Alison Petten of The Calm Place l Multidisciplinary
For Alison Petten, healing starts with the nervous system. Before any formal therapy begins, she believes that the first thing people need is to feel calm enough to arrive. That belief has shaped not only how she practices as a psychologist, but also how she designed her clinic, The Calm Place.
Alison has been a registered psychologist since 2018. Born and raised in Newfoundland, she still proudly calls it home. A self-described people person, Alison was always drawn to connection and conversation, curious about how we relate to one another. Counselling felt like a natural fit, offering her a way to do meaningful work that was authentic to who she is. But the direction her work would eventually take became clear only after she completed EMDR training early in her career.
“I didn’t even know what EMDR was at the time,” Alison recalls. She found herself fascinated by the neuroscience behind trauma, and by the way somatic and body-based approaches allow the brain to do what it’s built to do: process, integrate, and heal.
That training reshaped not only how Alison practiced therapy, but how she imagined the space where that therapy should happen.
A practice born from accessibility and care
Before opening The Calm Place in 2021, Alison worked in several clinics across Newfoundland. While she loved the work itself, she kept running into the same barrier: the spaces weren’t accessible.
Born with a physical condition that affects her joints, Alison has always been aware of how environments impact people’s ability to access care. Stairs, icy walkways, and poorly designed buildings aren’t just minor inconveniences, they determine who can receive support and who can’t. They also determine who feels welcome and who doesn’t.
Creating her own clinic became a way to remove those barriers, not just for herself, but for others who might face similar challenges. But accessibility was only the starting point: Alison also wanted to design a space that felt regulating from the moment someone walked in.
At The Calm Place, that intention is felt in every detail and shapes the entire experience. Calm colours. Gentle sounds in the waiting room. Even the light bulbs were tested repeatedly until they felt just right. In one chandelier alone, Alison and her partner tried almost seventy different bulbs before settling on the right glow.
When clients arrive, they often comment on how relaxed they feel before their session even begins. Some joke that they nearly fall asleep in the waiting room. For Alison, that type of reaction is exactly the point. “Doing trauma work requires safety. If someone can down-regulate before we even start, it makes the work feel more possible.”
From solo practice to a growing community
The Calm Place opened with just Alison and a business partner. They had a lot of hope that others would want to build something alongside them, and within the first year, the clinic had grown to around ten practitioners.
Four and a half years later, The Calm Place is home to nearly forty clinicians across two locations.
As the clinic grew, so did the need for systems that could support a larger team without losing the calm, intentional experience Alison was working so hard to create. She had used Jane at a previous clinic, so when she opened The Calm Place, staying with Jane felt like the most natural choice. The platform was intuitive, familiar, and one less thing to relearn while building a new practice.
Today, Jane plays an important role in helping The Calm Place run smoothly behind the scenes. With a growing team, Alison no longer has the capacity to walk every new clinician through booking, billing, or troubleshooting. Instead, her team relies on Jane’s support resources, and the feedback is consistent: the support team is quick to respond, kind, and genuinely helpful. That reliability frees Alison to focus her energy on clients, clinicians, and the overall vision of the practice, knowing that operational support is there when it’s needed.
A clinic that cares for the whole person
While The Calm Place is well known for offering trauma therapy and EMDR, Alison has always believed healing works best when it’s not confined to a single modality.
Alongside psychologists and counsellors, the clinic offers holistic and wellness services, including naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, massage therapy, Reiki, and group offerings in a dedicated studio space. Rather than treating these services as separate, Calm Place clinicians regularly collaborate with one another and refer within the clinic, allowing clients to build care plans that feel supportive and comprehensive.
Alison thinks of these different modalities of care as puzzle pieces, each supporting a different part of the healing process, that work together differently for each client. Some clients may start with talk therapy and discover they benefit from body-based work as well. Others might find that group classes or holistic treatments help them feel more grounded as they navigate deeper emotional work. The goal is to meet people where they are and to help them build a path that works for them.
While Alison’s long-term vision is to offer a more integrated trauma program, for now she’s focused on strengthening the foundation and letting clients engage with the pieces that resonate most.
Making space for growth and learning
The decision to open a second location came from both necessity and a greater vision for the work taking place in the practice. The first clinic had reached capacity, waitlists were growing, and more clinicians wanted to join than there was space to accommodate. At the same time, Alison was thinking about scale and sustainability, about building a hub where people could reliably find care that feels thoughtful and human. As The Calm Place has grown, so has Alison’s commitment to mentorship and accessibility. Through the clinic’s intern program, students are able to gain hands-on experience under the guidance of mentors and clients can access lower-cost or free counselling
Therapy can be expensive, Alison acknowledges, and insurance coverage often runs out long before people feel that their healing journey is complete. Interns help bridge that gap, creating a pathway to care that might otherwise be out of reach for people in the community.
Looking ahead
Alison envisions more Calm Places in the future. Spaces designed with care, accessibility, and nervous-system awareness at their core, guided by the belief that access to care is not a luxury, but a requirement. A calm place, where people can feel safe enough to arrive, and supported enough to stay.
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