The MindSpa Podcast

Ep 19 Art can say what words can’t—and it can calm, open, and reconnect us across ages, couples, and families

• Batten Media House • Season 1 • Episode 19

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When words stall, images step in. We invited Elena Kourounis—an art therapist-in-training at MindSpa—to unpack how creativity becomes a practical tool for regulation, insight, and connection across ages and settings. From first prompts to final reflections, she shows how art can do the heavy lifting when language feels thin, and how a simple choice of materials shifts the nervous system toward calm or openness.

We trace Elena’s path from pastry chef to classroom teacher to therapist, and how a health crisis clarified her values: empathy, authenticity, and collaboration. She explains why art therapy prioritizes process over product, how she selects media to match goals, and what happens inside a session: set the intention, make the image, let the client lead the meaning. You’ll hear concrete techniques like bilateral drawing to engage both hemispheres and soothe the body, along with strategies to stay within the window of affect tolerance—dialling down overwhelm or lifting out of shutdown without forcing disclosure.

The conversation goes deeper into who benefits: people who feel “bad at art,” those stuck in talk therapy, perfectionists, and folks navigating eating disorders, PTSD, or addiction recovery. In couples and families, we explore visual interventions that replace blame with empathy—each person draws their experience, then co-creates a bridge between images to map repair. Elena also clarifies the difference between art as therapy and art in therapy, why trauma-informed media choices matter, and how training protects safety and meaning.

We close with community: Elena’s work with queer, polyamorous, and kink groups in Ottawa, and the role of shared making in rebuilding connection after COVID. If you’ve ever felt something you couldn’t say, this conversation offers tools, language, and hope. Subscribe for more grounded mental health episodes, share with a friend who’d benefit, and leave a review to help others find MindSpa.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to the MindSpa podcast. On today's episode, we have Elena Karunis, who is going to be talking to us about art therapy. Elena currently works at MindSpa Mental Health Center as an intern, working towards her master's in art therapy. Her client base is with children as young as eight years old, teens, adults, couples, and families. Elena tailors her approach developmentally, bringing in age-appropriate, creative, and playful, safe art materials and interventions for younger clients. While with older clients, she combines creativity with verbal exploration of meaning, insight, and growth. Elena has a grounding in teaching in psychology, which helps her understand development, learning styles, and how people grow over time. She holds empathy, authenticity, and collaboration as core values, striving to build safe, non-judgmental spaces where people feel truly seen and heard. Her approach includes modalities beyond art, for example, acceptance and commitment therapy, narrative, mindfulness, attachment base, expressive arts, and integrative humanistic frameworks. Elena believes that everyone is creative and that you don't need prior artistic experience to benefit from art therapy. Often the opposite, because when people feel unsure or not creative, their therapeutic value can be profound. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about this. Yes, yes. You know what? We'd love to start with what brought you into this line of work. I think it's always a really great sort of origin story, starting point.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I've always worked in creative jobs. I started off as a pastry chef.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

And then I moved into teaching. And I think teaching can be very creative. At least I tried to make my classes as interesting and creative as possible to be able to really help all the students find a way of learning. Yeah. And then a few years ago, I had kind of a mental uh not a mental, a health crisis. Okay. And at the end of that, once I was starting to recover, I thought, how do I want to spend the next portion of my life? What do I want to be doing every day? And I thought I want to take the things that I love, which included making art myself. Yeah. And a real interest in how people learn and grow over time and put those two together in a profession. And art therapy was the perfect one for me. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

So, but it sounds like that health crisis had a real turning point for you. This moment of and was there this I can't I don't want to keep doing what I've been doing. I need to kind of shake it up. I need to kind of Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

I had come out of, I had just finished working at a school for three years, and I was working with middle school age kids. So grades six, seven, eight. Ooh, that's a tough tough age to work with. They're a very tough age to work with, but I love them because one minute they are you're having very serious conversations with them. They're very grown up and they're starting to have opinions about things that are separate from their parents.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And then the next minute they're excited because you have stickers.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02:

So I really like the age group, but they are difficult. And um because I had to face my own mortality at the time of that health crisis, yeah. I just felt like I wanted something where I was working directly with people, but without the layers of bureaucracy over me that come with teaching. Right. And so that's why I decided to pivot.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And such a different interaction, that sort of therapeutic one-on-one. Sometimes I do know though that you do couples and family, and I can't wait to hear more about how you incorporate art therapy with couples and family, because I never really put those together before we met in my mind. So I'm I'm excited for you to talk about that. Um, but yeah, very different than a 30-on-one or true.

