Back To Yourself - Alexander Technique, Energy work, Modern meditation

THE BODY REMEMBERS — AND THE ANCESTORS LIVE IN THE STORY
I would like to sit with you and talk for hours about the body.

Not the body as something to fix, control or make acceptable, but the body as a living intelligence — breathing, sensing, responding and constantly communicating with us.
This is at the heart of my work.

I work with the body as a place where our personal story, our relationships and our ancestral story can meet.
Sometimes we notice patterns before we understand them.
A tendency to detach.
A feeling of being frozen.
Difficulty receiving love.
A need to stay in control.
A sense of entitlement or protection.
A fear of closeness.
A feeling of coldness or absence.
Or perhaps a deep longing to belong.

Rather than asking, “What is wrong with me?”, I am interested in asking:
“What is my body trying to protect?”
Our responses did not appear from nowhere.
Human beings have been adapting, surviving, connecting and protecting life for thousands upon thousands of years. Some of the strategies held within us may have developed in circumstances very different from the ones we live in today.
The body can carry the wisdom of survival.
It can also carry what was never fully expressed, witnessed or completed.
This is where my work becomes relational.

I am interested in what happens when we slow down enough to sense ourselves — to notice breath, movement, sensation, boundaries, impulses and the subtle places where we move towards connection or away from it.
And then we can become curious.
What is happening in me right now?
Where did I learn this way of relating?
What might belong to my own story?
What might have travelled through my family and ancestors?
This is not about blaming our ancestors or creating a fixed story about the past.
It is about developing enough embodied awareness to recognise the patterns we have inherited — and discovering that we may have more choice in the present than we once believed.

Nature is one of my greatest teachers in this work.
Sun.
Senses.
Seeds.
Soil.
Source.
Nature does not rush itself into becoming something else.
It responds.
It adapts.
It rests.
It moves.
It belongs.
And perhaps our bodies are asking for something similar.
Not another layer of armour.
Not another shield.
But the possibility of becoming intimate with ourselves again.
Because when we disconnect from vulnerability in order to protect ourselves, we can also lose some of our connection with life.

I want to explore what happens when vulnerability can actually land in the body.
When we can feel our feet.
Feel our breath.
Feel the space around us.
Feel another person.
Feel the world.
And gradually discover that connection does not necessarily mean losing ourselves.
It can mean finding ourselves more deeply.

This is why I bring body awareness, relational exploration and ancestral reflection together in my work.
Because the story is not only in the mind.
It is also in how we breathe.
How we move.
How we protect ourselves.
How we receive.
How we reach.
How we withdraw.
How we relate.

And perhaps, sometimes, in what our bodies have been carrying for longer than we have had words for.
So I ask:
Where is the seed beginning for you right now?
What wants to change?
What are you ready to feel?
What strategy once protected you but may now be holding you back?
And what would become possible if your body no longer had to work so hard to keep you safe?
Love is the water.
The story is the cup.
And our work is to discover what becomes possible when the cup has room to hold something new.

“Our hearts remember those who gave us life, those who gave us love, and those whose fate is entangled with our own. As soon as the link to one parent or both is diminished, people lose energy and strength. Constellation restores the connection and the flow of love to what was separated.” – Bert Hellinger

An Invitation to Feel Through Touch

What if touch was more than contact?
What if it was a way of remembering?

My work is an invitation to experience touch as a language—a language that has travelled through generations.
It is inspired by my grandmothers, medicine woman whose healing hands continue to influence how I meet the world.
Their legacy is not about certification or proving knowledge. It is about presence. About listening. About allowing love to move through the rhythm of our hands and our bodies.

Each installation I create becomes an invitation to slow down. To feel the pulse beneath the surface. To notice what has become numb. To remember that our inner landscapes are deeply connected to the physical world around us.
We live in a time that encourages us to fix what is broken, improve what is imperfect, and optimise every aspect of ourselves. We are surrounded by medical interventions, beauty ideals, pharmaceutical solutions, and systems that promise certainty.

