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 embodiment and 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, and 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 empathetic professionals, I also encountered many who were not. I come from a scientific background and was close to completing a PhD. I researched extensively, understood treatment protocols, and asked informed questions. This was not always welcomed. When I questioned approaches or sought deeper explanations, I was sometimes labelled “non-compliant” and dismissed. I believe in Western medicine - it has helped me! - but I also believe the system is deeply flawed in how it relates to the body and to patients. Too often, agency is removed, curiosity is discouraged, and complexity is flattened. This is where my work consciously 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 resources, their needs. I create space for questions, understanding, and 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. I don’t believe the body can be wrong. Everything it does, it does for a reason. Rather than trying to fix or heal the body and mind (which are not separate), I guide people toward states that feel more supportive, more alive, more authentic. We do not tear down defenses, we approach them with velvet gloves. This is slow work. Respectful work rooted in trust. Pleasure-centred work.