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April 2012
Daily Practice Tool
Pearls of Wisdom
Welcome Dan Beauvais
Feeling Judged? Maybe it is time to re-author a new story for yourself by Dan Beauvais
Daily Practice Tool

 

Acknowledge each moment as you would acknowledge a friend - be awake and aware.  You have the power to bring perspective, appreciation, and choice to that new moment.  This is your journey. 
Pearls of Wisdom from 'The Mastery of Health & Happiness' CD Series

 

On Meditation
 With your eyes gently closed begin to take your awareness inwards, focusing
on your breath the inhalation and the exhalation, the inhalation and the
exhalation. Invite yourself 
to focus simply on your breathing. If your
mind wanders off just 
bring it back to your breath. Our mind can wander off
and without judgment just bring it back and watch 
your breathing. And you
can feel your breath, feeling air going in through your nostrils and as you
breathe out air leaving 
your nostrils and going through all the tiny hairs
of your upper lip. So allow yourself to be particularly aware of your breath in 
and your breath out.
About Beverley Pugh

Beverley Pugh

"Every joy is gain. And gain is gain, however small." 

- Robert Browning

 

Beverley Pugh has worked extensively in Canada, Australia, Japan and Thailand for over 30 years in the field of counselling, where she practices full time on the North Shore in Vancouver, Canada. Beverley specialized in addictions in Ontario, Canada for 9 years before moving to Vancouver where she initially worked in the areas of stress and pain before opening up her own private practice.

Read more...

 

Visit Beverley Pugh Counselling at
"There is one aspect of life that is available to you at all times. That is the choice to be awake and alive in each present moment." Beverley Pugh
Blooming Flowers

One of the things I love about life is that every moment is a new moment.

 

When I reflect on that, I take a deeper breath and I feel uplifted.  What is important for me about each moment being new?  It gives me the opportunity to move to a more awakened place and choose a different way of being - whether it is more relaxed, more perspective, more compassionate, more courageous, more forgiving. Each new moment offers new possibilities. How good is that!  Often we often live our lives out of conditioned habit. 

 

Imagine a life where you are awakened to each moment.  I get excited just writing about it.  Imagine not taking each moment in our life for granted.  Remember, when we live unconsciously, we just roll from one moment to another.

 

Now imagine you are turning on a light bulb in a darkened room and there is light.  You can see the moment with clarity and with each moment there is choice.

 

Each moment can be lost to the past or to the future by the focus of our minds. Our minds would argue to not make a big deal out of every moment. "It's just a little moment", says the mind.  "Wait for the big one." Well we could wait a long time and miss the beauty and the power of choice that exists in each moment.

 

I encourage you all to stay awake to each moment and to bring to it what is really important to you.

I'd like to formally welcome a new associate to my practice, Dan Beauvais. Read Dan's introduction letter below. He is also the guest writer this month.

 

Dan Beauvais Counselling Services

Suite 120 - 1451 Marine Drive West Vancouver, BC, V7P 1B8  778-235-2508

 

Dan BeauvaisDan Beauvais has been providing counselling services in various settings for 30 years.  He has worked in a broad spectrum of social service sectors providing counselling to individuals, couples and families.  The depth of Dan's clinical skills comes out of his extensive experience supporting people over many landscapes, through a variety of human experiences.  Mapping Dan's professional work through Family Service Agencies to Acute Medical and Rehab Settings has contributed to his extensive practiced insights and intuitive sensibility.

 

Academically, Dan holds a Master's Degree in Social Work with a specialization in Individual and Family Counselling from Dalhousie University.  He is trained in normal development and abnormal psychology, counselling and personality theories, group therapy and practice, family therapy theory and practice, research design and ethics.  Dan is a member in good standing with the BC College of Social Workers and is a Registered Clinical Counsellor with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors. 

 

Dan's counselling practice utilizes Narrative Therapy, Solution-Focused Brief Therapy and Non Violent Communication.  Narrative work "seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counselling and community work, which centres people as the experts in their own lives. It views problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives." 

 

Individuals, couples and families can find themselves entrenched in problem saturated stories and lose sight of those preferred ways of being that reflect their authentic voice.  Narrative work helps people reconnect to those forgotten ideals and principles they once held dear.  Dan works in a collaborative non-judgmental manner to help determine treatment goals to address many of the same struggles that we all face from time-to-time including relationship strain, depression, anxiety, identity, and personal transformation, addiction, parent-teen conflict, grief and loss, and others. 

 

On a personal level, Dan has lived and worked on the North Shore for most of his adult life.  He has been married for 25 years and has two lovely daughters.  He is passionate about reading philosophy and how it informs psychotherapeutic practice.  He enjoys tennis, a sport that both his daughters compete at on a National level.  He and his partner center their life on family, travel and everyday activities that contribute to learning and happiness.

 

Dan enjoys working collaboratively with other community professionals, is available for consultations and can prepare clinical reports when required.  Do not hesitate to contact Dan to make referrals for counselling services when needed.

 

Dan Beauvais, MSW, RSW, RCC

Registered Social Worker 09869 

Registered Clinical Counsellor 3658

Feeling Judged?  Maybe it is time to re-author a new story for yourself

by Dan Beauvais

 

"Narrative therapists are interested in joining with people to explore the stories they have about their lives and relationships, their effects, their meanings and the context in which they have been formed and authored." Alice Morgan from What is Narrative Therapy?

 

Have you ever felt that you being too hard on yourself?  That personal critical judgment has become overwhelming?  There are reasons why this happens.  From the time we are born, we learn our culture codes through imitation - we copy what we watch and hear.  It is ritual observance.  We learn from those who learned before - to walk, dress, use good table manners, how socialize in public, settle conflicts, etc. 

 

Our observing practice includes engaging in a ritual of ongoing internalized conversation with ourselves as a way of measuring ourselves against the external world, and trying to determine if we fit in or are acceptable to others.  The culture codes we adopt for ourselves represent the rules we use to judge our self worth and who we are as a person.  These rules form the stories we live by and inform how we make meaning of the world around us. 

 

Often we are recruited into adopting stories about ourselves where we don't feel like we quite "measure up".  This can happen when we enter in a new relationship, when our social environment changes, or at a time when we are undergoing personal changes in our own lives.  The ritual of practicing internalized conversations combined with adopting marginalizing stories about ourselves, leaves us vulnerable to negative self-judgment; to the point where we can't see anything but the "flaws" that we use to begin to define who we are.   

 

To overcome these debilitating self-judgments I have found it very useful to understand and challenge how this problem saturated story was manufactured.  Secondly, engage in re-remembering practices where you are able to identify preferred ways of being that fit with your authentic voice.  Challenge those codes, rules and points of reference that you have been using to judge yourself and return to your preferred way of being.
I love to hear from you. You can contact me at bev@beverleypugh.com.
 
Sincerely,
Bev 
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