Varvara stands in front of a church with the sign “GOSPEL HALL” over her head, 2013.
A photo of me coaching at my first in-person office when I started Be With, 2016.
A zoom screenshot from the first time I taught my online course How to Feel in April 2020.
My Story:
My twenties were defined by a desperate search to feel better. After a difficult childhood during the fall of the USSR, and teen years marked by immigration, conservative religion and a desperate search for belonging, I arrived at the cusp of adulthood scared, closeted, hurting and lost.
It took me seven years and thousands of dollars spent on therapists, practices and programs to land in the care of a healing practitioner who could accompany me where I needed to go. Katarina was the first person who didn’t try to fix me, and instead held a space for me to honour my wounds and root down below them into my inherent goodness. She taught me to trust myself, celebrate my queerness, take my wants and needs seriously, and question the incessant critical chatter of the mind.
Slowly, I began to unfurl like a tightly closed flower. I healed my chronic depression, grieved the loss of harmful beliefs, re-trained in coaching and psychotherapy, started my own coaching practice called Be With, and opened up to love by marrying my now wife, Tanya.
However, as I fostered greater stability, I found myself frozen in terror when I tried to move towards thriving, deep intimacy and meaningful social action. It was here that I learned more about personal and collective trauma, and the healing work of embodiment. I embarked on somatic therapy and began to unpack the personal, systemic and ancestral experiences of harm I and my people had survived, caused and perpetuate.
I started to see myself in the context of a complex world - one shaped both by the resilience and goodness of all living things, as well as the oppressive systems we’ve inherited including ableism, racism, patriarchy, classism, colonialism and more. As both oppressor and oppressed, I came into an understanding of the way people and systems act as mirrors for one another. Personal and collective harm go hand in hand, but so do our personal and collective healing.
I could no longer work for collective liberation without living out my own.
In turn, my own liberation demanded action towards liberation for all.
This radically changed the direction of both my own healing and Be With.
I turned my efforts towards healing myself in the context of my own family and lineage, trained in somatic trauma resolution, and finally re-structured Be With from the ground up.
Be With began as an emotional wellness coaching practice, expanding to group offerings, retreats, physical products and online courses. Today Be With offers somatic psychoeducation through online courses, coaching, and community in order to support the work of those working for personal and collective liberation.
I’m so glad you’re here and can’t wait to meet you.
Varia* (she/her)
* the short form of Varvara, my birth name, which I reclaimed after nearly two decades of going by the anglicized Barbara
Experience and Training:
I’ve spent the last thirteen years offering embodied emotional support through one on one and group coaching, teaching, spiritual care, facilitation, storytelling and community building. My work is shaped by a cross-disciplinary approach to healing that combines my background in somatic trauma resolution, Gestalt psychotherapy, co-active coaching, creative arts and spiritual care. My approach is politicized, non-hierarchical, and process (rather than outcome) oriented. Queerness, immigration, class struggle, and lived experience of trauma orient my work towards justice for all and a practice of accessibility as love. My magic is in being with people. So is my joy.
Relevant certifications include:
Alchemical Alignment: Somatic Imprints of Death in Life and Birth
Modules 8 - 14 , 2022 - 2023 (105 hours)
Brigit Viksnins MAT, SEP, RCST®, BCTMB, LMTFoundations in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry
Ancestral Reconnection and Repair Through Embodied Practice (50 hours)
Marika Heinrichs, MEd, RSME/TAlchemical Alignment: Bodywork for Trauma Resolution and Embodiment of Spirit
Levels 1-4 , 2021 (100 hours)
Brigit Viksnins MAT, SEP, RCST®, BCTMB, LMTCoaches Training Institute
Co-Active Coaching Fundamentals, 2015 (17.75 hours)
ICF Accredited Coach TrainingCertificate in Gestalt Psychotherapy Theory and Methodology
One-Year Traning Program for Professionals, 2012 (170 hours)
Year Two - Introduction to Field Dynamics , 2013(170 hours)
Gestalt Institute of TorontoFoundations in the Psychology of Counselling
As part of a Master’s of Divinity, 2013 (45 hours)
Dr. Marsha Hewitt, Trinity College, University of TorontoStudies towards a Master’s of Divinity
with a focus on Queer Theology, 2011 - 2013
Queen’s University, University of TorontoBachelor of Arts with Honours in Philosophy
York University, 2005 - 2009
Toronto, Ontario
Lineages of Practice:
My deepest gratitude is extended to my own lineage of practice, built first and foremost on the foundation of my own well-being. This foundation was and is made possible by the long-term support and encouragement of my community, as well as the pivotal guides in my own life - Katarina Maatta-Hebdon and Marika Heinrichs. I extend my deepest thanks to my teachers in healing, Brigit Viksnins and the faculty of The Gestalt Institute of Toronto, as well as Tele Darden and Steph Jagger who offer me private practice supervision and mentorship, respectively. My approach is shaped by the public teaching work of adrienne maree brown, Lindsay Mack, Brené Brown, Janina Fisher, Kathy Kain, Rachael Maddox and Rob Bell. My deepest bow goes to each of them, as well as to the ancient traditions that shape the lineages my work flows from, including the teachings of the Buddha, Indigenous teachings, Christian mystics, and earth based worship, ritual and magic.
At this point, I feel my life’s calling is to support myself and others to live in right relationship with self, others & the more than human world.
I am a cis white queer femme, a Russian immigrant, a cat mom and a wife to Tanya Neumeyer. I live in what is colonially known as Toronto in Canada, but has always been and will be Indigenous land. As both a settler and an immigrant in my lifetime, I hold the privilege, complexity and harm by which I get to call this place home seriously. The land I live on is part of the Dish with One Spoon Territory - a treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect. I look to this treaty as a guiding principle for how to live on the land, working towards decolonization through solidarity, education and when called for direct action.