Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Yes. We offer secure, privacy-protected virtual sessions to clients anywhere in Alberta and across Canada. Individual provider availability may vary as per their specific licensing and governing body regulations. While many clients worry that virtual therapy might feel "distant," we find it offers unique benefits—especially for busy people with mental health, pain, and trauma concerns impacting them: Ease: Virtual meetings allow your to meet on your terms, in a place your prefer, without travel pressure. They remove barriers that may otherwise get in the way of attending your sessions as planned. Connection: Research consistently shows no difference between in-person and video meetings. The most important thing to your progress it that you feel a good connection with your therapist, a good "fit". As long as your internet or mobile signal holds, the human connection is seamless. Real-World Context: Instead of describing your home or office to your therapist, they can "see" it without coming into your physical space. This allows them to provide real-time ergonomic advice or help you organize to support your mental health. Flexibility: You can access specialized care regardless of where you live, and fit sessions into a workday without extra travel.

Professional therapy is a regulated health profession, which means we are generally required to be licensed in the province where you are physically located during the appointment. Currently, Mindful Rehab is fully licensed to serve clients throughout Alberta and across Canada. However, exceptions exist: Regulations Vary: Some specific provinces allow for temporary services or specific out-of-province arrangements. Dual Registration: Some of our team members may hold licenses in other jurisdictions. Recommendation: Please search through our Team to see who is specifically able to cover your region. If you live outside Alberta, please feel free to contact us directly before booking. We can quickly verify the specific regulations for your province and confirm if who on our team is permitted to work with you.

Yes. One of the defining strengths of Occupational Therapy is that we don't just treat you in a clinic; we meet you where life happens. We offer Home and Community-Based Services, which can include workplace consultations or meetings at public locations. Your environments are a key part of healthy function, and navigating public spaces is important to engage in meaningful activities that sustain wellness. Why choose a community/home visit? The Environment Factors: Sometimes, the barrier to your recovery isn't just internal (your mood, thoughts, or energy), it's external (a chaotic home office, a stressful commute, overwhelming stimulation). By seeing your space, we can make practical changes for your progress. Real-Time Skill Building: Just as we talk thought difficulties, we can also work through them with you in real-time. This helps shift from default reactions in difficult or unfamiliar situation to deliberate responses that maintain your ability to participate. Note: Therapist availability for home and community visits depends on your location and funding. Home and community visits include travel time for your local therapist. Please ask about this during your intake.

Mindful Rehab is happy to offer outdoor walking appointments, or "Walk and Talks", with a local therapist primarily serving the Edmonton, Calgary, and Central Alberta areas. Mental Health Occupational Therapists are uniquely regulated to assist you in your personal and desired environments, and have specialized training to navigate personal health while in public spaces. Movement is often a missing link in both processing experiences and recovery. When you feel "stuck" in pain, stress, emotions, or trauma, the body is often physically stagnant too. Walking helps bridge the mind and body, allowing for a restorative experience and helping to integrate a strained nervous system. Why choose to have a walking appointment? Regulation via Movement: Rhythmic physical activity (walking) naturally regulates the nervous system, making it easier to process emotions, thoughts, and situations than sitting still. Less Pressure: Walking side-by-side, rather than face-to-face, reduces the intensity of eye contact and can make opening up feel safer and more natural. There may be numerous opportunities to refocus during the walk, allowing for natural conversation that helps to leave lasting impact. Connecting Internal & External: Meeting outdoors or in community helps to bring the skills and strategies outside of the virtual session or traditional office. This creates natural opportunities for practice and mastery building. How "Walk and Talks" work: Locations: Your local therapist has a designated meeting location for their walking meetings, or they can travel to you. Quiet trails are often preferred. Attire & Safety: Please ensure weather-appropriate clothing for the season, such as sunscreen, shades, water and in the hot summer, and warm jackets, toques and mitts in the winter. Other People: Being mindful of surroundings and sensitive topics, your therapist will help soften conversations and shift discussion focus as needed should the walk become busy or crowded. The Hybrid Plan: Your therapist always has a "Plan B." If the weather is poor or conditions unsafe, such as icy streets and sidewalks, your therapist will offer an alternatives session plan, ensuring your path of growth isn't interrupted by a snowstorm.

Outdoor walking sessions combine counselling therapy with the functional benefits of movement and nature. Movement is often a missing link in both processing experiences and recovery. When you feel stuck with pain, stress, emotions, or trauma, the body is often physically stagnant too. Walking helps bridge the mind and body, rooted in the science of the nervous system, allowing for a restorative experience. How "Walk and Talks" work: Locations: Your local therapist has a designated meeting location for their walking meetings, or they can travel to you. Quiet trails are often preferred. The Walk: We go at a pace that feels comfortable for you. This is a professional clinical session, just without the four walls. Attire & Safety: Please ensure weather-appropriate clothing for the season, such as sunscreen, shades, water and in the hot summer, and warm jackets, toques and mitts in the winter. Other People: Being mindful of surroundings and sensitive topics, your therapist will help soften conversations and shift discussion focus as needed should the walk become busy or crowded. The Hybrid Plan: Your therapist always has a "Plan B." If the weather is poor or conditions unsafe, such as icy streets and sidewalks, your therapist will offer an alternatives session plan, ensuring your path of growth isn't interrupted by a snowstorm. The Clinical Health & Wellness Benefits: Nervous System Regulation: The rhythmic motion of walking (bilateral stimulation) naturally calms the instinctual stress response, making it easier to process experiences and emotions. Reduced Professional Pressure: Walking side-by-side, rather than sitting face-to-face, reduces the intensity of conversation. This often helps to discuss sensitive or difficult topics more freely, while in tune with the present. From Default to Deliberate: Nature provides a dynamic environment. We use this to practice real-time mindfulness - shifting between internal awareness and external presence, allowing for healthy regulation and restored focus.