SPEAKER_02:

But um, I also taught um for quite a while, uh, was doing um ethics. Oh I was teaching an ethics course um in Quebec where ethics is required in all grade levels.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh.

SPEAKER_02:

And so I was doing ethics at the high school level, and you can have these incredible conversations within that, and the students really felt like they could open up and talk about difficult subjects with me. So it felt very much natural. Yeah, yeah, it was a natural fit.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Well, fantastic. I can you yeah, I think the next best place to go is to tell us what art therapy is, because I think that anybody who's listening right now probably doesn't actually quite know or understand what what art therapy is, who it's for, what it helps with, that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Teach us. So art therapy, I like to use the ex the uh explanation that it's like talk therapy, but the artwork is doing the heavy lifting as far as what you're trying to say and what you're trying to express. So we still talk, okay, we still discuss the artwork that you're making, but uh artwork is a way of tapping into feelings and emotions and ideas that you might not have the words for. Okay. So when you come in uh to a session with me, we talk a little bit at the beginning about what's been going on. I will make an an invitation for you to create a piece of art. Okay. Because of course, I am not the boss of them and they can choose whether they're comfortable with that. And sometimes I'll give a couple of different options so that people can choose the thing that speaks to them.

SPEAKER_00:

What would be the options then? Because uh paint comes to mind automatically, drawing comes to mind automatically, but I'm sure there's other options too.

SPEAKER_02:

I use all kinds of different materials. We use paint and clay, and of course, pencil crayons, markers, things like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But also fabric and yarn, and we do weaving, and we use all kinds of different materials depending on what we're trying to get to. Okay. Um, but I went, it might give a couple of different options. It's like, well, would you like to draw a picture of how this uh situation feels for you? Okay, without using like people or specific images. I just want colors and lines and how that feels in your body. So, okay, a bit more abstract. Right. Okay. Or I said might say, then would you prefer to draw a picture of this interaction that you had with the person that made you feel that way? Yeah. So people don't necessarily have to do one specific thing. I like to give people options. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's always gonna be based on the intake that you did with them and the identified goals for therapy, why they're there. You're gonna sort of look at that and then you're gonna start that prompt based on that information then.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And then once you've created the piece, we'll discuss it. You'll tell me all about it because of course the client is the expert. Yeah. I don't know what the colors are.

SPEAKER_00:

So this is a magic interpretation that you're doing. It is not.

SPEAKER_02:

I am not a mind reader. Okay. Um, I do have some, I have some training into what questions to ask and what things to look for. Okay. But it's not mind reading. You are the expert and you're filling me in. Okay. And I am always very curious about what you have to say about your own art. Okay. And then we'll go from there. We'll either create more art, we'll talk some more, and whatever comes out of that will inform what we do next time.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I want to talk a little bit about the workshop that I was with you in the other day because um, without disclosing any names, one uh I love the exercise you had us do, right? You you had us pick an animal to represent ourselves, and then you had us pick an animal to represent a difficult relationship or person in our lives. Um, and then you had us draw an environment uh around it. And it was really interesting because from my experience of it, there were certain things I was doing very purposefully. I was, I knew what I was doing. I was like, I'm gonna make myself this animal for this reason, and this person this animal for this reason, and I'm gonna draw, I drew trees and I'm gonna draw this tree this way for a specific reason in a different way for a different reason. Um, but then you asked me a few questions and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't even like I don't know why I did that. I don't know why I had them faced that way. But when I do think about it, yeah, this is very much indicative of the of the situation because I had the uh somebody else in the picture facing me, that kind of thing. And and how you noticed as well that uh for all three of us that did it, we all put ourselves in the kind of right side of the page.

