About Ambreen Ihsanullah MEd

I am a passionate people person with a loving nature and an open heart and mind. From my early teens, people have talked to me about their most intimate issues— friends, acquaintances and strangers alike. People gravitate to me and intuitively I have always known how to support the individual on his or her journey. Teaching and counselling teenagers for thirty years has kept me honest, self reflective and increasingly emphatic about our humanity.

I have thirty years experience as a secondary teacher of English,Anthropology,Sociology,Psychology and World Religions. As a counsellor for the last seventeen years, my specialty has been working with children and youth, individually and in groups. I have also created and facilitated workshops and personal and professional development programs for educators and administrators in Ontario and organisations overseas. I have extensive experience in community services, management and working with diversity in community building.

Qualifications:
•Med Counselling Psychology
•Gestalt Therapy
•Satir Marriage and Family Therapy
•Bert Hellinger Family Constellation
•Core Belief Engineering
•Energy Healing
•Spiritual and Shamanic Healing
•Aromatherapy

My Story

My life’s work as an educator and counsellor for over thirty years has truly been a privilege. Supporting individuals, couples, families and adolescents in their personal growth, and during critical and challenging life circumstances is both humbling and fulfilling.

I have learned that the human spirit is strong and the human psyche powerful and complex. I have also realized that all of life is about relationships— to ourselves, one another, the environment with all living beings, and the metaphysical realm.Relationships form the foundation of all our lives and provide our greatest challenge in life.

Becoming fully human means learning the lessons of love through our relationships. These difficult lessons of love are ultimately what we struggle with throughout our lives. The extent to which we relax our egos and allow ourselves to open to experiencing real love, determines the depth of peace and contentment we may come to know in our lives.

I am naturally a curious, creative and a critical thinker.  As a teacher and counsellor, over the years these qualities in me have been honed extensively. I have always been interested in applying knowledge to “real life” and bringing the light of intelligence to any situation– the classroom, the individual or group I am counselling and of course, in my own personal life in an effort to understand myself, others and the world around me. It is only through deep observation and attention, that understanding and insight grows. It is only through relaxing the ego that deep connections may be built and the foundations of a free, diverse yet harmonious society established.

My Approach to Counselling

My formal education and experience in counselling, energy and spiritual healing and my own intuitive guidance, reinforce my belief that we humans are spiritual beings having an earthly  experience. Our mind body soul is a whole organism always guided and supported by the light of our own intelligence, connected to the Great Mystery.

As the external world reveals itself to be increasingly more uncertain, we can turn inward and discover true comfort, safety and stability inside ourselves.

As we learn to relax, pay attention and listen to ourselves we uncover our own mystery and learn to trust the wisdom, resources and guidance which reside in our innermost being.

As we heal our hearts and follow our soul’s yearnings we are better able to acknowledge our choices in life and live with trust in our inner wisdom.

In our commitment to heal ourselves and express our truth with confidence, we become an example and inspiration to ourselves, our families and communities.

It all starts with you and your commitment to yourself.

Meaning Behind “Your Roots to Branches”

In naming my counselling practice “Your Roots to Branches” I am intending to encapsulate the idea of the family as a whole system; one that is rooted in generations of ancestors who lived before us and whose achievements and unresolved challenges and traumas are also inherited through our DNA. We are all branches growing from our family tree, connected to the trunk from which we sprouted yet, making our own way out into the environment and toward the sky.

We are part of the root system from which we sprang and unique in our individual expression as a branch. Yet our individual branch is as strong and healthy as the tree from which we emerge. We are linked to the fate of our family system and susceptible to the diseases, traumas and threats suffered by our ancestors and still present in our current environment.

We cannot escape the the challenges of our root system but we can heal any weakness, wounds or damage we inherit. Family Constellations work allows us to discover the damaging effects of past trauma in our extended family three or more generations back. It also allows us to work with the family soul or root system to alleviate the damage and heal past wounds.

In so doing, we heal our family tree from the ground up and create a healthy pathway for our off spring to grow strong and healthy.

I would be honoured to work with you ( and the family system you carry with you) on your healing journey.

Benefits

I will help you to:

• Learn to uncover the multi layers of your own being.

• Transform your perceived limitations and gain conscious awareness of your talents, resources and your soul’s yearnings.

• Learn to gently release unhealthy and unhelpful patterns of feelings, beliefs and behaviors.

• Release the past and live fully in the here and now.

• Gain awareness and acceptance of yourself and your value.

• Own your choices in life and choose with confidence.

• Express yourself with an open and loving heart and mind.

• Have faith in your authentic being as your personal guide.

• Strengthen and build your relationships.

• Trust yourself and allow your life to unfold as you have always dreamed.

• Experience peace and harmony deep within yourself

Counselling Services

So it’s 2019. A new year; a fresh start and commitment to grow and evolve. However, the old problems, old wounds, old emotions and thought patterns accompany us into the new start.  January reality check. Even if some of us were able to put the old baggage down for the Christmas and holiday season festivities; like our shadow, our past automatically follows us into the New Year.

 Our most earnest resolutions and intentions only last so long — a few days, weeks, but often we don’t make it to February with our new year resolutions intact.It’s discouraging and debilitating. Our conscious mind has good intentions but our unconscious mind  is running our life, based on old mental and emotional defensive programs acquired during traumatic or difficult times. The reptilian brain is about survival and it is powerful.  However, repression of old wounds is really self oppression and often prevents our best efforts to grow.

If we aim to thrive in our lives, we must engage in in a cleansing of the mind and spirit as well as the physical body. Careful examination of what we have stored in the nooks and crannies of our unconscious mind and thorough release of old traumas which have become obstacles to our evolution, is a must.

This new year give yourself and your loved ones a truly fresh start in life and gently address and release old patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving which have stopped serving your highest benefit.

New Years Offerings:

Group Therapy- three hour sessions once a week

                           $275 4 week package

                           $495 8 week package

                           $725 12 week package

Individual Sessions 1 hour session $140

                                Package of 8 sessions $125 per session

                                Package of 12 sessions $110 per session

Couples Sessions  1 hour session $160

                               Package of 8 $145 per session

                               Package of 12 $130 per session

All packages must be paid for in advance in order to qualify for the discounted rate. Payment plans available.

NOTE: All fees remain the same for 2019 however HST will be added to all services listed.

Ongoing Group Counselling and Workshops

Please check this page for new offerings starting January 2018

Self Awareness • Self Knowledge • Self Confidence

Take time out for your yourself away from the hectic pace of life; the constant external demands and expectations.

Nourish yourself in a safe space with time to go inward and pay attention to your inner being.

Remember Yourself • Rediscover Yourself • Re-energize Yourself

External change begins with an internal shift
in consciousness.

My group workshop offer a philosophical approach and practical methods and skills anyone can use to create internal harmony, peace and well-being.

Self-knowledge, understanding and acceptance provide the inner foundation from which we can all consciously help create an inclusive and harmonious society of individuals who are a meaningful part of the whole.

Self acceptance allows us to accept others without fear.
We model and teach who we are.

Comfortable in our own uniqueness we are able to grow stronger together.