What defines my work

As I’ve already described on my website, I bring together what is often seen as contradictory – sometimes even irreconcilable – in my work: spirituality and science, shamanism and psychology, breathwork and research. In this post, I’ll share with you what this means in practice.

"Fantasy instead of science, feeling instead of reason? Not at all..."

When I began my shamanic training and started exploring alternative healing methods, it initially seemed like I was taking a completely different path than before. Fantasy instead of science, feeling instead of reason – that’s how many of my former colleagues from the academic field saw it. I was also a bit nervous at first because it seemed risky to just throw away all the effort I had put into earning my doctorate and my academic training.

However, I quickly realized that the opposite was true: all of my experiences at university and in research turned out to be an excellent foundation for my work as a breathworker and transformation guide. At the same time, this combination gives rise to important principles of my approach: bringing together heart and mind, body and spirit; understanding trauma and the role of body practices and mindfulness for healing and development; empathetic communication and the role of the guide.

Bringing together heart and mind, body and spirit.

As an academic, I personally experienced what it feels like when work, life, and self-concept revolve primarily around the mind. The focus on rationality and thinking, often accompanied by a devaluation of feelings, intuition, and body knowledge, is a feature of our society as a whole. However, I had the impression that within the scientific milieu, or when identifying as a scientist, this tendency is even more pronounced. While I did engage in sports and yoga, overall, my body was primarily seen as a tool to carry my head around. I made decisions (or so I thought) based purely on rational considerations, and my body often only caught my attention when it showed up negatively, through cold-related illnesses, headaches, and fatigue, which hindered my productivity. Interestingly, this disconnection from the body and its sensations is also a symptom of trauma. In other words, the academic habitus, to some extent, reinforced restrictive behavioral patterns that had already been developed.

One of the first things I learned on the shamanic path was to relate to my body in a different way. I learned to perceive it more finely, seeing it as an indicator or compass of where well-being lies. This included reconnecting with my "good feelings," my gut instincts and intuition, and using them for decision-making. It also meant learning to recognize and respect my own energetic and emotional boundaries instead of constantly pushing myself and overexerting. Particularly in Breathwork, I was able to experience how comfortable I could feel in my body, how much it could become a home where I felt safe.

At the same time, my own experiences with trauma also taught me how much our body and our unconscious often lead the way without us being consciously aware of it. Our mind is like a little rider sitting on a huge elephant but hasn't learned to understand the elephant and gently guide it. Sounds like disaster, right? It is. By the way, this metaphor of the elephant comes from Jonathan Haidt, who vividly and inspiringly explains what goes wrong in our relationship between mind and body, conscious mind and unconscious mind, in his book The Happiness Hypothesis.

The metaphor of the elephant and its rider also shows that the mind does play an important role. Unlike some people on the shamanic or spiritual path, I have a great respect for the mind, science, and logical thinking. In my view, it's about knowing both, heart and mind, body and spirit, understanding their interplay, and assigning them the right place in the ensemble. Therefore, it is important to me to meet the people I work with both rationally and emotionally. Based on my own experiences and scientific knowledge, I help them come into their feelings and bodies, refine their body awareness, while also intellectually understanding what is happening and why it is helpful.

Understanding trauma

Anyone who works with people on their personal development or healing should be familiar with trauma. (This actually applies to teachers, doctors, and especially psychologists, but unfortunately, this is far too rare. Hard to believe, but true.)

At the same time, trauma is a very broad field and is situated at the intersection of various areas: neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences are all relevant for understanding trauma as an individual and collective phenomenon. At the same time, the most important and innovative contributions to trauma healing often come from therapeutic practice, both from psychotherapists and bodyworkers, doctors, and people working with alternative methods. This has also led to a real potpourri of approaches, hypotheses, and methods. My academic training helps me immensely to sift through, categorize, and integrate this vast amount of information into my own thinking and actions.

In shamanism, trauma is one of the key points of healing work, even though it is sometimes called something else. My training as a Clarity Breathworker was trauma-sensitive, as one of my instructors is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I also greatly value the work of Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Experiencing. His concepts and methods for trauma healing (e.g., pendulation, titration) have found wide application beyond Somatic Experiencing in trauma work and various therapeutic approaches such as Breathwork. I have studied Polyvagal Theory in depth, along with therapy approaches that take it into account, and have engaged with the work of Steven Porges, Bonnie Badenoch, Bessel Van der Kolk, Janine Fisher, Dan Siegel, and Melanie Büttner in my self-study and online courses. Since the spring of 2021, I have been an active member of the Trauma Working Group of the German Breathwork Association.

