About

Credentials

Sam Turton is a Registered Psychotherapist (RP) with the College of Registered Psychotherapists

of Ontario (CRPO).

Memberships

• College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO)

• Canadian Association for Psychodynamic Therapy (CAPT)

• Association of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH)

• International Primal Association (IPA)

Feelingawareness

After practicing Zen meditation since the early 70s, teaching art, and managing his own graphic arts business, Sam dedicated himself to three years of expressive trauma-resolution psychotherapy in the 1990s.

The addition of feeling psychotherapy to Zen awareness was the birth of Sam's understanding of feelingawareness as our natural human state. The profound transformation of Sam's physical and emotional health inspired him to shift to a career in psychotherapy.

Apprenticeship and Training

After an extensive search for a highly skilled and accomplished mentor, Sam was accepted into an experiential apprenticeship with Barbara Ann Bryan, MA, LLMSW at the Primal Integration Center of Michigan, in which he assisted and eventually co-led intensive multi-day therapy retreats. Sam also attended the residential Ark Multi-Modal Psychotherapy Training in Lehighton, Pennsylvania created by Ms. Bryan's mentor, William Smukler, PhD, of Philadelphia.

In addition to rigorous study and extensive hands-on training, Sam and all his mentors made a commitment to their own deep psychotherapy in order to fully know it from the inside out. A person cannot guide someone through the forest without walking—and knowing—that forest themselves. Academic learning and educational trainings, though valuable, cannot replace the hard realities and inescapable truths of embodied life experience.

Private Practice

After working in the US and Canada as a co-leader under the supervision of experienced professionals, Sam initiated his private practice of psychotherapy in 2001. Since that time, he has completed tens of thousands of clinical hours with many hundreds of clients from across Canada and the United States, as well as overseas countries such as Croatia, England, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia, and Sweden.

Training Leader

Independently and with Barbara Bryan, Sam created and delivered educational/training programs for interested individuals across the world. These residential experiential trainings were a refinement and continuation of The Ark Multi-Modal Psychotherapy Training created by William Smukler. Graduates of these trainings work in a variety of health care professions, predominantly psychotherapy.

Life Experience

Being a compassionate, effective therapist/guide requires extended and varied life experience. Born in 1951, Sam has passed through decades of cultural change and has explored many paths—art, teaching, meditation, organic gardening, songwriting performance, and psychotherapy—as well as raising three children and enjoying two wonderful grandchildren. All of these rich and challenging experiences inform his approach to therapy, parenting, Zen, counselling, and coaching.

"Life fills every moment. We are either engaged in it—or disconnected and struggling. We are either feelingaware—connected to every part of ourselves and the world—or unaware pawns in the game of life. We can walk through life blindfolded—or with our eyes open."