BILL GAYNER, B.S.W., M.S.W., R.S.W.

(He/Him)

Bill Gayner is a Registered Social Worker and Psychotherapist in the Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health. He is also the Mindfulness and Wellness Clinical Educator in the Health Arts and Humanities Program, University of Toronto.

Bill is a gentle, warm, supportive, deeply attuned therapist who provides Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) for individuals and couples and Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Therapy (EFMT) for individuals and groups. Bill developed EFMT, adapting mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) to better address internal conflicts and unfinished business, navigate issues in daily life, and cultivate growth and flourishing. He researches and provides professional training and mentoring in EFMT. He has presented on mindfulness at local, provincial, national and international levels.

Bill is a pioneer in providing professional mindfulness training in Toronto. He has trained and mentored mental health professionals, psychiatry residents and social work students in mindfulness-based approaches for fifteen years. Many mindfulness-based clinicians in Ontario received their initial training through the Mindfulness-Based Group Practice program Bill co-led with Kate Kitchen and Kirstin Bindseil for years in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work’s continuation education program and then the Mount Sinai Psychotherapy Institute, University of Toronto. Bill then went on to provide professional training and mentoring in EFMT, including collaborating with Jeanne Watson and now Serine Warwar in this. He also leads an annual residential EFMT meditation retreat for mental health professionals at the Ecology Retreat Centre, north of Toronto.

Bill led a randomized-controlled trial of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for gay men living with HIV that was the first to indicate psychological improvements for mindfulness in this population. This study inspired him to explore how to integrate self-compassion more deeply into MBIs to better address issues associated with internalized stigma, such as harsh-self criticism, shame and interpersonal challenges, and with complex trauma and high levels of adverse childhood events. He came to recognize that compassion and empathy are key, deeply inter-related factors in cultivating a more genuine relationship with experiencing and with self, others and the world, which led him to integrate mindfulness into EFT, integrating experiential and emotional processing into meditation and the way psychotherapists collaboratively explore clients’ meditative and current experiencing. More information on EFMT can be found at https://mindfulfeeling.ca.

Bill worked as a Mental Health Clinician in Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital, where he provided individual psychotherapy in the Clinic for HIV-Related Concerns for over 22 years, as well as EFMT groups for HIV+ gay men and for psychiatric outpatients, and Emotion-Focused Mindfulness wellness training for employees at Mount Sinai and Bridgepoint.

Bill was awarded the Joel Sadavoy Community Mental Health Award in 2007 by his department for outstanding contributions as co-principal investigator of PHA ACCESS, a community-hospital knowledge exchange project in which front line workers and volunteers in AIDS service organizations were trained and supported in providing brief narrative, art or mindfulness interventions, the second person presented this award. He was also awarded the Karen McGibbon Award of Excellence and Seymour Schulich Honorarium that year by the hospital for outstanding effort and commitment in advancing the values of the hospital.

Bill is a member of the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers, the Ontario Association of Social Workers, the International Society for Emotion-Focused Therapy, and the World Association for Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counselling, and an affiliate member of the International Focusing Institute.

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