Jan started her career as a teacher in Indiana and received a Masters of Education degree in 1977. After moving to Canada in 1979 and starting a family, she completed by a Masters of Social Work degree in 1994. Over the next twenty – five years she developed her career in private practice counselling in Waterloo Region in southern Ontario. As Jan developed her skills as a counsellor, she studied many different techniques that would come to enhance her work as a therapist. She found that her clients benefited significantly from therapeutic tools including Play Therapy, EMDR, Brain Gym, Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), and Energy Psychology techniques. For most of her career Jan specialized in working with children and she also found fulfillment in working with teens and adults who have experienced physical and emotional trauma.

Fueled by her interest in working with children and the brain/body connections, Jan completed her training to become a Brain Gym instructor in 2001. By 2004 excited by what she was learning about the neural plasticity of the brain, Jan and two partners developed, the Integrated Centre for Optimal Learning (ICOL). Jan did the emotional counselling work and her two partners utilized Brain Gym, Structures of Intellect (SOI) and many perceptual motor techniques to help grow the neural connections for children and teens who were struggling to learn. When Jan first experienced NeurOptimal^® in 2006 she knew she had to bring it to ICOL! Soon they were seeing amazing changes as children and teens did half an hour of perceptual motor movements and then half an hour of NeurOptimal^®. Jan stayed with ICOL for nine years before leaving to set up her own center so she could utilize NeurOptimal^® with more of her counseling clients.

Over the years Jan has enjoyed teaching a variety of workshops to educators, therapists and parents and was fortunate to be able to present workshops in Canada and Internationally. In her work with children, she developed several creative games, published two children’s books and made several DVDs for parents and therapists to use with children. Recently she completed a third book for children and plans to get it published in 2021.

Jan has always been passionate about helping people make their lives better. Her keen interest in the brain and how one could improve learning abilities or heal trauma excited her and kept her on a quest to find the best tools for helping her clients. Since 2006 at the Integrated Centre for Optimal Learning she witnessed the power of NeurOptimal^® to enhance brain functioning. Then In 2014 when she set up her own center in Waterloo, Ontario she was excited to offer NeurOptimal^® to many more people. This gave her increased opportunities to witness how NeurOptimal^® facilitated the counseling process helping clients to develop more abilities to regulate their feelings as well as become more flexible and resilient in how they approached life. She also was able to offer NeurOptimal^® to other people who were interested in training their brains to be more flexible and resilient.

At this stage in her life Jan is excited to focus totally on NeurOptimal^® neurofeedback. She will continue to offer NeurOptimal^® sessions, support people in their rental of NeurOptimal^® systems and facilitate monthly certification classes at her office in beautiful Waterloo, Ontario. She would be delighted to support you as you learn more about and become certified as a trainer with NeurOptimal^® neurofeedback.