About Kimiko

Family

The intergenerational impacts of immigration and wartime experiences have been deeply formative in my journey through life and healing. Understanding how trauma transmutes through the generations in the body, mind, and spirit has been the longest thread through my work, life, and study and has guided me to the liberatory-focused healing work I do today.

Work·Study

In 1999, I began studying developmental and contemplative psychology, and Buddhism in my undergraduate program at Naropa University, a liberal arts college in Boulder, Colorado founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a former monk who fled Tibet in 1959 during the Chinese invasion. While there, I rigorously trained in Buddhist meditation which became foundational to my approach to life. After graduating in 2001, I returned home and worked in social service agencies in East Vancouver in community mental health and development, and harm reduction.

In 2011 I entered the University of Toronto to study for my MSW. After graduation, I worked primarily in the Urban Indigenous community providing counselling and case management to individuals and families.

Lineage

I have been fortunate to receive teachings and mentorship from many people over the years.

Although I continued to learn from many others, Christine Denning introduced me to developmental psychology while at Naropa University, and her teachings have remained a cornerstone of my work to this day.

I received root teachings in Buddhism from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Frank Berliner, and Marvin Casper.

My extensive somatics training was with Susan Aposhyan, creator of Bodymind Psychotherapy and founder of the somatic psychology department at Naropa University.

Because the majority of my Buddhist teachers were his direct students, I consider Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche to have been a teacher in all his wildly problematic, abusive complexity.

I did not find my social work education to be particularly rich or expansive. Among the U of T faculty, Dr. Steven Solomon shone like a star with his nuanced, generous, and humanistic teachings on social work practice.

I am deeply grateful for the Indigenous teachings I have received from:

• Vivian Roy, Ojibwe

• Alita Sauve, Tahltan and Cree

• Pat Greene, Mohawk

• Constance Simmonds, Métis

My hypnosis training was completed with the gifted Désirée Echert.