stress, and unmet attachment needs shape the nervous system and sense of self over time.

My path eventually led me to India, where I studied Ashtanga Yoga in Mysore. This experience profoundly influenced my understanding of embodiment, discipline, and the intelligence of the body. Yoga was not something I added later to my psychotherapy work — it has been a continuous, daily personal practice for over two decades and a central way I have come to understand healing, presence, and inner transformation.

I went on to complete a Master of Social Work at the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Relational Psychotherapy through the Toronto Institute for Relational Psychotherapy. Over the years, I have pursued extensive post-graduate training in trauma therapy, attachment-based work, relational and family systems, couples therapy, and clinical supervision. I have also trained deeply in yoga therapy, completing over 1,000 hours of advanced yoga therapy education and ongoing study in yoga philosophy, psychology, and therapeutic application.

In recent years, my work has been further shaped by extensive training in the Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM)— including advanced and generational trainings, intensive experiential retreats, and ongoing consultation and personal work. CRM deeply aligns with how I understand trauma healing: as a process that requires resourcing the whole system — nervous system, body, emotional life, relational field, and inner spiritual capacities — so that difficult material can be approached without overwhelm or collapse.

Alongside my formal training, I consider my own long-term psychotherapy, yoga practice, yoga therapy, and inner work to be foundational to my clinical capacity. Over time, this has allowed my work to become increasingly intuitive and attuned. I trust subtle cues in the body, relational field, and energetic experience — understanding that attunement often reaches deeper than what psychotherapy models alone can fully describe. I believe we each carry innate “internal technologies” for healing — capacities for regulation, connection, meaning, and repair that have been largely forgotten or overridden by modern life — and that therapy can help restore access to these inner resources.

From 2013 onward, my clinical and leadership work expanded significantly through my role at Pine River Institute, where I worked as a Psychotherapist and Team Manager supporting youth, parents, couples, families, and groups within an intensive treatment setting. This experience strengthened my capacity to work with complexity, high acuity, and relational systems, and deepened my understanding of how trauma unfolds — and heals — in real-world contexts.

In 2018, I founded Collingwood Psychotherapy & Yoga Centre with the intention of creating a practice that integrates psychotherapy, yoga therapy, and embodied healing within a coherent, relational framework. As Director, I continue to engage in ongoing education in leadership, business development, and organizational strategy to ensure that the centre is sustainable, ethical, and aligned with its healing mission.

Today, my work integrates relational psychotherapy, yoga therapy, CRM-informed resourcing and memory reconsolidation, and intuitive attunement to support people through deep healing and post-traumatic growth. I work with complexity. I value depth. And I believe healing is not about fixing what is broken, but about restoring connection to the strengths, wisdom, and wholeness that already exist within us.

I am continually shaped by my family, friends, community, teachers, supervisors, colleagues, and inner practices — and most profoundly by the clients who trust me with their stories, their pain, and their courage. It is an honour and a gift to walk alongside courageous people as they reconnect with themselves, repair old patterns, face their pain, open up to joy and step more fully into their lives.

• Masters of Social Work, University of Toronto, 2007
• Diploma in Psychotherapy, Toronto Institute for Relational Psychotherapy, 2007
• Undergraduate Degree in Humanities (Women’s Studies and Environmental Studies), University of Victoria, BC, 2001
• Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM) Basic 5 day training – 40 hours (Feb 2021, April 2024), Generational Training – 40 hours (Feb 2022 and January 2023), Black hole webinar (Jan 2022), Paradox webinar (March 2022), Core Self and Gestational Training (February 2024), Heal the Healer Intensive – 7 days (June 2022 and September 2023)all with Lisa Schwarz. Personal CRM sessions and consultations with Elisa Elkin Cleary and Lisa Schwarz (2021-Present)
• Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment – level I, II, III, IV,  (and other workshops) with Dr. Janina Fisher, 2014 – 2018
• Satir Family Therapy training, 5 day course 2013, 5 day course 2015 and 5 day course 2017, with Dr. Maria Gomori.
• Relational Couples Therapy course, with Dr. Pat DeYoung, 2009
• Relational Clinical Supervision course with Dr. Pat DeYoung, 2018-2019.
• Trauma informed therapy with couples – 2 days – with Janina Fisher and Terry Real – 2020
• Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, level I, with Dr. Sian Phillips, 2017
• Attachment-Based Yoga and Meditation for Trauma-Recovery: Practical Ways to Shift Attachment Patterns,  2 day course, 2018, with Deirdre Fay
• Emotionally Focused Therapy – 1 day training, 2018, with Dr. Sue Johnson.
• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy – 2 day training 2014 with Sheri Van Dijk
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents – 16.5 hours with SickKids Centre for Community Mental Health Learning Institute – November 2020.
• Various training in grief and loss, shame, attachment, trauma, addictions, psychopharmacology, managing aggressive behaviour, and parenting.

•  2+ year, 1000+ Hours Yoga Therapist Training Course with Yoga Therapy Toronto, March 2019 – January 2022
• Yogābhyāsa Vinyāsa – Understanding the Fundamentals of Course Planning certificate – 10 hours  from Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, 2021
• Understanding the Yoga Sutras with Dr. NC at Yoga Vaidya Shala – 2020-present.
• Two months studying Ashtanga Yoga in Mysore, India, with Shri, K. Pattabhi Jois and Sharath Jois, 2007
• Yin/Restorative Yoga training, with Felicia Pavlovic at Yoga Therapy Toronto, 2015
• Fundamentals of Yoga Therapy course with Felicia Pavlovic – 2022-Present
• 40 hour intensive in Ashtanga Yoga, with David Robson, 2016
• 200-hour Ashtanga Yoga Teacher Training, Downward Dog Yoga Studio, 2018
• 3 weeks Assisting School at Ashtanga Yoga Centre with David Robson, 2018
• Daily Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga practice 2003-2008 with Paul and Rachelle Gold of AYS Toronto 
• Daily Mysore Style Ashtange Yoga practice 2009-2013 with David Robson of AYCT.
• Daily Personal Yoga Practice – 2002- Present

• 8-month training in Organic Farming and Permaculture Design, Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island, BC, 2003.