Linda Warman became a social worker after she started her own personal growth journey.
The Toronto-born woman had a successful career with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, planning events for Canada’s prime ministers and lieutenant governors, even once standing behind then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney during a speech in the early 1990s when he helped a mountie who was standing at attention to a chair after she nearly fainted.
“(It was) at a large ceremony we did at the Royal York Hotel and (I) witnessed kind of a magical moment,” she said.
After Mulroney sat the mountie down, without losing a beat during his speech, he quipped, “It would take a speech of mine to make a mountie weak in the knees.”
Although Warman said she loved the job for the adrenaline rush it gave her, eventually she grew tired of Toronto and moved to Thornhill to raise her family.
In 1989, she started therapy on her own personal growth journey.
“I was so amazed at the healing,” she said.
Warman was so inspired by her own experience, she decided to go back to school, studying psychology at the University of Toronto. She got her masters of social work from Wilfrid Laurier University in 1999.
She moved to Bradford West Gwillimbury in 2013 and has continued her practice.
“I can help a broad spectrum of people,” she said, but “having been on a spiritual quest for most of my adult life” I tend to help people interested in a holistic, psycho-spiritual journey.
“Seeking truth can be different to different people,” she added. “Psychospirituality is about finding purpose and making meaning. How do we make sense of the suffering?”
Warman dedicates two hours every other Friday for clients who pay what they can, even if that is nothing.
She practices out of her BWG home, and she often does couples counselling, and she is certified in Imago relationship therapy, which Warman points out the method has been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey.
The author Harville Hendrix, she said, writes about his theory of “intentional dialogue” and putting that into action.
“Relationships are linchpins to own lives,” Warman said. “When they’re working, everything seems possible. Everything loses meaning without our intimate connection.”
Along with developing better relationships with others, Warman said there is a need for people to work on their connections with nature.
“There’s a lot of people right now suffering from anxiety and depression. Sound mental health rests upon a foundation of sound physical health,” she said, adding she encourages some clients to eat healthier and get active. “(We have a) forgotten relationship with the fresh air and the sunshine.”
For more information about Linda Warm, visit lindawarman.ca or call 905-775-7979.
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