my story ...

At fourteen, I lost my best friend - my father. In the years that followed, I watched my mother struggle with alcohol addiction, powerless to help. By eighteen, she was gone too. I was an orphan.

With no one to guide me through the anger and pain, I did what was naturally and evolutionarily available: I buried it. When things could have actually gone much worse, there was some internal compass and survival instinct that shaped the years to come. I finished university and focused on work, built a career in corporate finance, startups and venture capital across Vienna, Dubai, and Zurich. I spent 15+ years succeeding on the outside while something inside waited - paused, intact, for the conditions it needed to move forward, to maybe even complete.

2017 brought a confluence of things: another move to a new country, two small children, a social world that needed to be rebuilt from scratch, and the shift in a career that had structured my sense of self for more than one decade. The ground shifted in every direction at once. And in that disorientation, something else surfaced - a quiet but persistent knowing that had always been there: that the body was holding more than I had ever allowed myself to approach, that there were deeper layers I hadn't yet found. I had long been drawn to the philosophical and psychological dimensions of yoga, curious in the way you are curious about something that feels important before you can explain why. So I enrolled in a yoga teacher training - part leap into the unknown, part first step toward something I already sensed was waiting.

Uncertainty.

Recognition.

Both true. Neither canceling the other out.

coming home to the body

What happened on the yoga mat was something no business strategy had ever given me: I started to feel again. To sense flow and not fragmentation. To breathe deeper and learn how to listen to my nervous system. Slowly, carefully, I began a journey inward - through yoga, breathwork, meditation, and eventually through trauma-specific work with some of the most respected teachers in the field.

While still continuing to work in the financial industry, I started training.

I did a 6-months intensive with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk's Trauma Research Foundation. I studied Somatic Attachment Therapy and did a 2 year program focused on developmental trauma with Stephen Terrell. I went back to school, earning a Master's degree in Neuroscience and Psychology of Mental Health from King's College London, because I wanted to understand not just that healing happens through the body, but why and how (spoiler alert - we mostly don't know, or we know pieces but it's a huge puzzle still not put together entirely).

Somewhere along the way I also built enough internal resources and clarity to leave the financial industry path. Driven by curiosity and a trust that I was meant to do something in mental health, even if for a long time it wasn't clear what. And gradually, something did become clear: the struggles we carry are not disorders to be managed or pushed down. They are intelligent adaptations to overwhelming circumstances - our nervous system's best attempt at keeping us safe. And when we create the right conditions, the body knows how to heal. Not heal in the way of fixing, reverting, unbreaking something back to how it was before, but as the unlocking of vital energy that was never lost, only held in place.

from my own path, rippling effects

Today, my work lives at the intersection of science and lived experience. I am training in Somatic Experiencing (SEP in training), a body-based approach to trauma resolution developed by Dr. Peter Levine, and in Internal Family Systems (IFS practitioner in training), a non-pathologizing psychotherapy method used in clinical settings developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. I also work in a leadership role at a mental health NGO.

My approach in 1-1 work is built on a yoga therapy foundation, weaving in Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, breathwork, and somatic attachment work. But underneath all the training and the science, what I really bring is this: I know what it feels like to carry something heavy for a long time, and to slowly build the resources to turn toward it rather than away. And I know what it feels like when the body finally gets to put parts of it down and let them move through.

And perhaps the greatest gift has been this: the sense of finally acting from somewhere true, at peace. Something underneath the adapting and the striving - closer to what I actually am.

what remains

I believe that healing is not about fixing what's broken - it's about completing what was interrupted. I believe the body keeps the score, and it also knows the way forward. I believe mental health struggles should not be automatically pathologized – but I also believe the medical system has an essential role. Some of what people carry is pathology, and needs appropriate clinical care. I am grateful that system exists. What I wish for is better integration: that psychiatric and medical support could work alongside trauma-informed, somatic, and body-based approaches more often, rather than in worlds that don't always meet.

My story might have begun with loss. But it continues with openness and trust in what wants to move.

If you've read this far, pay attention to what part(s) in you resonated or not. And always welcome all with openness and curiosity.