As a child growing up in Switzerland, I wanted to dance. My family valued music instead, so I was handed a violin — and it would be years before I found my way to movement on my own terms.

I moved to New York at twenty-five and finally took my first ballet classes at age 30, fully expecting some kind of Black Swan moment. My body had other plans — turns out pirouettes and I were not destined for each other, and I let that dream go with surprising ease.

It would take a cancer diagnosis a couple years later to point me toward the life I was meant to be living. Before that, I hadn’t been able to see clearly what actually mattered to me. That moment changed everything - I started looking at how I was living, what I valued, and how I could bring more joy, freedom, and genuine care for all parts of myself into my life. That’s when I began turning toward movement, and toward a healthier, more whole way of living.

I found Gyrotonic and fell for its circular, figure-eight patterns almost instantly — they felt strangely familiar. As a kid, my brother struggled with learning difficulties, and a healer had us trace figure eights with our hands, feet, arms, our whole bodies, over and over. I joined those sessions partly for him, partly for myself. Decades later, that same pattern found me again, and something in my body recognized it before my mind did.

I trained as a Gyrotonic instructor in New York while living in San Francisco, splitting my life between coasts to finish the certification. Gyrotonic also led me to Kundalini yoga — one warm-up practice, the Ego Eradicator, opened a door I ended up walking all the way through.

My Gyrotonic teachers encouraged their students to study Swedish massage, on the theory that the best movement teachers aren't afraid to put their hands on people. I followed that advice and fell completely for massage therapy — deep tissue, sports massage, cupping, shiatsu, and eventually craniosacral therapy.

Over time, bodywork became the center of my practice, and I stepped back from teaching Gyrotonic. Along the way, I also trained as a personal trainer — not to build a career and more to deepen my understanding of anatomy and how bodies actually move and hold themselves. In 2018, I traveled to India to complete my Kundalini Yoga Level One teacher training, and I've been working through Level Two ever since — a process that will likely take a few more years, and one I'm in no hurry to finish.

The deepest layer of this work began after my third car accident, when I realized that positive thinking alone wasn't going to carry me through. That period forced a kind of introspection I hadn't done before, and it's what led me to the somatic field — and eventually to training as a somatic coach.

Somewhere in all of this, I also fell deeply for Latin dance — salsa especially — which has become one of the most uplifting, unexpected joys in my life, and a reminder that movement doesn't have to be solemn to be sacred.

Today I work as a bodyworker, massage therapist, craniosacral therapist, kundalini yoga and meditation teacher, and somatic coach. My path here has never been linear, but every piece of it — the violin, the ballet, the figure eights, the accidents, the years of training — taught me something about how the body holds, remembers, and heals. That's the work I now get to share with others.