It feels vulnerable to share my story, but it is the path that led me here, and the reason why I deeply believe in this work.

For more than thirty years, my life was shaped by intense emotional instability, deep psychological pain, insomnia, chronic physical pain, hormonal and metabolic conditions, and a long list of diagnoses. This suffering inevitably affected the people around me, often leaving me with the feeling that I was a burden at best, or abandoned at worst.
I did everything that was expected of me: years of psychotherapy, psychiatry, medical appointments, and treatment plans. Over time, I gained a clear intellectual understanding of my patterns, and some behavioural symptoms improved. Yet emotionally and physically, I felt worse than ever. When my familiar - if unhelpful - coping mechanisms fell away due to Cognitive Behavioural Theraphy, I was left completely exposed. Maybe it's this that led to the darkest period of my life, marked by excruciating physical and emotional pain and psychotic episodes. All of this happened while I was highly masked and maintaining a seemingly successful corporate career. From the outside, I appeared competent, brilliant even - just inconsistent and moody. Inside, I was constantly falling apart. My body felt like an enemy. It was a source of constant pain and seemed to betray me at every turn: unable to exercise, to sleep, to regulate eating, to menstruate, to feel joy. I couldn’t carry all of this pain, so I dissociated from it. I was alexithymic: unable to feel my emotions, until they suddenly broke through and flooded me. And even then, I only knew that they were “bad,” without being able to discern if I was feeling sadness, anger or fear.
So I outsourced control. I followed what therapists told me I should do, what diet culture said I should eat, when society said I should sleep. I was working on my body, managing, correcting, disciplining it.
On my body, never with it.

Everything changed when I discovered embodiment and somatic practices.
Slowly, very slowly, I learned how to feel. First sensations, then emotions. It took time. And once I could feel, I had to learn how to respond, to act in ways that honoured those signals. That took time too. But it was revolutionary. I stopped trying to dominate my body. I stopped abandoning myself. Gradually, day by day, month by month, the constant curtain of emotional pain began to lift. My insomnia faded. I eventually stopped taking antidepressants. I started making more aligned decisions. I still work with some physical pain, and there are ups and downs, but every single day I wake up and I marvel at how GOOD I feel, something I once believed was impossible.

This is why I am so deeply committed to somatic work. It did not “fix” me, it gave me back a relationship with myself, and a life that feels alive, inhabitable, and mine. This is why I chose to train and certify in these approaches: because I believe that somatic work is life-changing, and I want to offer it to others.

I have spent a significant part of my life inside the medical system. Too often, I felt unheard, rushed, stripped of dignity, or treated as a problem to be managed rather than a person to be met. Alongside deeply competent and compassionate professionals, I also encountered many who left little room for curiosity, collaboration, or individual experience.

My background is scientific. So when my own health became complicated, I immersed myself in understanding it. I read the research, learned treatment protocols, and asked informed questions. This wasn't always welcomed. At times, questioning an approach or seeking a deeper explanation was interpreted as resistance rather than engagement.

These experiences didn't diminish my respect for Western medicine. Modern medicine has helped me enormously, and I know firsthand how life-changing good medical care can be. At the same time, I believe the healthcare system often struggles with complexity. Agency can be lost, patients can be treated as passive recipients rather than active participants, and the richness of a person's lived experience is sometimes reduced to a diagnosis or protocol.

This is where my work takes a different path.

With me, clients are met with agency, consent, and dignity. I slow down. I listen. I see the whole human being: their history, their strengths, their challenges, their needs, the systems and power dynamics they are navigating, and the remarkable ways they have survived and adapted.

I create space for questions, understanding, and genuine collaboration. You may notice that I rarely use the word healing. For me, it implies a fixed "right" state and a "wrong" one: healed versus broken. But everything the body does makes sense in context. Symptoms, protective patterns, and adaptations are not failures; they are intelligent responses to a person's history and environment.

Rather than trying to fix the body - or the mind, which I don't see as separate - I help people cultivate conditions in which they can feel more supported, more resourced, more alive, and more authentically themselves. We don't tear down defences; we approach them with velvet gloves.

I describe myself as an integrative practitioner because I bring together a carefully curated blend of modern, evidence-informed modalities as well as embodied intuition, nature-based practices, and traditional wisdom. I also believe people benefit most when different forms of expertise work together. Medicine is one important part of the picture... So are touch, movement, nervous system education, somatic practice, embodiment, psychology, lifestyle, community, and the many ways we learn to relate to ourselves. That is why I work collaboratively. In this kind of collaboration, the client isn't a passive recipient of care... they are an active participant whose knowledge of their own body is an essential part of the process. When appropriate, I encourage clients to maintain relationships with their doctors and other healthcare professionals, and I am happy to work alongside them while remaining firmly within my  non-medical scope of practice.

Imagine someone living with diabetes. Their diagnosis, medication, and ongoing monitoring belong with their diabetologist. At the same time, they may benefit from working with a skilled personal trainer who can help them move in ways that are safe, effective, and appropriate for their body. The trainer isn't a medical professional, and they aren't treating diabetes: they're supporting the person's health in a different, complementary way. My role is much the same. One way to think about my work is that I'm a personal trainer for the nervous system. I don't diagnose or treat medical conditions. Instead, I help people develop greater somatic awareness, nervous system capacity, self-understanding, and embodied transformation. Whether someone is living with a long-term health condition or simply wants to feel more connected to themselves, my work complements - not replaces - the care they receive from medical professionals.

This is slow work. Respectful work. Rooted in trust, presence, curiosity, and pleasure.