But what if healing begins somewhere else?
What if, instead of fixing ourselves, we recognised what is already present? What if we reset, listened, and chose a different direction? What if we changed the soil rather than forcing the flower?
Transformation is rarely comfortable. Like nature, we move through storms, sunshine, drought, and renewal. Our bodies carry stories. Our hands carry memories. Our senses long for intimacy in a culture that often values productivity over presence.

I believe healing is not something one person gives to another. It is something we create together through attention, vulnerability, and creative tenderness.
My hands have learned, through generations, to meet another person with curiosity rather than certainty. To stay with complexity. To trust that we can learn new ways of being together.

The question I continue to ask myself is:
Can I allow myself to be touched by tenderness? Can I remain open enough to feel, even in my vulnerability?
If we can, perhaps we can rediscover a deeper sense of belonging—not only to ourselves, but to each other and to the living ecology we are part of.
I warmly invite you to visit the installation, spend time with it, allow yourself to slow down, and become part of this shared exploration.
Come and stay for a while.
Feel.
Listen.
Remember.
I look forward to welcoming you.

Summer Intensive: Returning to the Mountain
A retreat in the highlands for deep listening, ancestral unwinding, and embodied stillness.
In the mountains, everything becomes simple.�The body softens.�The breath steadies.�The land speaks.
This retreat is a space to step out of your life and back into the quiet rhythm beneath it.