SPEAKER_02:

Sort of in the bottom left and then the difficult people were all up in the top right. Top right. And and we weren't all right-handed. No, and that's the interesting part. And quite and I was one of the questions I asked, right? So what is what hand were you drawing with? Because it could mean nothing. It could mean just that if you are right-handed and you come from a culture where we draw, where we read left to right, that that could be it. But you all you weren't all right-handed. And it was very much, I think, a matter of trying to put as much distance between that difficult person and yourself as far apart on the page as you could. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is actually, again, just that everybody wanted to do the same thing. So that's probably something that you see the way that that in regular therapy, you see trends, themes, certain things repeat themselves. Certain things often mean the same thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Certain behaviors will show up over and over again. And it's not that it's a guarantee. It's not that everybody is going to do it the exact same way, but there's a trend. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And that can spark that curiosity and then asking and checking in. Do you think that this happened? Because I think if you'd said, do you think one of your reasons for putting them there was because you wanted them as far away from you as possible? I think we we all would have been like, Yep. Yep, I did want them actually. So yeah, that was a it was a very uh it was a great experience to kind of be on the on the receiving end of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, and and something else that that you brought up in that was the um how to use it as a grounding. Um, so can you tell us a little bit? Because you were saying that the intervention of there's an issue going on in your life, and let's use art to discuss the difficult situation, but also I could be feeling very upset, very uh emotional in the session, and art can be used to actually calm things down as well. So, can you tell us a bit about how that's used?

SPEAKER_02:

Right. So there are exercises that we can do using art materials that can be very calming and very grounding. Um, I think people tend to think of things like meditation or um yoga exercises, very um physical things. And this is in a way as well, but with art materials. So one of the things I had you doing was bilateral drawing. So you have in this case, we were using crayons, one in each hand that's a different color, and you are drawing at the same time on the same piece of paper with both hands. Yeah. And especially I was having you like cross over and um try and do certain movements. And what that does is not only is it grounding, it's very calming, it activates both hemispheres of the brain. Yeah. And strengthens the um corpus callosum, the bridge that goes between the two, so that you are able to process things better both verbally and uh visually.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's it also opens you up to the artistic process when we might move forward into something that was more therapeutic.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. And and you we discussed as well, and a lot of people don't, I think, always know this, that we we always talk about the window of affect tolerance, which basically means when someone's in therapy, right? We want to make sure that they are not overactivated. We don't want to be causing anybody any panic attacks or have anybody be um very, very upset. But at the same time, there's also the bottom end of the, so that's the top end of the window of affect tolerance. We're out of the window, we're up too high, and we need to kind of bring it back down. And art interventions can be used to bring it back down. But then there's also the ones that people aren't always as aware of, which is more dissociative. I am shutting down, I am feeling numb, I am feeling empty. And a lot of people experience that in therapy as I don't know, you know, when we're trying to engage verbally, asking questions, and it's just like, I don't know, I don't know. Um, and that's often that shut down outside of the window of affect tolerance, they're they're too low. So, so you were saying that that it can be used for both. It can calm things down, but it can also get us out of that associative place.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. I think um when you hear I don't know, I don't know, there it's very difficult for that person to come up with the language that they need to explain. And so that is why they're saying I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

When you then offer them the opportunity to use art materials, they're no longer having to find the words themselves. And especially if the directive is somewhat abstract. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Then we can give me an example, like an of an abstract, like in that moment, what what you might use as a prompt?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So I might ask them um to use shapes and colors and patterns to express how they're feeling inside right at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And then what materials I offer are also dependent on the person that I'm working with. So if it is somebody who is struggling, they probably are going to find that a more fluid material, such as like watercolors or paints, clay, that sort of thing, um, is going to help open them up a bit more. Um things like pencil crayons and markers, they have a tendency to help us control how we're feeling a bit a bit better. Okay. But if I have somebody who, for example, um is perfectionistic, then we're gonna want them to do something that is they're gonna want to use the pencil crayons. Okay. They're gonna want to do something very controlled and specific. Right. And in a case like that, I would maybe have them make their own paint brushes. Okay. So I have a lot of different materials in my in my studio that they can use to create paint brushes with, and then they have to paint with them. And of course, it's not going to be perfect. No, you're not going to control that very well. You cannot control it. You're going to do the best that you can. And the best you can is perfect. Okay. Is exactly what you need to be doing. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And so that brings us back to one of the biggest misconceptions about art therapy. I th I would think out there. If somebody's looking at their options for therapy and they see art therapy, they're going to think, I'm not an artist, therefore, art therapy isn't appropriate for me. Or even they might even think I'm not good at art. It's not even I'm not an artist, but I'm not good at art, therefore, art therapy isn't the right fit for me. And I think that we we talked about how that's the biggest, that's a huge misconception. Actually, factually, art therapy is good and beneficial and can help anyone, primarily with with pretty much any issue, which I want to hear you talk a bit more about. But before we talk about that, can you tell me a little bit about um who the who it really is the best fit for, though, also? Because I know it's good for everybody, but also I maybe speaking to the people is like if this, if this hasn't worked for you, for example, if talk therapy hasn't worked for you, it could be a good idea to try art therapy, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02:

