Who am I today?
I am a mother, artist, immigrant, registered psychotherapist (Qualifying) and someone who spent a long time not knowing that I mattered.
I work online across Ontario with people navigating complex trauma, childhood emotional neglect, and the particular exhaustion of functioning well while feeling nothing inside. My training spans nine years of ceremonial work in the Peruvian Amazon and postgraduate studies in Expressive Arts Therapy at the CREATE Institute in Toronto — CRPO# 22667.
I understand what it means to grow up feeling invisible. To learn early that your needs were too much, that you had to earn your place, that love was conditional on being easy, good, or small. I carried that story in my body for years before I found a way to set it down.
That's what brought me to this work — not an academic interest in healing, but a desperate need for it.
And what I found, slowly and through many languages, is that the body knows the way home. We just have to learn to listen to it.
About Mariya Garnet
How I got here:
Born in the Soviet Union and raised in Ukraine, I immigrated to Canada at 18 to pursue filmmaking and media arts. I was building a career I loved, and carrying something I didn't have words for yet: not quite belonging, working hard to be seen and never fully believing I was.
At 25, an encounter with ayahuasca stopped me in my tracks. I felt something in my body loosen that I hadn't known was held. I left my career, sold what I had, and moved to the Peruvian Amazon. What I thought would take six months took nine years.
In Peru (2008-2017):
I apprenticed with master curanderos Enrique Santiago Paredes Melendes and Reyna Luz Edery in Peruvian Vegetalismo, the Amazon's plant medicine tradition. It wasn't just ceremony. I was learning how healing happens: not through insight or willpower, but in the body, in the space beneath language.
Over those years I sat with hundreds of people carrying deep trauma: grief, abandonment, shame, the loneliness of never truly mattering to the people who were supposed to love you most. I learned to hold that without flinching, and to create space where something locked away for decades could finally, carefully, move.
In 2012, I co-founded Canto Luz Centre for Research and Healing in the Amazon. In 2017, I returned to Canada to start my family and bring what I'd learned to more people.
Returning to Canada (2017-Present):
When I came back, I went to school to translate what I knew into ethical, supervised, clinical practice, completing my postgraduate studies in Expressive Arts Therapy at the CREATE Institute in Toronto.
The 17 years I spent sitting with people in ceremony gave me something clinical training alone can't: an embodied understanding of how trauma lives in the body, how transformation happens beneath the level of narrative, and how to hold space for what has never felt safe enough to be seen. Clinical training gives that knowledge a rigorous, ethical container, so what I offer is both soulful and safe.
Today, I practice as a psychotherapist, facilitate workshops, speak at conferences on psychedelic integration and expressive arts, and mentor practitioners at the intersection of traditional and contemporary healing.
TRAINING & CREDENTIALS
Education & Professional Training
Traditional Apprenticeship:
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Ongoing apprenticeship in Peruvian Vegetalismo (Amazonian plant medicine tradition) since 2008
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Direct training with master curanderos Enrique Santiago Paredes Melendes and Reyna Luz Edery
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Co-founder & former director of Canto Luz Centre for Research and Cultural Preservation (2012-2017)
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Guided over 1,000 individuals through traditional psychedelic ceremonies and healing work
Contemporary Postgraduate Education:
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Neuro Affective Relational Model for Complex Trauma and CPTSD, Complex Trauma Training Center (in progress)
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Postgraduate studies in Expressive Arts Psychotherapy (EXAT), CREATE Institute, Toronto
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Diploma in Applied Psychology (Integral Neuroprogramming), Institute of Advanced Psychotechnologies
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Advanced Diploma in Media Arts, Sheridan College
Professional Memberships & Recognition:
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Expressive Arts Therapist, Ontario Expressive Arts Therapists Association (OEATA)
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Speaker and facilitator at major conferences including CATA-OEATA and McKenna Academy
Languages:
English, Russian, Spanish
How I work
My work is about creating sacred space where you can meet yourself without judgment, where you can explore the depths of your experience without having to perform or pretend.
Whether we're working with paint and clay, sitting in meditation, processing a difficult experience, or simply talking about what's alive in you right now—every moment is an opportunity for remembering that you are whole, that you are welcome, that you belong.
As a therapist, I bring warmth, empathy, and a sense of humor into our work together. I leave my own agenda at the door and follow your cues, offering support when you need it and gently challenging you when it serves your growth. I strive to find a balance between seriousness and lightness—honoring the depth of your experience while making space for joy and laughter along the way.
Much of the work I hold is quiet and old — the grief of feeling like you never quite mattered, the exhaustion of a lifetime of earning your place, the longing for a parent who couldn't give you what you needed. I know that terrain from the inside. I know what it takes to find your way back from it. And I know how to sit with you while you do.
You are not a problem to be solved. You are a mystery to be lived, a song to be sung, a work of art in constant creation. My honor is to witness your unfolding and reflect back the magnificence I see—especially when you can't see it yourself.