Movement is one of the keys ways we can regulate our bodies, along with the other senses. When stress and trauma activations kick the nervous system into "survival mode", people experience distress that results in automatic, impulsive reactions - classic Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn responses. I turn, these default reactions create tension in the body. Movement works by reversing these nervous system signals - using the body to signal safety to the brain. How it works: "Bottom-Up" Regulation: You can't always "talk yourself out" of strong emotions. Rhythmic movement (like walking) acts as a physical anchor, demanding some of the body's attention processes to coordinate, burning off excess stress energy, and calming the automatic, impulsive reactions. Breaking the Loop: When you feel stuck in your head (rumination), refocusing on your body forces a shift. It moves you from a "Default" mode of spinning in thoughts and feelings to a "Deliberate" mode that restores your presence, intention, and ability to be effective in the moment. Restoring Flow: Emotion is inherently meant to move and flow. Physical activity engages many key brain regions, as well as increased circulation and oxygen to the brain. This helps you process strong feelings and difficult experiences rather than holding them in your body as tension that eats away at you.

Activity-based therapy moves therapy beyond just talking about your functional or practical concerns to actively working through them. It is based on the science that doing changes being. When traditional talk therapy isn't helping you move forward, activity-based therapy can kickstart the real-world progress. Occupational Therapists (OTs) are experts in activity-based therapy, and Mental Health OTs (MHOTs) are particularly skilled to apply this for mental health, pain, and trauma issues. How it works (The Internal-External Connection): How we act is the bridge between our inner experiences, thoughts and feelings, and external lives. Instead of planning or preparing a strategy, it's practice in real-time with your OT. This bridges the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Examples of Activity-Based Sessions: Walking Meetings: Bring your therapy and counselling outdoors with your local therapist. Walks introduce more movement, reduce pressure, and allow for healthy regulation while talking through concerns. Home Meetings: If you need help in your home, an OT can visit to assess things and determine practical solutions for immediate improvement. MHOTs assist with various in-home needs, including self-care, home management, routine organization, and safety. Instead of talking about anxiety in the past tense, we might engage in a challenging task together to trigger low-level stress, then practice "deliberate" regulation tools in the moment to manage it. Exposure Therapy: Issues related to anxiety and trauma make it difficult to be in different specific community places (like a grocery store or gym), a MHOT will assist you to approach the challenges in a paced, successful way. Approaching challenge in this deliberate way allows for skills practice, regulation, confidence, and progress. Functional Planning: We don't just tell you to "get organized." We actively work with you to structure your time and routines, helping you break down overwhelming goals into manageable steps that you can actually execute. The Goal: To help you shift from "Default" (reacting to life) to "Deliberate" (practicing life), ensuring the skills you learn in therapy actually stick in the real world.

Our dedicated team of regulated mental health professionals are trained and experienced in a variety of evidence-based therapeutic approaches and mental health treatment modalities. Mental Health Occupational Therapists bridge psychological and physiological care with a function-focused approach, both internal and external, to holistically address mental health, pain, and trauma concerns. All of our team are work with modern, evidence-based mental health approaches, which include: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Prolonged Exposure (PE) Therapy Occupational Therapy (OT) Additional trainings and specialties, such as Somatic Experiencing (SE) or Therapeutic Arts, vary by individual provider. Please review Our Team to see who may be a good fit for your, or feel free to get in touch!

The Mindful Rehab™ Method is a specialized approach to mental health recovery that bridges the gap between traditional talk therapy and real-world wellness. Developed by Logan McColl, our Lead Mental Health Occupational Therapist, Licensed Counselling Therapist, and Mindful Rehab Clinic Director, this method is designed to help people experiencing get unstuck and back on track. The Mindful Rehab™ Method addresses the root causes of distress and dysfunction, facilitates sustainable strategies to foster resilience, and enables intentional growth towards your desired way of living. The key concepts of the Mindful Rehab™ Method utilize neuroscience-informed strategies and mind-body principles with modern therapy approaches to shift unhelpful patterns for . We focus on four key pillars: Moving from Default to Deliberate Planning for Intentional Growth Address Unhelpful Distress Cycles Establish Helpful Resilience Habits Read more about the Mindful Rehab™ Method here. How the MindfulRehab™ Method Works Our Mental Health Occupational Therapists (MHOTs) guide clients through a non-linear, three-phase therapeutic growth journey: Prepare: Clarify how issues play out and how to address them with practical strategies. Approach: Move through challenges in a paced manner to practice skills and build confidence. Progress: Build mastery with ongoing practice, and further personal growth in other desired areas. Why Choose the MindfulRehab™ Method as your therapeutic approach? Evidence-Based: Rooted in current research conducted in neuroscience, psychology, and occupational therapy that bridges psychological, physiological, and function aspects of wellness. Internal Wellness: Work with how you think and feel, mind and body, to foster a healthy self-relationship and regulate nervous system. Function-Focused: We move beyond traditional talk therapy to bring the conversation into practical habits, supportive environments, and real-world success. Specialized Care: Our therapists are highly trained and experienced in personal wellness and psychosocial rehabilitation, addressing symptoms and dysfunction related to emotions, cognition, pain, activity, and relationships —including trauma, neurodiversity, and work issues. Accessibility: Our team is available to help virtually across Canada and in-person across Alberta. Our Mission: To help you show up at your best and thrive in your meaningful, desired life. Are you ready to restore your function? Connect with a Mindful Rehab Therapist today to learn how they can support your personal path for growth and wellness.