Associate and Adjunct Faculty

Profession: Physician

Andrea Alvarez is an assistant professor with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University. She is the Director of Education and Research and an outpatient psychiatrist at the Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo
Wellington Region. She is also a consultant psychiatrist for the Bariatric Program in Guelph General Hospital.

She has practiced Psychiatry in Acute Care, Chronic Care and she works with individuals with moderate to severe mental health challenges. Her areas of interest include Mind and Body Medicine, psychotherapy and teaching. Dr. Alvarez is expanding her knowledge
in mindfulness-based therapies to bring them in her clinical practise.

Blakie is a registered Occupational Therapist with over 10 years of experience working in a variety of mental health and addictions settings. She has additional training in CBT, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. She also completed her yoga teacher training in 2005. She is also currently working on her Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy at Dalhousie University focusing on the positive influence mindfulness groups can have on improving belonging.

Sarah Kinsley was the coordinator of the Embodied Mind stream of the Applied Mindfulness Meditation program in Continuing Education at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. She worked at Native Child and Family Services of Toronto as a Child and Family Therapist. She has trained with Indigenous Elders in the field of healing within Canada and abroad. Sarah has completed three Yoga Teacher Training courses, and studied with various Yogis in North America and Asia.

Profession:  Speech-Language Pathologist

Evelyn Tan is a Speech-Language Pathologist in private practice with over 30 years of clinical experience in acute care, adult and pediatric rehabilitation and complex continuing care hospitals, and in community settings.  She holds a casual position at The Ottawa Hospital and The Rehabilitation Centre.  She has had a personal practice in mindfulness and vipassana meditation for over twelve years, having first learned it from buddhist monastics and lay teachers from the Theravadan tradition.  She trained in MBCT in 2011 with Dr. Zindel Segal, Dr. Stephen Hick and Dr. Sarah Bowen as well as with Sue Woods and Char Wilkinson in an MBCT Teacher Training Intensive.  In 2014, she participated in the Teach .b Certification Course given by Mindfulness in Schools Project senior trainers Kevin Hawkins and James Gibbs.  Ms Tan was part of a tri-centre research study to determine if MBCT would be beneficial to persons with traumatic brain injury.  She continued to provide MBCT at The Rehabilitation Centre (Ottawa) after the completion of that study in 2011. In 2016, she developed a mindfulness and CBT program designed for small groups of people experiencing complex mild TBI which she continues to run in her private practice.   Website:  www.mbctottawa.com