You're right. The number one thing I hear from people is, well, I'm no good at art. I couldn't possibly do art therapy. I'm no good at art. But art therapy is not about product, it's about process. Yeah. So I don't really care if you can make a pretty picture. Yeah. That's not the point. What we want is for you to be in the moment and creating what feels right for you. And then we'll go from there. Yeah. Um, sometimes you'll be happy with the way it looks, and sometimes you won't. But often, sometimes I'll go back and say, if you could change this, what would you change about it? Okay. And that gives them an opportunity to tell me what they would have done differently if they had the ability, if they had thought of it at the time, if they had more skill. But they don't have to produce it. Okay. So it is a very good therapeutic approach for people who um, for whom talk therapy has gone as far as it can go. Yeah. For people who struggle to express their own feelings, maybe they are not in touch with all of their emotions. And this is a great way to open yourself up to those. Um, but it also, like I you were saying, it works very well with all kinds of different approaches. Yeah. And it is the gold star therapy for certain problems. Um eating disorders. Okay. Wow. Didn't know that. It is an absolutely excellent and uh one of the most recommended therapies for people dealing with eating disorders. Okay. Because here we have a group of people who are trying to control their themselves and their environment as much as they possibly can. They tend not to have um they struggle with the ability to express emotion.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

They're very try controlled in their own emotions. And art therapy gives them the way of starting to release that. Um we can work with any group. There are considerations that we have. There are, for example, um, if you're working with people who have experienced sexual violence, there are certain materials we're not going to use.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

That are tr tend to tend to be more triggering, yeah, especially when you first start. And so knowing what materials work best for what situations is part of the training.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Actually, on that note, can you tell me a little bit more about how you incorporate it in for couples and families?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So when we're working with uh couples or b bigger groups, yeah, um we're doing a lot of the same things. Okay, but we're asking each person involved to give us their point of view. Okay. And even though they may have talked or argued about something over and over and over again, they don't necessarily understand the other person's point of view. And this gives an opportunity for people to really express how they're feeling and what they're thinking and how what the other person is doing is affecting them in a very visual way, which gives the other person in the couple or the other members of the family another way of understanding.

SPEAKER_00:

So would you ever do an intervention of saying let's say we have a child and a parent? Parent, I want you to draw your relationship with your child. Child, I want you to draw your relationship with your parent and have them each draw that. And then would you ever do that?

SPEAKER_02:

I would, but then there's another step.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So I would have each of them do exactly that. Draw how it feels for you being in this relationship. Yeah. And then we'll we're going to discuss it. And then I'm going to have the two of you work together to draw a bridge between your two drawings. Okay. And what would that bridge look like? And what would it involve? Right. And how are we going to move forward on that bridge? Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Would you ever have, because this feels like it could be dangerous, would you ever say to one person, I want you to actually draw the other person, like how you view the other person? Because that intervention that you just said was very much from my perspective, how do I feel in the relationship? Which we know is always safer communication. Like, I feel, not saying you made me feel, it's more I feel. So the I statement. So would that then not be an intervention you would tend to use of like, tell me about this other person and draw or you know, make some art representing the other person?

SPEAKER_02:

I would word it slightly differently. Okay. I would say, tell me what you think it feels like to be that other person. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

What do you So more empathy?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Ah put yourself in their shoes. Right. So tell me when you're having an argument, how do you think it feels for that person? Draw how you think they're experiencing it. Right. And that way it's not as aggressive. It's not as finger pointing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But it's still a way of getting you to think about what the other person is experiencing.

SPEAKER_00:

I just realize how much more gentle of an intervention that is than if someone tells you a story and you say, Well, how do you think that made them feel? Like, like you'd never actually quite say it that way, but generally trying to explore that empathy of how do you think that was for them? This feels like such a gentler because you're it's like create art and imagine how it feels for them. And almost that art piece softens that question to make it almost easier to empathize, I think, with the other person, because it feels less threatening to do it to your feelings in this situation.

