Rachael Frankford, RSW

My work is grounded in 25 years of experience walking alongside clients in their healing journey as a registered social worker, therapist, front line mental health worker, and educator. I worked for 15 years in a hospital setting serving a diverse, inner city population of Toronto. It was in this environment I learned the value of bringing a humanistic, client centred approach to working with patients dealing with chronic physical and mental health challenges in a medical setting. In 2015 I transitioned to a full time therapy practice so that I could deepen my commitment to offering counseling services that are holistic and trauma informed, combining the best of ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience that we have available to us at this moment in history. Our clinic combines traditional talk therapy with somatic, neuroscience informed interventions such as EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and Infra Low Frequency Neurofeedback. My community based, social work values have always been front and centre in my personal and professional life and motivated me to create a group therapy practice, New Pathways, where clinicians can bring an integrative approach to working as a team and to providing the best care possible for clients. I have a particular interest in transpersonal psychology and psychedelic integration which has been an integral part of my own healing journey. I have completed advanced training in Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy with the California Institute of Integral Studies, the Michener Institute (University of Toronto), and MAPS training in MDMA for PTSD. I am currently enrolled in the Grof Legacy Training where I am deepening my understanding of work with holotropic states of consciousness. Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy offers a paradigm shift in mental health care that is long overdue and emerging research is supporting the benefits of these interventions in controlled, clinical settings. We still have a ways to go before these treatments are readily available and accessible in legal settings. In the meantime, I am committed to offering psychedelic integration services using a transpersonal and harm reduction approach so that clients can responsibly process their non ordinary experiences in a safe and therapeutic environment.