Personally, courses, texts, and interviews by Ilan Stephani, Dami Charf, and Gabor Maté on trauma have been the most formative for me. Since September 2021, I have been training in the “Compassionate Inquiry” program by Dr. Gabor Maté and am glad to be able to further expand my skills in accompanying people through their processes within this framework.

Mindfulness vs. Mode

A clear trend in trauma research is the emphasis on body practices and mindfulness, which have a central role in human health and development in the wisdom traditions of Asia and Latin America. (See, for example, the work of Bessel van der Kolk, Levin, Maté) Increasing scientific evidence shows that meditation, mindfulness, and breathing techniques have a positive impact on our mental and physical health. At the same time, particularly in the fields of yoga and meditation, there has been such an adaptation of the practices to current logics, values, and customs that in some variants, it is questionable whether they actually contribute to calming the nervous system, strengthening the internal observer, and grounding in the body. Rather than adopting something uncritically, I am, partly thanks to my training as a social scientist and empirical researcher, able to carefully assess what truly helps and what is merely a trend or superstition. This is an ongoing process of being open to the new, experimenting, verifying, and adapting (for all the social science nerds: "abductively," so to speak). I usually start with myself: I first test every new tool and technique through personal experience before sharing it with my clients.

Quality of relationships and communication skills

While tools and techniques, information, and methods are important, the quality of the relationship plays a particularly significant role in my work. This also has a biological and scientifically proven basis: thanks to Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory and the field of interpersonal neurobiology, we know that human nervous systems co-regulate in interactive situations. This means that my nervous system and the client's "sync up" and influence each other; we become a system when we engage in conversation. If I am able to regulate myself, stay centered, and grounded in this situation, it creates favorable conditions for my clients to also settle and relax. It is important that I can emotionally resonate without losing composure.

At the same time, it simply feels good for most people when they are listened to, with an open ear, full attention, compassionate attitude, and free from judgment. I had this experience in my empirical research. Over many years, I conducted narrative and biographical interviews in various cultural contexts. During this time, people—often strangers to me—opened a door to their hearts and lives for 2-3 hours. Many shared their most difficult experiences, some spoke for the first time in years, or sometimes for the first time ever, about traumatic events. Even then, I was able to observe how much can shift just by having the opportunity to speak in peace, to be held, heard, and mirrored. This “holding space” for the other is a central aspect of my work and, as we know today, also an important component of successful therapeutic encounters.

Thanks to my analytical skills, my trained thinking in creative problem-solving, and my psychological knowledge, I am also able to point out existing patterns during our conversation and help my clients understand themselves in new ways, as well as discover new aspects of their situation and behavior. I can regularly observe how much moves cognitively and emotionally in clients during the preliminary conversation, which is then “rounded out” with body-oriented methods afterward.

Beyond the specific conversation situation, I also offer my clients a reliable and committed working relationship based on mutual respect, where boundaries are acknowledged and maintained. This can be a key building block, especially for individuals whose early relationships were marked by a lack of connection, allowing them to experience something different.

Empowerment and freedom

This "on eye level" is really important to me. I am fully aware that, just like my clients, I am in a continuous process of development and learning. My work with others constantly points out where I still need to heal or grow. Particularly, the Compassionate Inquiry training helps me a lot to embody this awareness that we are all still on our journey and to handle my own triggers with confidence during sessions.

It’s important to me to empower people to recognize how they themselves create their lives. Gaining freedom from old patterns and beliefs is one of the most important goals in my work, and I provide knowledge and practical techniques on how to advance this process in daily life.

Therefore, my work centers on bringing heart and mind into balance, establishing a supportive relationship, and working in a trauma-informed, mindful, body-centered, and experiential way.

As for the specific methods, I now combine several into an integrative approach. These include Clarity Breathwork, Compassionate Inquiry (Dr. Gabor Maté), IFS (Internal Family Systems by Richard Schwartz), and Shamanism. If you want to learn more about these individual methods, check them out here.