About
Bringing the body back into the picture
“I used to spend most of my life in my head, anxious and overwhelmed. ”
Always thinking, analysing, planning, stressing but rarely feeling present. I often felt a kind of distance from myself and others, like I wasn’t living in my body. My intuition felt far away, and I didn’t fully trust my own responses.
In my early twenties, I began experimenting with meditation. For many years, it was an anchor for me but over time, I noticed that my meditation practice often left me feeling dissociated and detached. I was drifting further away from my body. At the time, I didn’t understand why.
“Today, I know this was actually a nervous system response, a kind of dissociation rooted in trauma. My nervous system thought it was keeping me safe by pulling me away.”
I was searching for a sense of stability from an early age. I struggled with anxiety and depression, constantly stuck in shutdown or flight-or-fight mode. If I was stressed I would either completely forget that I have a body and become stuck in my head, anxiously making future speculations, or be overwhelmed by my body’s sensations, unable to relax, becoming increasingly frustrated because I did not know why all of this was happening, or how to stop it.
Things started to slowly shift when I found a doorway back into my body through performance art and Feldenkrais (a gentle movement-based practice that builds body awareness). I learned what it meant to feel embodied and regulated and how the nervous system is an integral part of it.
“I became fascinated with how the nervous system works, how it can get stuck in patterns of stress or trauma, and how it can be retrained to find stability again while remaining dynamic.”
After studying, practicing and experiencing nervous system recovery, I had a map of my bodily sensations and could navigate them. I now had agency in how I am feeling. I learned how much the state of my nervous system can affect my mood and how I interact with others, for example, having the need to people-please in order to feel safe or struggling with insecurity only to realise that my nervous system is in a collapsed state.
I also started asking myself if the way I was holding myself, for example, my posture, or my habitual bodily responses to difficult situations had something to do with how I was feeling and how my nervous system was reacting. Was there another way to approach these situations?
“What would happen if I choose a different embodiment, a different way of holding myself, of how I am in my body?”
By retraining my nervous system to feel safe again, recognising the state it is in and having the tools to bring it back to regulation, I was able to come home to my body. I feel more connected to myself and by listening to what my body is telling me I can now find an embodiment that works for me in any given situation. I trained to share this work with others, because I knew I wasn’t alone in feeling this way.
My background
I was born in southern Germany and I was a toddler when my family moved to South Africa where I lived until my late 20’s. Since 2016 I’m based in The Hague in the Netherlands. Living in different countries allowed me to develop an intercultural sensitivity: I know what a life-changing transition feels like.
With a professional background in visual and performance art, I’ve extensively worked through and with the body as both subject and material, with a focus on fascia, sensation, and motor imagery — the understanding that visualising movement can create real, physical shifts. Currently I explore embodied research as a way of connecting and relating with materials and landscapes.
My path has also included years of Yin Yoga, Feldenkrais, Body-Mind Centering, clowning, and acting.
I hold a masters degree in Performance Practices (Netherlands), and am trained in ICF accredited Embodiment Coaching (UK) with a focus on nervous system recovery through the Nervous System School (Australia). Currently I’m undergoing Feldenkrais practitioner training at the Feldenkrais Institute in Vienna.
Lastly, I adore seals and how they live both in water and on land. They need both to survive, the land to breed and the water to feed. For seals there is no separation between land and water, those spaces are one habitat. I find this an apt metaphor for the body-mind connection, understanding it not as two separate entities but rather as one.
Performing in Tenna, Switzerland, in 2022.