Facilitator in Residence – Kalikalos, Pelion, Greece

Arriving at Kalikalos - Anilio, nestled in the Pelion Mountains near Volos, I was welcomed by a landscape where mountains meet the sea, and traditional villages preserve centuries of architecture and culture.
Pelion is known in Greek mythology as the Land of the Centaurs, the home of Chiron, the wise centaur who taught many of the great Greek heroes. It is said that even the Greek gods came here to rest. It is a place where myth still seems to live within the forests, the stones, and the sea.
From an inquiring and questioning mind arises a healthy curiosity—a freedom to explore, to understand, and to discover. It is a place where looking gradually becomes seeing.
Walking the forest paths, I found myself letting go into a deeper relationship with sensing and witnessing. The essence of this time was to embody my movement into the future with a sense of sacredness, allowing life to be experienced more fully and impressions to be received rather than sought.
After a period of grief, this felt like the place where it was finally time to turn the page. Perhaps now, more than ever, our world needs people who are committed to carrying light.
Joining a small community of participants from nine different nationalities, each bringing their own experiences and perspectives, reminded me that we are all creation in movement. Living, learning, and sharing together became a practice in itself.
On my first day I wrote:
"Hope can sometimes feel like an empty promise. Trust is an overused word. Root deeply in nature. Listen to the rhythm of your own heartbeat. Nature is growth. Non-attachment can reveal our blind spots. Leading and allowing ourselves to be led are equally important. Impact, choice, desire. Weird is good. A decision is always a movement forward, never something to regret."
Being a Facilitator in Residence arrived as an open question. What was I supposed to do? What was expected of me?
The invitation came immediately—to offer an early morning yoga class.
I introduced myself by saying that I wasn't actually a yoga teacher.
By the end of the session, the group had affectionately given my work a new name:
"Non Yoga."
Rather than teaching postures, I invited people into embodied awareness—of gravity, space, relationship, and presence. The forest itself became our teacher. The land offered endless opportunities for exploration. My work includes gentle touch where appropriate, always with clear consent, allowing participants to discover their own relationship with ease and balance.
The long studio, surrounded by towering trees and birdsong, became an extraordinary place to work. Our first movement practice was offered with reverence—not only to the forest itself, but to all of its inhabitants, the more-than-human world... even the mosquitoes.
The feedback was deeply moving. Participants spoke of spaciousness, calm, a quieter nervous system, and a profound sense of having tuned inward. For some, sadness surfaced; for others, forgotten memories. Yet everything seemed to be held with remarkable lightness.
As the weeks unfolded, I watched each participant soften into themselves. Their nervous systems gradually found permission to relax.
A teacher of mine, Ted McNamara, often spoke of The Weight of Being. He wrote:
"It is possible to 'fall upwards' into a state of relaxation which is there, waiting to receive us."
His words accompanied me throughout the residency, reminding me that true effort is often effortless, and that openness requires both grounding and verticality.
Again and again I returned to the question:
Is it possible to return to a familiar place and experience it as though for the first time?
As T. S. Eliot wrote:
"We shall not cease from exploration... and know the place for the first time."
I guided a gentle introduction to Family Constellations, inviting us to honour our ancestors. During one meditation we called upon our grandmothers. Some awoke from vivid dreams in the nights that followed. Rather than seeking explanations, we allowed these experiences to rest with reverence, acknowledging the greater fields of history to which we all belong.
By honouring the past, we create a meeting place where the future can find us.
We explored how we wish to be loved, how we ourselves love, and how receiving can become as important as giving.
Transformation happened quietly—in movement, in dance, in conversation, in silence.
During the summer solstice we gathered on Plaka Beach, bathing beneath the rising sun as night gently became morning. Surrounded by mythology, every stone seemed to carry memory. Delphi, the Temple of Apollo, the Omphalos—the symbolic navel of the world—felt less like history and more like living metaphor.
Community circles became places of shared reflection.
We remembered the words of Rumi:
"Let the rain continue to fall until the shell reveals its pearl."
There were moments when I questioned whether I was enough. Was I giving enough? Doing enough?
Yet the deeper practice was never about doing. It was about remaining present to whatever was being asked in each moment and continually asking:
How am I to serve?
Observation became mirror.
Reflection became teacher.
Presence became practice.
There was no yoga.
There was no Alexander Technique.
Only an invitation into quiet stability.
A mirror that neither searches nor creates, but simply receives and reflects whatever stands before it.
The attention remained on the present moment.
The acceptance of imperfection gradually revealed its own perfection.
Not through striving, but through allowing.
Not through control, but through trust.
This is where the magic happens.
One particularly memorable experience was walking the newly created labyrinth. Labyrinths have guided pilgrims for thousands of years, inviting us to remember, reset, and begin again. Every step became both inward and outward, a journey through balance towards a renewed relationship with ourselves and the wider world.
Looking back, I realise that I no longer separate my personal exploration from my teaching.
They have become one.
I travel without agency or agenda. I simply respond to the invitations that arise, allowing my work to emerge organically from the people, the landscape, and the moment itself.
Perhaps that is what Non Yoga has always been.
Not a method.
Not a technique.
But an invitation to remember what has always been quietly waiting within us.

In gratitude to the Kalikalaos core team Julia,Sabine and Martha and to everyone else participating in the community …

Join us next year and let us know where have you found yourself arriving at a place that changed the way you see yourself?

From To
Certainty Participation
Performing Love Inhabiting Love
Chasing Intensity Cultivating Intimacy
Seeking Completion Discovering Wholeness
Exiling the self Devotion to reality

The Role of the Body

The central thesis is that the body is not an obstacle to healing, but the primary doorway. By moving past "anesthesia"—the numbing of our feelings to avoid pain—we gain the capacity to feel beauty, wonder, and pleasure.

The author posits that sensuality is a form of intelligence . It is the nervous system’s way of anchoring us in the present moment, reminding us that we are part of a living world.

