Meet Your Facilitator

Helen Butlin brings 25 years of experience as a psychotherapist (Registered since 2015 with CRPO) with ten years specializing in oncology in a large regional medical cancer treatment centre. During those years on the Supportive Care team in a spiritual-existential counselling role she developed a unique method for guiding individuals in the art and science of cultivating personal wisdom for living with life-altering cancer diagnoses. This individual and group process became titled, “Soul-Medicine” informed by Carl Jung’s depth psychology for linking our conscious mind with the deep, embodied, intuitive wisdom of the whole human psyche and contemporary psychological interventions for restoring well-being, mental health, and fostering inner strengths.

Soul-Medicine groups became the basis of her research for her doctoral study. This methodology integrates Jung’s central tenet that we have an adaptive capacity to generate the wisdom we need for whatever challenges we are facing. Helen integrates Jung’s insights with Mindful Self-Compassion and Polyvagal Therapy which enable us to learn how to ground our body into anchored states for clearing fear, handling uncertainty, listening to our embodied intuition and ‘knowing’ for meeting difficult decisions, facing challenges, being self-compassionate when we are in acute distress and grief, and discovering the glimmers in the present moment that feed a sense of hope, inner strength, connection, renewal of embodied presence. In so doing, cultivating this ‘wisdom-making’ capacity using specific skills that integrate into your own unique ‘wisdom-compass’ that guides you, day to day in how to find what you need from within and without.

Helen thus weaves the creative, intuitive, embodied, reflective, existential, spiritual, human and organic worlds together for harnessing what is your human birthright – to live each day shaped by our own wisdom for living in the present moment and navigating whatever arises with skills to stay grounded and capable of meeting what comes with hopeful inner strength, radical acceptance of ‘what is’, openness to moments of joy, grounding, peace, appreciation, self-compassion even in the midst of hardship and struggle. 

Helen has extensive training in Mindful Self-Compassion, Polyvagal Therapy (nervous system regulation), complex trauma, treating existential-spiritual distress, and wisdom-centered approaches to healing drawn from many differing traditions. She developed Soul-Medicine For Living With Cancer Support Groups from her deep work with hundreds of cancer patients seeking something more than medical treatment alone. She has facilitated groups over many years and brings an organic approach to drawing out each group’s unique wisdom.

Helen holds a Ph.D. in health sciences with research focused on wisdom-formation in women living with cancer. She combines clinical expertise with personal understanding of what it means to find your way through life's most challenging passages.