Psychotherapy Practicum Placement
At Heal Through Connection, we offer a Psychotherapy Practicum site for Yorkville and CREATE Institute students. We're dedicated to guiding psychotherapy students in building a successful, sustainable private practice. Our practicum combines clinical and business training, emphasizing a psychodynamic, trauma-informed, and body-oriented approach under the compassionate mentorship of our clinical supervisors.
Alongside developing clinical skills, students gain practical tools for managing the business side of practice - such as profile optimization and scheduling - while participating in workshops on self-care and resilience. We're currently accepting practicum students for 2026 and look forward to supporting the next generation of confident, balanced practitioners.
"Heal Through Connection is a philosophy rooted in guiding clients back to their true selves and helping them rediscover their innate ability to heal. As their psychotherapist, you support them in developing a strong connection to themselves and assist them in navigating their healing journey with trust and confidence."
Our Site Director
Tabitha, Site Director at Heal Through Connection Psychotherapy, is dedicated to supporting practicum students throughout their journey, offering guidance in third-party profile optimization, business practices, and scheduling software.
With experience in practicum support, Tabitha is passionate about preparing students for successful careers in private practice.
As a Certified Meditation Facilitator and Hypnotist, she brings a holistic approach that emphasizes the mind-body connection, empowering students to care for themselves while navigating a client-facing career. She also provides wellness workshops, fostering resilience and self-awareness as essential tools for emerging practitioners.
If you think our practicum site would be a good fit for you, please get in touch!
Our Supervisors
Tala El-Achkar
Tala El-Achkar is an approved clinical supervisor, who brings a psychodynamic, trauma-informed, and body-oriented approach to her work, offering comprehensive supervision.
In her practice as an integrative psychotherapist, she is passionate about providing client-centered and anti-oppressive care, particularly for individuals navigating the complexities of diaspora, identity, ambiguous loss, and intergenerational trauma. She focuses on the ways early life shapes present-day experiences, viewing relationships as central to healing.​
Rooted in her academic background, Lebanese-Palestinian heritage, and lived diasporic experience, her approach is sensitive to systemic, intergenerational, and collective influences.
Erin Kuri
Erin Kuri, PhD, RP, CCC, CCS, OATR is a qualified and enthusiastic clinical supervisor with graduate-level training and on-going professional development in clinical supervision and consultation. Through the creative process of art-making and a relational approach to supervision, she supports supervisees in a non-judgemental manner to practice ethically and effectively.
Erin practices clinical supervision and consultation through a feminist, relational, trauma and attachment informed framework. She integrates psychodynamic theory, critical social justice theory and ways of working through creativity and visual art into her practice. Erin aims to cultivate a safe space to explore areas of tension and successes with your clients, as well as supporting you in your career and identity as a mental health practitioner.
Erin has 20 years of practice experience as a Registered Psychotherapist and Registered Art Therapist across community agency and private practice settings. Her areas of specialization include attachment, trauma and loss, gender-based sexual violence,
emotional support in connection with reproductive planning/ infertility/ reproductive loss/ reproductive healthcare, perinatal/maternal mental health, infant and early childhood (0-6)
mental health, and child and youth mental health.
Paula Ruiz
Paula Ruiz is a Registered Psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and educator with a longstanding interest in understanding people’s inner worlds and the ways they make meaning of their experiences. She holds a Master’s degree and PhD in anthropology, where her academic work focused on trauma, mental health, suffering, and the ways individuals and communities adapt to adversity. Her background in research, combined with her clinical training, informs her thoughtful and compassionate approach to psychotherapy.
Paula completed a five-year training program in psychodynamic psychotherapy through the Ontario Psychotherapy & Counselling College (OPCC), where she now teaches on topics related to cultural competency, human development and clinical approaches to working with complex trauma.
Her approach to supervision emphasizes the importance of therapeutic presence, self-reflection, curiosity, and the capacity to remain engaged with complexity rather than rushing to find solutions. She values creating a supportive learning environment where students can explore their clinical work, deepen their understanding of clients, and develop greater confidence in their therapeutic interventions.
In her clinical work, Paula draws on a trauma-informed, relational, and culturally responsive approach, with particular attention to the impact of early experiences, relational dynamics, and emotional patterns on present-day functioning. She is interested in helping individuals better understand themselves and their relationships, particularly as they navigate trauma, loss, identity, and emotional suffering.
Paula has pursued additional training in trauma, EMDR, anxiety, psychosocial oncology, and clinical supervision.
