ARIEL’S BIO AND CREDENTIALS

I have a formidable passion for helping you live a joyful, loving and creative life.

Let me accompany you in your journey to help you reduce your suffering and hone your internal resources to accomplish what you want in life.

More than 20-years of experience will be at your service to help you bloom, feel better, and re-imagine yourself.

LICENSING

I am licensed as a Registered Social Worker (#830915) with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers.

I have LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) status in the State of Connecticut in the United States.

FORMAL EDUCATION

My formal education includes a Master's degree in Social Work from New York University, a Master's in Fine Arts from Brandeis University, and a great number of professional development clinical workshops, certificates and seminars.

EARLY CLINICAL TRAINING

I completed my clinical training at Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, helping individuals suffering from concurrent mental health and substance-related conditions in intensive outpatient settings.

I completed 2 extra clinical internships, and emerged with three times the clinical training of other graduates (1800 hours compared with 600 hours). One of them was at the Yale Hospital Continuing Care Clinic learning to apply arts-based interventions with individuals diagnosed with psychosis and refractory depression, and another at the Clifford Beers Clinic New Haven as a clinician for individuals and families affected by trauma.

At Yale, I trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT), and Recovery and Relapse Prevention with Rebecca Koenisgberg, LCSW, LADAC.

I was also invited to train in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) with Dr. Seth Axelrod, PhD, one of North America’s leaders in the modality. I learned to work in Psychodynamic group therapy modality with Dr. Cathy Markle, PhD, and in psychiatric diagnosis with Yale Psychiatric faculty.

At New York University, I studied Psychodynamic and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy approaches, and took specialized courses to work with mindfulness, immigrants, and groups.

I attend numerous workshops and courses yearly to stay abreast of cutting edge practices and research in psychotherapy and neuroscience.

Ongoing interests and trainings include advanced training in working with Trans and GNC individuals, Autism, and Neurodivergence. Recent trainings I have pursued have been in Narrative Therapy for non-medicalized therapies, Jungian image-based therapies, and advanced training for working with immigrants.

ONGOING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

MINDFULNESS

Research shows that Mindfulness practices can help you alleviate stress, reduce pain, and provide you with many mental and health benefits.

Experience with mindfulness helps you increase your ability to focus, manage stress, get rid of unnecessary suffering, and be more attuned and productive.

I have been practicing mindfulness for more than 20 years, and love to introduce my patients to the practice so you can experience the benefits.

IMAGINATION

My gift for divergent thinking and imaginative solutions, which I exercised and honed in the arts and an an educator in progressive education at the University level, is very useful for connecting to your experience in therapy, and for working with you to develop interventions tailored just for you.

PERFORMANCE

My experience as an award winning creator of live and hybrid performance, and as the founding member of two theatre companies, one in New York city and one in Olympia, WA, relied on skills for thinking “out-of-the-box.”

Following my natural inclination for innovation and community engagement, I founded and directed an artist-run space dedicated to fostering wild innovation and creativity. It was called PLOP!, or the Performance Laboratory for Objects and Puppets. Earlier in my life, I was a member of a collective that started a crowd funded political theatre company called Theater of Necessity in New York.

TEACHING CREATIVITY

My interest in Utopian cultural models brought me to the Evergreen State College, a University in Olympia, Washington, at the time dedicated to liberatory-teaching and progressive education.

As a professor of Cross-Disciplinary Creativity, Experimental Performance, and Object and Puppet Theatre, I designed laboratory-style interdisciplinary academic programs that functioned as learning communities dedicated to cross-disciplinary investigation and inquiry.

These iconoclastic classes were known for their innovative quality as well as for fostering imagination, diverse thinking and creativity in all participants.

AWARDS

Among my awards, I received a National Endowment for the Arts award (US) to further my artistic work, and an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (Rockefeller Brother's Fund, US) to research mystical performances with shadow puppets in Bali, Indonesia.

The Henson Foundation granted me several awards for my imaginative puppet-theatre productions.

I was privileged to receive numerous professional development grants to travel to Indonesia, Japan, Spain, Turkey, France and other locations for research, learning and creative enterprises.

INTERESTS

Figuring people out. Human rights. Learning about other cultures. Lounging (I am trying to convince everybody to embrace this simple sport!). Gardening. Fitness. Cooking. Fantasy novels, magic and dragons. Science fiction. My dog Pickles. Cultivating multiple art forms, from performance to visual arts. Humour. Languages. Interesting conversations.