Hello and welcome!
It’s a pleasure to greet you in my virtual home:)
Meeting someone for the first time can feel a little awkward. As a way of introduction, let me share a few random and not so random facts about me:
I spent a big chunk of my childhood daydreaming, journeying through whimsical worlds, exploring subtle energies and noticing things that other people strangely wouldn’t notice. I wrote my first poem at the age of 6. This is also when I experienced myself as a cloud during my first ever meditation, guided by my grand dad. One of my favourite treasures was a blue crystal ball that my mum brought home from a lab she worked at - it seemed to have come from a different dimension. For a long time, I made myself believe these things were silly and meaningless. These days, I cherish the magical, the whimsical, the weird and believe the sense of WONDER to be a potent medicine for the soul that I am privileged to share with others.
Up until the age of 9, if I closed my eyes, I could see people’s emotional states as auras of different colours. I developed my own colour coding system to identify what was going on - it was quite accurate. Unfortunately, I don’t see auras anymore, but I get a lot of subtle information through my body sensations. Whenever I speak to someone, a whole big experience unfolds within me and, over the years, through studies of the nervous system and what not, I have developed a way of making quite a good sense of it. It is a huge resource that I bring into my work with people.
I also see images and metaphors that come seemingly out of nowhere and bring insights into things.
I am currently 38. Most people assume I am younger and it can feel mischievously delicious to see them acting in alignment with this assumption without breaking the illusion.
I currently live in London, am planning to move to Portugal, was born and raised in Russia and my roots are mainly from Ukraine. I speak seven languages and know both the curses and the gifts of not having one single place of belonging.
I came to the UK when I was 20 to study hospitality and tourism management…only to realise, a couple of years later, that my heart longs to create and express itself, not manage. So I got my BA, completed my internship in a Central London office and went on to pursue photography and other visual arts for many years to come.
It is only recently that I have connected my early interest in hospitality with what I currently do - which hosting spaces where people can really land and feel at home, in connection with their body, soul and spirit.
I spent many years of my life in a relationship that felt utterly destructive to my soul. In 2015, I felt desperate and went to see a therapist. I thought this work was useless and nothing would help. In 2016, I went through a painful separation and then divorce. At that time, I was also feeling completely lost professionally. This period felt like the dark night of the soul, but I have eventually managed to come through, with a different understanding of myself, my strength, my needs and things I stand for in this world. What felt like hell, turned out to be the beginning of my healing journey.
A BIT ABOUT MY HEALING JOURNEY
Having grown up in an environment where emotional depth, sensitivity to nuance, authentic self-expression and creative ways were not exactly appreciated, I know very well what it's like to feel different, misunderstood, not sure where and if I can ever belong.
For many, many years, I believed that something was deeply wrong with and broken about me and how I am. No matter how much I tried, how much I pushed to change myself, I struggled to fit into the loud, noisy, rushing, linear, rationality-oriented world that at times didn't make any sense.
Like so many other sensitive souls, I have developed my own ways of coping and fitting in - like hiding bits of myself that I deemed ugly, scary or uncool, swallowing my truth, hiding my thoughts and feelings even from myself to the extent of losing any sense of boundaries, disconnecting from my body and intuition, anxiously chasing after the next new thing and external validation, not giving myself any space to breathe and listen to my inner voice.
Living like this was painful and at some point became intolerable, so I reached out for help.
In the course of my own healing journey, one of the many things I have discovered that the belief that something was fundamentally wrong and broken about me, was just that - a belief, not a curse that determined how I lived my life.
I have also discovered that the most healing thing was not this or that tool, modality or approach. It was not even a cognitive understanding of why things happened.
What my inner system and the young parts of my psyche deeply needed in order to heal was an attuned relational space, where I was loved for who I was and allowed to go at my own pace and be fully me, with all of my feelings of brokenness, sadness, envy, confusion, darkness, guilt, lostness, anger, heartbreak, as well as joy, excitement, dreaminess, hope and pride and a myriad of other feelings. What my parts needed, were to be seen and consistently met with acceptance, love, warm curiosity, compassion and understanding by another human being.
In the process, I have also discovered the power of connecting with my intuitive body wisdom and befriending my nervous system and what is often referred to as somatic intelligence - a resource I never knew was available to me.
As a result, rigid ways of being/thinking/reacting that have felt like "just who I am", started to soften, release and transform, while my sense of authentic self, personal power, self-trust, boundaries and capacity to feel and handle difficult emotions, without becoming overwhelmed, has been steadily growing.
Offering healing spaces like that and supporting others like myself on their journeys of growth and healing, has become my passion and vocation.