Our Pathwork Leadership

Madeline Dietrich

Senior Pathwork Helper, M.A., S.E.P.

Madeline is the leader of Pathwork Ottawa and a Senior Pathwork Helper, hailing from Ottawa, Canada. She has a private practice as a Pathwork

Helper and offers supervisor/ mentoring to new Pathwork Helpers. She also teaches internationally on a number of Helpership training programs, including the U.S. Israel and Japan. Madeline is the creator of Unlock Pleasure, a program that supports people to re-imagine pleasure, to bring it more fully into their lives, as a healing resource. In her professional life she has focused on the topics of trauma healing, sexuality and relationship, and the intersection of spirituality and psychology.

Madeline was introduced to The Guide’s Pathwork Lectures in1984. Since that time she has studied and worked with the Pathwork teachings in her own personal journey of healing and transformation and in her professional life. When not travelling the globe, you will most likely find Madeline in the garden, or in the kitchen creating tasty delights for friends or family, or hiking or swimming in the beautiful Gatineau Park, north of the city. www.madelinedietrich.com

Jean Millar

Pathwork Helper, B.Sc.

Jean has been studying and living the Pathwork since the late 1990s. Since 2008, she has been a Pathwork Helper in Ottawa, teaching Pathwork Lecture Study classes, assisting with group leadership and participating in the leadership of the Pathwork Ottawa community. She comes to the Pathwork from a long career in education and finds there is a synergy between her love of teaching and her own deep commitment to, and gratitude for, the Pathwork teachings. She is married and a mother of two adult daughters, stepmother to two adult sons and a grandmother to four wonderful children. For Jean, the connection to Spirit is nurtured in nature which is part of why she likes to hike, canoe and ski. As well, yoga and Pilates provide an essential grounding for her both physically and spiritually. Music and poetry often bring a personal deep inner connection and she offers these into the groups she facilitates to help integrate the wise and practical Pathwork teachings. It is her deep desire to share the Pathwork concepts and wisdom with those seeking to live more authentically through a closer connection to spirit.

Louise Stevenson

Pathwork Ottawa Elder

Retired Helper, Ottawa

Louise is Pathwork Ottawa’s Elder and one of our founders. She is a retired Pathwork Helper and teacher who came to the Pathwork from a career in international development. She followed Pathwork Studies and then Helpership Training with the New York Region Pathwork, graduating in 1992. At the same time, she also took a Diploma in Theology and an M.A. in Pastoral Groupwork. Since then she has been working with both individuals and groups. In cooperation with Roddy Duchesne, she created and taught the first Pathwork Transformation Program in Canada, from 2001 to 2005, followed by the Soul’s Journey Program (2005- 2008). Louise served the International Pathwork Foundation as trustee and then President from 1998 to 2002, and more recently was a member of the international group which worked to ‘rebirth’ the Foundation.

Mary-Anne Bourque

Community Spirit Keeper

Mary-Anne is Pathwork Ottawa’s Spirit keeper, participates in teaching and leadership in the community. She has been living Pathwork since the early 90’s, completing her Helpership training in Burlington, Vermont in 2008 and her training in Somatic Experiencing in 2017. Mary-Anne has 38 years of journeying with the sick and dying as a hospital chaplain. In this time she was director of Spiritual Care for 14 years. She has a passion for yoga, delight in gardening and growing desire for travel. Patients and colleagues comment on Mary-Anne’s profound patience, a deep letting be of others, allowing them to develop in their own way; her ability to create space for others and hold then in quiet strength; her ability to put people at ease, listen to them attentively and inspire their trust.

Guest Pathwork Helpers

Brian O’Donnell

Senior Pathwork Helper, Michigan

Brian was introduced to Pathwork in the late 70’s. He was impacted by “the sophistication of the teachings, the blend of the psychological and the spiritual, and the confluence of the ancient and modern wisdoms.” His call and blessing has been to take the Pathwork around the world. In addition to being a helper, Brian is a psychotherapist who works with the perspective that the illness is also the medicine, and that what ails us is a call to an enlarged life. Brian is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Alison Greene Barton

Senior Pathwork Helper, Massachusets

Alison has been involved with Pathwork for 35 years as a senior helper, teacher, supervisor, program director, president, board of directors, member of the Helpership Association Group, and on-going student of the Pathwork Lectures. She has created, founded and led Pathwork workshops, programs and trainings in the United States, South America, Australia, Japan, Canada and Germany. Alison specializes in healing the trauma of early wounding, combining her training as a Child/Family therapist, Cranial Sacral therapist, Castellino Prenatal and Birth Trauma therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Energy Healer, Shaman, Meditation teacher, Brethwork facilitator, and training in Acting and Expressive Movement. Alison enjoys assisting in the birth of one’s unique spirit for each stage of life. She lives in Amherst, MA with her son, Rohan.

Sage Walker

Senior Pathwork Helper, Toronto

Sagewalker has been a therapist/counsellor and educator since 1970.

Trained initially as a Social Worker and Bioenergetics Psychotherapist, she found the Pathwork (or did it find her?) and became a helper in 1983. Since that time as a leader and educator, she has brought the Guide’s teachings to Helpership training, feminine spirituality, the spiritual significance of human relationship and sexuality, and the concept of Evil and its transcendence, along with her ongoing private practice with individuals and couples.

Sage lives relationship as a spiritual path as a spouse, mother, stepmother, aunt and grandmother and lover of the natural world.

What is a Pathwork Helper?

A Pathwork Helper is a member of the Pathwork community who has chosen and trained for the role of guiding and assisting other pathworkers on their spiritual journey. It is a role that has some similarity to that of therapist or of a spiritual director in a religious context. But neither description is more than partly accurate.

The Pathwork is defined as a ‘psycho-spiritual path’, which is to say that those who follow the Pathwork teachings need to do emotional and therapeutic work, particularly in the early stages. However, that work is done within a larger spiritual context — that of the soul’s journey towards the unfolding of the Real Self or the Divine within. The Real Self is described in the lectures as an already existing inner well of wisdom and love, which can be accessed “only as you become aware of all those aspects that barricade this treasure”. As this requires much time (maybe lifetimes), Helpers work with a long-term view.

The road to Pathwork Helpership is demanding. It is not an overstatement to say that it is a calling, requiring a long period of study and training and a high level of commitment and devotion. The training normally takes seven or eight years, comprising three or four years of study of the Pathwork plus four years of Helpership Development. This is followed in turn by a year or two of apprenticeship. The programs take place in well-spaced modules, which provides time for prospective helpers to deepen their own emotional and spiritual process, to thoroughly integrate the teachings and experience the deeper levels of richness in the lectures, and also to discover and develop their own particular gifts for working with others.

Each helper brings his or her own particular talents to the work. However, all have, as their prime motivation, the desire to help others on their spiritual journey and to assist them in fulfilling some portion of their task for this lifetime.

Once qualified, Pathwork helpers are asked to continue working under supervision, and thus all helpers also work with a helper. It is also part of a helper’s practice to pray for their workers and to meditate to purify their own motives around helpership. Helpers are required to always tend to their own spiritual work and study so that they will continue to grow and evolve.