Key Practices for Embodied Healing

Healing is presented as a practice of "restoration" rather than "optimization." The following are framed as ways to reconnect with the self:

Radical Presence: Staying with grief without collapsing into it; honoring desire without shame.
Nature Immersion: Using the environment (forests, cold water, stones, wind) to reset the nervous system and awaken dormant vitality.
Sensory Reclamation: Allowing sunlight, air, and touch to nourish the body without the pressure of eroticization or immediate utility.
Ritual and Reflection: Creating space to hear "ancestral memory" and to allow the mind to step aside in favor of direct, somatic experience.
The Invitation

The message culminates in an invitation to an immersive experience in the Italian Alps (August 20 – early September). This event is positioned as a structured container for those seeking to:

Recalibrate: Move from nervous system depletion to restoration.
Integrate: Harmonize the intellectual and the instinctual.
Remember: Reclaim pleasure, connection, and vitality as fundamental birthrights rather than luxuries.
Consider the following:
Can you allow the miracle of aliveness to touch you now—not someday when all grief is gone, but here, inside this unfinished becoming?

Healing, in this view, is the process of becoming porous —sufficiently open to allow sorrow and beauty to sit at the same table, rather than forcing the mind to exile the parts of us that hurt.

https://www.kalikalos.com

We are getting ready to depart for Greece, and there is still time to join us.
Away from the demands of daily life, we will explore the Inner Silence of Presence through gravity, space, and breath—rediscovering the simple awareness that is already alive within us.
We would be delighted to share this journey with you.

The Inner Silence of Presence is a body-centred meditation practice. Rather than approaching meditation through the thinking mind in a top-down way—as many modern methods do—it works from the bottom up. This means connecting with the natural awareness that already exists within the body itself.
Instead of relying primarily on thoughts, concepts, or mental instructions, we develop awareness through bodily sensations, feelings, intuition, and the felt sense of being embodied. The aim is simply to tune into the body's own innate awareness.
From the perspective of Alexander Technique philosophy, the human body naturally expresses or contains the conditions for meditation.. Awakening is not something separate from us, nor is it a distant goal to be attained. It is already present within our living body, waiting to be recognised.
The Inner Silence of Presence is a direct, non-conceptual experience of reality. By meeting our experience in this immediate way, deeper and more lasting transformation becomes possible.
We can understand this somatically through three aspects: ground, path, and fruition. In our previous sessions, we explored these through our three trusted companions—gravity, space, and breath. Gravity provides the ground, space reveals the path, and breath expresses the living fruition of embodied awareness. Together, they guide us back to the silent presence that is already here.Together we will bathe in the sunshine, savour olives and tomatoes freshly picked from the land, and in the stillness of each day, practise simply being present."

Home - Kalikalos Holistic Centre at Anilio Welcome to Kalikalos!   a simple, safe place in nature for connection, exploration and growth.     More than just a retreat centre, Kalikalos is a seasonal international community for

Do not banish words through subtraction. The language we shift shapes the stories we can tell, and the stories we tell shape how we respond under pressure.
What is expected of us now, as the monster of institutional culture creeps in on all sides? Seeing is not beholding. Resourcing is not belonging. Solidarity is more than togetherness.
The body is not a container for the mind; it is the mind's first language. Before thoughts and words, there are breaths, tensions, sensations, and subtle movements that reveal how we are already in relation with the world.
The monster is not arriving from elsewhere. It exposes the violence, silence, numbness, and uncertainty already present in our systems. It comes through the cracks, and perhaps the cracks are not failures but openings. As Bayo Akomolafe reminds us, cracks are where other possibilities become visible.
Nostalgia, imagination, uncertainty, ecological survival—these are not problems to solve but conditions to inhabit. Change is not always an act of force. Sometimes it is learning to perceive unfamiliar movement as something already becoming.
The task is not to restore normality. It is to remain sensitive to what emerges when the familiar no longer holds, and to belong to the larger field of life that is asking us to change.

There comes a moment in life when healing can no longer remain intellectual.
A moment when the mind, after years of analysis, striving, coping, and surviving, quietly steps aside—and the body begins asking to be heard again.
Not through theory. Not through performance. But through direct experience.

Over the years, I have come to understand that transformation does not happen in isolation from the body. It happens through immersion. Through contact. Through relationship with the living world.
Walking through forests until the nervous system softens. Cold river bathing that awakens dormant vitality. Bodywork that allows old grief to finally move. Silence deep enough to hear ancestral memory rising beneath thought. Eating and drinking in ways that restore reverence for nourishment itself. Resting against stones warmed by the sun. Allowing nature to touch every forgotten part of our sensuality and aliveness.

