Alex Borovoy

Sometimes, you might feel that life is just too hard. Perhaps it seems as though the same things keep happening—in your relationships, with your friends, in your career, or with your family. You might feel a whole range of things, some of which you cannot even name but know inside yourself, leaving you with the sense that you are not living the life you want. On top of it all, you might not know what to do to make any of these feelings or your life different.

How Can Therapy help?

Your reasons for entering therapy will be unique and individual. It is true for all of us, though, that how we live with our experiences and feelings can be the cause of a great deal of pain and confusion. Therapy can be an uncomfortable and challenging process at times, bringing forward memories and feelings you might not want to experience again. They were suppressed so you could keep going in life. That was a necessary process that might no longer serve the fullness of yourself you want to live out now.

Therapy does not make your experiences go away, but it can help you to understand them in a new way, opening you to new ways of being in the world. As your anxieties and unhappiness ease, a clearer and more empowered sense of yourself emerges, along with a new, more vitalized, and fulfilling way of being in your life.

How I Work

Something uncanny can happen to us in relationships. Our experiences can lead to us becoming less of who we are, as we learn to live up to, or to be, what others expect of us. Parts of who we are can feel as if they have been lost entirely. As we explore in therapy how some of this might have happened to you, something equally uncanny can occur. As we learn how your accommodations to others have affected your present, it also becomes possible to see how your life can be different, as you integrate more of your natural authentic self, your vitality, and your spontaneity. In our sessions I listen with care to actually hear what your life experiences have been for you.

*Certified Hakomi Practitioner

Hakomi is a method of mindfulness – based, assisted self – study. It combines somatic awareness and experiential techniques to bring unconscious beliefs into conscious awareness. The Hakomi method, as an experiential therapy, focuses on present experience to reveal beliefs and habitual patterns that organize and shape how one experiences life. The principles of Hakomi are grounded the practice of Loving Presence.

About Me

Through my own therapy, I came to know that really being heard and seen profoundly altered who I was and how I lived. It was not something that I had experienced before in my life. I know now what it is to speak to another person of the pain and unhappiness I lived with because of my past. I draw on this experience when working with clients so that I may listen with care, compassion, and empathy.

My university education includes an Honours degree in Art History, and I am a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. After the extensive academic and supervised clinical training at the Centre for Training in Psychotherapy in Toronto, I am now a graduate. I also bring my years of awareness and meditation practices to my work with clients, which includes work with both individuals and couples.

Couples Work

The main focus of my work with couples is on how you communicate with each other. The three of us will work together to identify the patterns and cycles of your communication. We will seek to learn how and why these patterns have come to be, and we will discover different ways for you to connect with each other. My training in couples work is with the EFT model, Emotionally Focused Therapy, which has proven to be a highly effective short-term therapy process (nine to twenty weeks, depending upon the needs of the couple).

I also work with couples who are in heterosexual or same sex relationships, or who are in open relationships, considering opening their relationship, or living in a polyamorous dynamic.

Psychedelic Integration

The natural next step in my evolution, as a therapist, has led me to training in the integration of the potentially transformative and healing experiences that induced, non-ordinary states of consciousness experiences can offer.

Working with medicines and techniques which facilitate altered and non-ordinary states of consciousness can leave one feeling a lot of things: curious, transformed, vulnerable, confused, ungrounded or simply concerned about what may have been experienced. It is possible to have had experiences that have the feeling of connecting with something that is beyond one’s self that feels to be mystical or Spiritual in nature.

It is my intention and goal to offer a supportive framework for the integration of those experiences you may have had during a psychedelic journey, that has taken place outside of the therapy setting, either using a psychedelic medicine, or other means. It does not include the supply or administration of these medicines.

Please note, I do not, nor will I advise anyone to use any medicine that is, or is not legally sanctioned in this country. But, once they become legalized, it is my intention is to work more directly with these medicines. Use of these medicines in combination with an ethically informed integration process can lead to the possibilities of enhanced self – knowledge, and a deeper connection within oneself, enduring healing and a more wholistic way of being in one’s life.

If you would like to learn more, or book an initial 30 minute no-fee consultation, please email me at eaborovoy@gmail.com or call 416-921-7788.