Johanne Ascoli - OEATA Member Directory

I offer expressive arts therapy workshops and sessions to groups and individuals with an aim to resource, heal and support a remembering of Self as Soul. My approach is gentle, collaborative, intuitive, creative, soulful, strength-based, non-pathologizing, somatic, trauma-informed, healing centred and person centred.

My practice has led me to work with women survivors of violence, children with exceptionalities (autism spectrum, ADHD, ADD, etc.), young adults with mental health and substance use challenges, women with experience in the justice system, and humans living with C-PTSD. I have a particular interest in working to support folks in healing the trauma induced by colonization and toxic patriarchy.

I also design creatively experiential workshops for corporate and non-profit organizations to facilitate embodied learning, expanded awareness and, where needed, healing using the expressive arts. Workshops can be designed to suit a variety of goals and needs, including team bonding and relationship building, conflict resolution, strategic visioning, inclusivity, diversity, gender and cultural sensitivity, and trauma-informed practice.

I also facilitate group ecstatic dance journeys where participants can access deeper levels of embodied knowing, open greater paths of permission for embodied expression, and release and metabolize emotional material to access greater presence and joy.

I came to this work after courageously shifting my life and returning to my original loves— creative expression, Mother Earth, psychology and spirituality—after two decades as a strategic public policy and legislative advisor at various levels of the government, including with the BC government in service of survivors of violence. Drawing on my passions, skills, healing journey, training and lived experience (C-PTSD, substance abuse and addictions, sexual trauma), I now am passionate about supporting others in healing the soul wounds that keep them from living the vibrant lives they so long for and deserve; the wounds that keep them separate from their sacred relationship to self, others and the Earth.