These immersions are among the most distilled, refined, and deeply restorative ways I know to support transformation.
They are designed for those who feel called to invest—fully and consciously—in their mental health, emotional renewal, sensual and sexual fulfillments, and the profound intelligence of the body as a pathway toward healing.

For many of us, modern life has taught disconnection:disconnection from sensation, from intuition, from community,from grief, from pleasure, from the rhythms that once kept human beings rooted in the earth and in themselves.
And yet beneath the exhaustion, beneath the heartbreak, beneath the anxiety and striving, something ancient still lives within us.
A deeper self. A sensitive self. A remembering self.

The body remembers how to heal when given the right conditions.
Not through force. Not through optimisation. But through safety, presence, beauty, nourishment, movement, touch, ritual, and connection.
This is not escapism. It is restoration.
Because true healing is not about becoming someone else. It is about returning to the wholeness that existed before survival became our primary identity.

There is a profound difference between merely functioning and truly feeling alive.
To feel alive is to reclaim the capacity for wonder. To rediscover the pleasure of simply being. To soften enough to receive touch again—whether from another human being, from water, from wind, from silence, or from the landscape itself.

Many people today are quietly carrying immense grief, loneliness, emotional fatigue, and nervous system depletion. We have become overstimulated mentally while remaining undernourished emotionally and sensually.
And so the invitation is simple:
What if healing could become an embodied experience rather than another concept to understand?
What if your body is not the obstacle to transformation—but the doorway into it?

This August and September, we gather in Italy for an immersive journey into restoration, embodiment, ancestral reflection, sensual awakening, nervous system healing, nature connection, movement, ritual, and deep human presence.
We invite you into a space intentionally designed to support profound recalibration of body, mind, heart, and spirit.
Together we will explore:– Forest bathing and conscious walking– Cold water immersion– Bodywork and nervous system restoration– Silent reflection and ancestral connection– Nourishing food and sensory awareness– Embodiment practices– Rest, beauty, pleasure, and human connection– Learning to access the intelligence of the body for comprehensive healing
This is for those who feel the call not merely to recover—but to awaken.

To remember that sensuality is not separate from spirituality. That softness can coexist with strength.That grief and beauty can sit beside one another.That pleasure, connection, and vitality are not luxuries, but birthrights.
Healing does not erase pain. But it changes the way we carry it.
And perhaps now, more than ever, we are being asked to return:to the body,to nature, to presence,to one another, and to the living intelligence within us that has always known the way home.

Join us in Italy from the 20th of August until the beginning of September for a transformational immersion into healing, embodiment, sensual aliveness, and restoration.
Sometimes the deepest medicine is not found in escaping life—but in learning how to fully inhabit it.

This was shared a while ago.... resonating always ...

The Light of the Forgotten
In every family system,
there are stories that were never told,
feelings that were too heavy to carry,
loyalties inherited before we knew we had a choice.
Positive change doesn’t come from denying the past—
it comes from honoring all of it.
Especially what was dismissed.
What was forgotten.
What no one dared to believe.
What was never heard.
There are unspoken contracts that bind us—
acts of love disguised as silence,
hidden sacrifices carried across generations.
But some loyalties no longer belong in the present.
Some echoes need not be repeated.
In the space of constellation,
we bring light to the disembodied truths—
not from outside, but from within.
Each of us becomes a candle,
a witness,
a holder of the truth too long left in the dark.
And when the story is seen,
when the forgotten is welcomed,
when each part is offered its rightful place—
then the system can breathe again.
Then the anxiety and the blockage
begin to melt.
Then harmony can return.
Not perfection.
Not forgetting.
But peace—rooted in the dignity of what has been
and the possibility of what can now become.
Take a breath.
Feel the field.
Let us begin.