SPEAKER_02:

So never thought of that, but that's I I look at it as a more gentle way. And when especially you're dealing with families, and you know, there are so many opinions and so many voices voices. Yeah, it is a wonderful way to give everybody an equal playing field. Right. Um for example, I just did an intake with a family and they have a teenage child, and one of the things I said to the child is uh your parents are not my clients. The family is. Yeah. So your point of view is as important as your mother's or as your father's, but my goal is to help the family. Right. So I I think for uh especially for teens and young people coming in with parents, it's um we're starting from a place that is more inclusive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, a thought that came to mind is I would think that potentially women would gravitate towards art therapy potentially more than men. But can you speak a little bit to the men out there that are hopefully listening? Um, about how how art therapy is actually really amazing for men, particularly, like you said, that maybe struggling to be uh connected to their emotions, they know anger, maybe they're not super familiar with all the other range of emotions. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, society is set up in a way that makes it more um, it makes it easier for women to come to therapy. Yeah. And especially something like art therapy. But for men who struggle to name their feelings, for men who have been through very traumatic event uh events.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So PTSD. Absolutely for PTSD. Here is a way for you to get out all of that, all the bad feelings inside without necessarily having to say them out loud. Okay. And for a lot of men, saying it out loud is difficult. And hopefully uh these art interventions will get you to a point where being able to say it out loud is no longer scary. So a stepping stone. Yes. Yeah. And one of the things I really like about this is that it works so well with other therapies. So, for example, um, if you are a person who is dealing with addiction and you've got an addiction counselor who you're working with, art therapy can be really conducive to helping you deal with the emotions that have come up from dealing with your addiction.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

I am not necessarily the person who is going to help you through your addiction, but I will help you with with all the emotions and the things that come up about around your addiction and around the process of becoming sober.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, what we do know a lot in addiction is it's often used to numb. Um, and so once that substance is gone and the numbing is not happening anymore, a lot of emotions can kind of come up. And we do know that a lot of addictions programs, the the staff that run those, they're really great at the addiction side. They may not be trained, actually fully trained in all the emotions that can kind of come up. So it sounds like it's a good add-on.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's hard work. Going through becoming sober and leaving behind your addictions is hard work. And sometimes it's good to have a place where you can come and say, this is really hard, yeah, and I'm struggling, and make art about it and feel better about where you are and how you're doing when you leave. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Is there anything else about art therapy that we haven't covered that you wanted to make sure to talk about?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, I just I think it it is something that can benefit anybody, whether you are doing strictly art therapy or whether you are using it alongside of another therapy. The other thing, too, is that we are trained in different types of therapeutic work. So, for example, there are specific assessments that we can use with children to look at what kind of attachments they have, whether they are securely attached, whether it's disorganized, whether it's anxious. And so we can move from that to try and rebuild those attachments with their parents.

SPEAKER_00:

And so, um, can you tell us the difference between going for art therapy and having a therapist integrate art into the therapeutic process? Because those, I think the average person wouldn't actually know the difference and therefore wouldn't be able to make an informed choice necessarily on what's best for them. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And unfortunately, there are people who are calling themselves art therapists who have not had the training, are not a member of the association, don't have the uh the background. But um the difference is really that there is art as therapy and there is art in therapy. Okay. So art in therapy might be having a child draw a picture while they're talking to you about something because it is too difficult for them to make eye contact and sit still. So you're having them color a page or maybe play with some Lego while you're talking to them. Yeah. Whereas for me, the art in itself is therapy and is therapeutic. Okay. Um, there's nothing Nothing wrong with you know having a client work like have a little play-doh in their hand to move around while they're talking because it is helping to ground them. Yeah. It's working like a fidget toy for a child with ADHD. But that's different. Okay. That is something to keep their hands busy or to ground them. And I'm happy to teach other therapists grounding techniques because it's useful for them and it is not something that cannot be done properly by another therapist. Okay. Like teaching you about the the bilateral drawing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Yeah. Right? Now I can use that, and that's not the same thing. No, it's it doesn't make me an art therapist.

SPEAKER_02:

No, it doesn't make you an art therapist, but it does give you a skill that you can use with clients that is helpful, but not therapeutic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So both are good. Art in using art in therapy is good. Art therapy is good, but they are not the same thing. And you don't want to confuse them because that would actually be a very different experience working with a therapist who integrates art versus an art therapist. And your training is very, very in-depth about the different materials, I imagine, the different interventions, the different ways, the different questions. Like you said, your training is a lot about the questions to ask during the process in order to really deepen and make that process therapeutic and safe.

