I was born and educated in Poland but always felt I would live somewhere else. Aged 21, I left Poland for England where I continued to study business and then joined an international consultancy company.

 

The Iron Curtain has just came down and I found my business knowledge and language skills in demand. But I also felt deeply dissatisfied with the grabbing nature of business and its apparent lack of heart. Simultaneously, my interest in Eastern philosophy, had lead me to learn Transcendental Meditation and its practice created an oasis of calm in my otherwise chaotic and over-busy life.

 

When my then partner was offered a job in South Africa, I jumped at the opportunity for change. South Africa, just after its first democratic elections, was full of optimism and great expectations. I threw myself into more rewarding but demanding NGO work and my body collapsed. I spent the next year recovering from what was diagnosed as ME.

 

 

In retrospect, this was the greatest gift. I finally had time to stop and get to know myself. I was blessed with meeting two exceptional people at this time. One was an Irish doctor who helped me to see beyond my physical condition and start to peel away the layers of stress, conditioning and self-imposed limitations. Another was a Dutch yoga teacher who helped me gain strength that I had never known was possible.  Under her tutelage, I began to listen to my body for the first time in my adult life.

 

When I got back to London in 1996, I knew that the insights I had gained during my time in SA, would lead me to work in the healing field. I started a two-year yoga teaching course, after which I went to India to study with the Iyengar family, the founders of the system I trained in. Although my time in India was wonderful in so many ways, it was also clear to me that I needed to leave this tradition to embark on a journey of my own. Since then, I have met many inspiring teachers, but the one that helped me to look beyond the form and search for the essence of the practice was Donna Farhi, whose teacher training course I attended in Vancouver in 2006.

 

Another pivotal moment was meeting Qi Gong Master, Zhixing Wang. The practice of Qi Gong has opened my eyes to seeing the body in a new way. From the energy perspective, it is the field of intelligence with the potential to constantly renew itself. Imbuing the practice with Qi or Prana makes it more effortless and potent with healing possibilities.

 

In 2007, I completed a two year course to become an NLP (Neuro-Linquistic Programming) Master Practitioner. This has given me another way of understanding mind-body dynamics. As mind and body constantly interact and shape one another, freeing the thinking from its habitual patterns can create a corresponding feeling of expansion in the body.

 

My inquiry into the body-mind workings is a continuous and exhilarating journey, which has over the years taken me to meet the most wonderful people - healers and teachers of all traditions whose work is helping others. As Nelson Mandela once said: “After a great hill, one only finds there are many more hills to climb”. And so the journey continues…