About Vanya
Vanya Laporte
Registered Clinical Counsellor, Internal Family Systems and Certified Hakomi Practitioner
Director of Thriving Roots Counselling Services
Vanya’s basket of skills weave together mindfulness, a body-centered and trauma-informed approach, along with deep nature connection. She holds a deeply compassionate and nourishing space for her clients that is both gentle and grounded.
Clients feel welcomed and valued in Vanya’s calm, supporting presence.
Vanya is a highly competent and respectful counsellor who holds kindness and curiousity as her gold standards. She is committed to honoring the unique qualities of each individual and helping them discover their own innate resources for well-being.
Vanya especially loves to work with individuals who want support with:
- Anxiety
- Grief/loss
- Stress/burnout
- Parenting
- Relationship counselling
- Life transitions
- Pregnancy/Postpartum
- Reconnection with the natural world
Vanya also specializes in Nature Based Therapy to meet the needs of youth, families and individual adults who are seeking an alternative approach to mental health services.
Nature Based Therapy can help support clients with:
- Stress, anxiety and depression
- Trauma
- Family conflict and parenting support
- ADHD
- Grief and Loss
- Emotional regulation
- Challenges with social skills
- Life transitions and personal growth
- Reconnecting with the natural world
Approach & Values
Using a compassionate approach Vanya helps clients by supporting their self discovery both mindfully and somatically. By using mindfulness practises the client and counsellor work together to bring normally inaccesible mental processes into consciousness, gently and efficiently. With increased awareness to these mental processes, such as thoughts, feelings, and habits that may be causing unnecessary suffering, they can be examined and modified to provide a more realistic and nourishing way of living. This work of supported self discovery requires clients to enter short periods (a minute or less) of mindfulness throughout the sessions.
Most people are tired of “their story”. This approach is not about talking out your problems or your emotional history for lengthy amounts of time. Your history is written in the way you do things every minute. Vanya will be looking and listening for these defining characteristics and will bring them to your attention as a part of setting up little experiments in mindfulness.
There are many rewards from mindfulness-based counselling- relief from persistent, painful emotions and behaviours, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of yourself which can provide more freedom to choose how you feel, think, and react, and how to engage in more rewarding relationships.
With increased awareness and compassionate support, you get to choose how to live a meaningful life!
I am a cisgendered, white woman who uses the pronouns she/her. My approach is inclusive – queer-positive, body-positive, gender-affirming, and culturally sensitive.
I acknowledge that I live and work on traditional territories of the LƏK̓ʷƏŊƏN & W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples.
Vanya also co-facilitates therapeutic groups.
Some past groups include: Tending the Hearth for Parents, Renewal of the Creative Path, Mindful Mamas, Nature-Based Grief Support, Mindfulness For Anxious Times, and Remembering Our Resilience: Tools for Coping with Covid.
Telehealth Counselling
Online video or phone sessions are a great option for accessible counselling services with Vanya. Many clients find the same benefits with telehealth services as they do with in-person services.
In office services in Victoria, BC
Located in Victoria, BC, near Hillside, Vanya offers in-person counselling options (currently on Fridays).
Nature-Based Counselling Services
Vanya conducts nature-based counselling sessions outdoors on public, well- groomed trails, mainly in the Highlands district.
Nature Based Therapy can often meet the needs of youth, families and adultswho are seeking an alternative approach to mental health services.
Book Online HERE
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