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Hi! I’m Rakshanda.

I’m a Registered Psychotherapist (RP) and Registered Art Therapist (RCAT) practising in Newmarket, Ontario. I support adults, children, youth, and families in finding their strength and resilience. My practice is built on the understanding that our personal struggles are often intertwined with larger social and intergenerational stories. I maintain an intentionally curated space where all genders, orientations, abilities, and backgrounds are honored. Here, art, imagination and dialogue become tools for reconnection, curiosity, exploration and liberation.

Here’s a little video of me introducing myself & my approach

Therapy for Children, Adults & Families

As a cisgender South Asian immigrant and a parent of a neurodivergent child, I navigate intersecting identities that deeply inform my practice. I am committed to understanding each person within their sociopolitical and biopsychosocial context, using a neurodiversity-affirming, strengths-based, and anti-oppressive framework.

My approach is built upon a deep reverence for the wisdom held in the body and the stories told through image, symbol, and metaphor. My practise integrates evidence-based trauma-informed expressive arts, somatic practices, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Emotionally Focused Individual and Family Therapies, TF-CBT and Internal Family Systems. I believe in somatics and restorative arts as pathways to reclaiming our narratives.

Outside of my practice, my own healing is nurtured by nature, swimming, watercolor painting, djembe drumming, community activism, and the continual practice of showing up—for myself and for others.

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Services

Psychotherapy & Art Therapy

$170+ (sliding scale available)

I offer individual psychotherapy and art therapy services for children, youth, and adults (ages 5+) with a focus on racialized and neurodivergent communities. Therapy services are available online and in-person in Newmarket, Ontario.

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Clinical Supervision

$130 (sliding scale available)

As a Clinical Supervisor, I prioritize creating a supervisory relationship built on mutual respect, trust, and accountability with clearly defined goals. I also invite arts-based reflection to conceptualize cases and explore therapists’ experiences, responses and values.

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Family Psychotherapy & Family Art Therapy

$200+ (sliding scale available)

For families facing conflict, stress, or difficult transitions, family therapy provides a supportive space to improve communication, resolve conflict, and strengthen bonds. I incorporate arts-based techniques to nurture family cohesion.

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Artsy Workshops

$400+

I customize arts-based wellness and psychoeducation workshops for workplaces, schools, agencies, communities, and caregiver groups. Sessions are designed to help groups explore specific topics through engaging and accessible creative practice.

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Trauma-focused, anti-oppressive psychotherapy and art therapy services for children, youth, and families in Newmarket, Ontario.

Schedule a FREE 20-Minute Consultation

411 Queen Street
Newmarket, ON L3Y 2G9

rakshanda@theartsytherapist.com
(289) 809-8032

Tuesdays
4:30 pm — 9:30 pm

Fridays
2:00 pm — 9:30 pm

A monochromatic study capturing the quiet calm of sleep. Loved rendering the different textures of fabric in the play of shadow and light, all washed in shades of indigo. A lullaby in blue. Creating this mixed media artwork was an act of time travel and a chance to fully immerse myself in the warmth of memories—back to afternoons playing with siblings and cousins in our large garden, eating juicy jaman fruit, and resting among fallen franjipani flowers. This memory, like so many from the time, feels lovingly preserved by the warm embrace of my aunt. Capturing the quiet magic of deep sleep in monochrome #monochromaticart #blueaesthetic #arttherapy #watercolourpainting Evening art vibes on the balcony art studio. Painting under the fairy lights. #artstudıo #watercolourpainting #nighttimeart Painting in my balcony art studio to the rhythm of nostalgic Bollywood music. This is my happy place :) '#emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. it emphasizes critical connections, authentic relationships, listening with the body and the mind. Feeling grateful to have spent this past weekend at the CATA conference in Thunder Bay, Ontario, connecting, learning, and feeling all the feels with my beloved & incredible art therapy community. #WalkandTalk #ArtTherapy merges traditional art therapy with #walking sessions, allowing clients to engage in creative processes while moving through natural environments. This approach leverages the #therapeuticbenefits of both walking and #artmaking, creating a space where clients can explore their #innerworlds while physically interacting with their surroundings. It incorporates elements of #mindfulness, #somatictherapies as well as eco-art approaches which involves using #nature and #naturalmaterials in the art making process.  Chronicling my love for #comics

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This pop-up briefly occupies digital space. That space, like the land it’s accessed from, has a colonial cost.

York Region rests on the territories of the Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, the Chippewas of Georgina Island, the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Anishinaabeg. The treaties that ceded this land simultaneously recognized and denied Indigenous sovereignty and rights.

The technology we are using to connect, such as this website, also runs on systems of extraction whose carbon footprint contributes to a climate crisis that disproportionately harms Indigenous communities.

We meet at this intersection of histories and harms, in these layered entanglements.