Sophie (Lejeune) Barcant was born in Martinique and moved to Trinidad at age six. She has two degrees from Queen’s University, Canada. A B.Arts. in Psychology, and a B.Ed. (Bachelor in Education), specializing in Special Education.
She has been teaching and training people of every age; children, parents, teachers, guidance counsellors including people in the corporate sector for the past 40 years. She is a certified ACC coach with ICF (International Coach Federation).
Having navigated raising eight children and a marriage of 39 years through the typical and not so typical ups and downs of life, she is well-equipped to coach parents and married couples. For many years, she provided “Love and Logic@” parent and teacher training programs. She also facilitates 12-Step recovery programs based on AA 12-Step approach.
Having provided Neuroleadership training to companies as an associate of Growth Opportunities Ltd for 12 years, she is also equipped to provide leadership training and coaching to leaders. http://growthopportunitiesltd.com
One of her deepest joys comes from guiding people in their growth in becoming free from the shackles of their own minds: wounds, negative subconscious programming, self-limiting beliefs, and undesirable habits, as she has done with herself, with amazing effective tools she has discovered along her life journey. She is driven by her passion for supporting and promoting healthy well-rounded relationships with oneself, God, family, the workplace and school.
Her coaching has led her to become trauma-informed to better support her clients. This has led her to become a certified provider of the Safe and Sound Protocol, a listening music therapy program. http://www.whatisthessp.com,
Her coaching is also pivoting towards supporting people in understanding trauma and developing mental and emotional fitness and wellness.
She is a certified peer counsellor, trained by the Family Life Commission in Trinidad.
She has a longstanding association with several NGOs: The Foundation for Human Development, Parenting TT and KIND (Kids in Need of Direction), to name a few. She has participated extensively in both radio and television programs addressing parenting issues. She writes various articles for publication. A series of them were published in a parenting column, ”With Parents in Mind” in the Catholic News in 2019-2022 https://catholictt.org/category/column/with-parents-in-mind/
As a certified provider of the SSP Safe and Sound Protocol listening music therapy program based on the Polyvagal theory of Dr Stephen Porges and Deb Dana, and studying the works of Dr Bessel Van der Kolk, Peter Levine and Gabor Mate, leaders in the field of trauma and healing, she has become trauma-informed and can now support her clients and audiences with understanding and managing their emotions better. The psychoeducation involved with the SSP equips people to understand how their nervous systems work and thus become more emotionally regulated, emotionally intelligent, resilient and enabeled to function at more optimal levels.
She has recovered from the impact of her own traumas by researching, experimenting and embodying many healing and nervous system and emotionally regulating techniques and modalities. She is eager to share these with people so they too can implement them and add to their restorative practices.
The SSP listening music therapy program and the co-regulation accompanied with it, facilitates the retuning of the nervous system and enables clients to experience better social engagement, stress, anger management, and anxiety. This includes offering very effective support to the neurodiverse population.
She is now on a mission to inform people in both the business and education sectors on how to understand what deeply drives their behavior and that of others; from ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences), to conditioning, assumptions, limiting beliefs, unmet needs, fears, shame, poor attachment, dissociation, neurodiverse personality styles, etc. She is also seeking to inform others about the various approaches that can be adopted and implemented to begin or continue recovery. Of great interest to her is the Expressive Arts Therapy model which promotes the retuning of the nervous system, self awareness and safe processing of emotions via all kinds of movement, including Qigong, non-spiritual types of yoga, the Arts such as music, art, dance, and drama with professional guidance.
Sophie has experienced what most people do in some form or fashion: rejection, broken home, various types of depression, sudden death of loved ones, neurodiverse relatives, and more, like having been a victim of crime, co-dependency and more.
She has enormous compassion for criminals who are most often themselves victims of abuse and neglect.
She believes strongly that if people can gain an understanding of what drives others to behave the way they do, then there will be more forgiveness, compassion and reduced anger, resentment and conflict and greater peace, understanding, harmony and health. Like Gabor Mate says: illness is mostly due to emotional causes. And according to Dr Bessel van der Kolk and Dr Peter Levine’s research, the issues are in the tissues.
Sophie Barcant - Life Harmony Coaching & Consulting 