SPEAKER_02:

What directive to give, what questions to ask, what materials to use that are going to be helpful, but not triggering. Right. So yeah, it's a very different experience. Okay. Um but for example, you can work with um another therapist who is trained in some other modality and work together using both of your skills in order to help a client as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Well, that is fantastic. I I did want to spend a few minutes because you're very passionate about working with the queer community and the polyamorous community. Um, so can you just speak a little bit about that? Because I feel like those are also, uh at least the polyamorous community, I think, is maybe a community that when people hear that term, first of all, I think, again, a lot of people misunderstand what that term is or is not. Um and uh yeah, about your passion about working with the queer community.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So I've always felt that this was a group of people that were underserved to begin with. Okay. And that my experience has always been that people within that community tend to be very creative. Okay. There is a lot of art making going on within the queer and ethically non-monogamous communities. Yeah. So art therapy is a nice fit for that. Um as a member of the ethically the polyamorous community, I have some lived experience there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And there's a lot of crossover between the queer and the polyamorous communities. So that is a group of people, a community that I am part of. Yeah. And who are very underserved. So I am, for example, right now, I work with a uh queer and uh polyamorous and kink community club in town in Ottawa that and I offer art therapy every other month. Okay. In a workshop there for them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It's been going really well. We've been sold out every time.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So that uh that club is probe and they offer all kinds of educational um and therapeutic um educational and therapeutic um workshops and activities and events that um people within those communities can take part in in their space. And it's very welcoming. It's very um no problem.

SPEAKER_00:

I hate when that happens. That's definitely happened to me.

SPEAKER_02:

Like I have a word that I want to say. I know, right? And then in searching for that word, you then lose the rest of the thought. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But you wanted to talk about probe.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. So probe is this wonderful um club that is geared towards the queer and kink communities. Okay. And they offer all kinds of programs and workshops and activities that are educational and fun and community building. Amazing. And so I've been doing workshops with them and it's been a wonderful experience. They actually I approached them even before I got to the point of being ready to see clients and said, when I am, yeah, this is something I would like to do. And they've been wonderful about supporting me in that.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. I I think that there's so much healing that happens in community. And I think it's something that we lost a lot during COVID. First of all, we just couldn't gather together and create community. And then I think people kind of got used to that and they kind of got habituated to not putting themselves out there, not joining communities. And I love to see more and more communities starting. I I think people are getting it. I think people are realizing that they're not feeling satisfied in life because they've lost community. So I absolutely love to hear about any sort of organization that's creating community. Oh, they're doing a wonderful job about it.

SPEAKER_02:

And they've actually just started a podcast themselves. Amazing. So it's uh it's been a wonderful experience to watch them grow over the last couple of years here in Ottawa and really um extend what they're able to provide for the community. Amazing. One of the other things, though, that we're seeing coming out of COVID is the difficulty our kids and teenagers are having in building community because they were so isolated. And I mean, not having that time together with your peers as a teenager is a real struggle.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and I think it exacerbated an issue that was already happening where people were turning to online communities more than their in-person communities before COVID happened. And then they had to do that actually for two years through COVID. Then I think social anxiety started kind of kicking in for a lot of people, leading to really focusing still on not doing that in-person community. And while I am a huge fan of online communities as well, I think the best is a balance of both. So that these different places in Ottawa are starting to really gather together, invite community. I know that Youth Ottawa is also on a mission to like focus in that youth area as well, to get them in community more again. And I'm excited about it all.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, it's a it's really necessary. I know I was still teaching during COVID, and at one point I taught for six weeks to a blank screen because I could not get students to turn their cameras on. Yeah. Because they were so anxious about seeing themselves on camera. Yeah. So it is, it is a a long-term repercussion of COVID. We're gonna keep working our way out of it. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, thank you so much for being on today's episode of the Mind Spa podcast. We've really enjoyed having you. We'll have you back again for sure. We can talk, I'm sure, about a million different topics. I could talk all day. Yeah. And anybody who wants to learn more about Elena, she's on our website, www.themindspa.ca to learn more and to connect with Elena. Thank you so much. Thank you. So that wraps up today's episode of the MindSpa podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And please remember to reach out to us at mediathemindspa.ca. I hope you enjoy the episode.

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