About my practice
Talk therapy, somatic therapy and bodywork rooted in remembrance of our innate wholeness
I'm Vanessa Deverell, a Registered Clinical Counsellor, somatic therapist, and craniosacral therapist in Nelson, BC. I work with individual adults (19+) who are ready to create lasting positive change through integrated approaches that honour both body and mind—whether through counselling, craniosacral therapy, or a combination of both.
The root of the word 'healing' means 'to make whole.' This guides everything I do – helping you reconnect the parts of yourself that have become fragmented through life's challenges.
Integration of multiple streams
You are complex and multifaceted. Your treatment should reflect this.
I weave together several powerful approaches to create healing that addresses the whole person:
Somatic Experiencing® principles guide how we work with your nervous system. Rather than diving straight into overwhelming material, we learn to track sensations, impulses, and body states with curiosity. We work at the edge of your capacity—close enough to feel something shift, but not so far that you become flooded. This creates the conditions for your nervous system to complete responses it couldn't finish during difficult experiences, releasing stored survival energy without retraumatization.
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy offers deep listening through gentle touch. As a Registered Craniosacral Therapist (RCST®), I work with the body's inherent capacity for nervous system regulation and healing that occurs beneath the level of language. This modality creates profound states of rest and integration through gentle, attuned contact.
Mindfulness practices invite a deeper quality of present-moment experience. Through cultivating this quality of attention, you will naturally begin to notice more spaciousness between perception and reaction—finding choice where before there was only automatic response. My own meditation practice since 2012 informs how I help you cultivate this fundamental capacity—learning that where you place your attention shapes your entire experience.
Body-mind integration restores coherence in a system that's often divided against itself. You might experience intense fatigue alongside pressure to keep striving, or a deep lack of safety alongside compliant behaviour. We work to reconnect your instinctive, intuitive knowing with your intelligence. Both matter. Our work together creates space for integration in a culture that fragments us.
The gap between insight and change
Perhaps you've had this experience: leaving a therapy session having gained insights about yourself, understanding the origins of your patterns—and yet somehow the understanding doesn't translate into feeling or living differently. The anxiety persists. The relationship patterns repeat. The body remains spring-loaded.
This gap points to something essential about how we're put together: consciousness and embodiment aren't separate—we experience the world through our bodies, not despite them. My undergraduate work exploring trauma and embodied memory through phenomenology taught me that lasting change requires engaging both our capacity to understand and our lived, felt experience.
“The world is not what I think, but what I live through.”
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The language of the body
How we inhabit our bodies tells a story that words often miss.
Your posture reveals whether you're braced for impact or open to connection. The gestures you make without awareness—fidgeting, crossing arms, turning away—signal your nervous system's state. Your breathing patterns, muscle tension, and movement quality all communicate what's happening internally.
These aren't problems to fix. They're entry points for self-awareness and potential transformation.
Most people are unconscious of these signals, but learning to read them opens a portal to understanding yourself. This isn't about forcing yourself to appear more "open" or trying to perform the external trappings of peace. It's about learning to respect your body's responses, explore them with compassion and curiosity, and perhaps allow them to be expressed more fully so your system can find a new equilibrium.
Your body has been communicating all along—our work helps you become fluent in reading its signals.
Our culture splits mind from body in countless subtle ways. We speak of "managing" emotions, "treating" bodies, "controlling" reactions—as if the basic, felt experience of being human could be managed from the outside. This philosophical foundation helps me see your struggles differently: not as problems to fix, but as intelligent responses encoded in your nervous system, waiting to be understood and brought into alignment with present realities.
What makes this practice distinct
I don't treat emotions and life experiences as problems to sterilize or analyze away. Much of what we experience as psychological distress is actually a normal response to challenging circumstances, past or present. You may need support navigating these experiences, but the feelings themselves don't need to be pathologized or eliminated—they need to be understood and met with compassion.
The combination of credentials I hold—Registered Clinical Counsellor, Registered Craniosacral Therapist, and ongoing training in Somatic Experiencing®—is relatively uncommon. This allows me to work fluidly between talk therapy and body-based approaches, meeting you where you are rather than fitting you into one modality.
I bring a philosophical perspective to our work together—helping you see your struggles not as personal failures but as part of the larger human condition. This shift from "what's wrong with me?" to "what happened, and how did my response make sense—perhaps even save me from worse outcomes?" can be profoundly liberating.
I'm comfortable with complexity and paradox. You don't need to have neat answers or a clear path forward. We can hold multiple truths at once and explore what emerges without forcing premature resolution.
Professional background
Current credentials
Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) – British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (insurance coverage available)
Registered Craniosacral Therapist (RCST®) – Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America
Somatic Experiencing® three-year Professional Training (to be completed in 2026)
Education
M.A. in Counselling Psychology (Honours) – Yorkville University (2023)
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy 700-hour practitioner training – Body Intelligence (2022)
B.A. in Philosophy (Honours) – McGill University (2015)
Ashtanga Yoga 200-hour Teacher Training – Sattva Yoga Shala (2015)
Specialized training
Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) workshop with Frank Anderson
Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy workshop with Deah Baird
Intensive Mindfulness Training with Richard Sears
Traditional Chinese Medicine foundations
Reiki I & II
Working together
Whether you come for counselling or craniosacral therapy, my commitment is the same: to embrace the wholeness of who you are. I offer space for you to both make sense of your story and be deeply intimate with your felt experience.
We'll work together to help you fully inhabit your life—to say 'yes' to both pleasurable and painful experiences, discovering freedom and choice that didn't seem possible before.
Learn more about my personal journey →
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“I have received profound sessions of both cranio & council with Vanessa that have led me to great depths of realization on my personal healing journey. I am grateful and would highly recommend others to Vanessa.”