Advent Reflections #1 Today is the first Sunday of advent. No matter if this is a tradition you celebrate or not, the Sundays until the end of the year can offer welcome moments for reflection of the year that is nearing completion. I appreciate pauses for...
It’s the end of the harvest season. And as such a good moment to pause and reflect what you’ve harvested so far this year. The basis for a serendipidous harvest I have come to the understanding that life is not linear. We don’t live in a tit-for-tat world. Sometimes...
Are humans and bodies supposed to work like machines? Shut down what you don’t need, switch on what you want. And when the switch is on, the body (or human) is supposed to function like a cog in a system without fault. I can’t say this mechanical way of looking...
One of the things that has been on my mind is the question what “normal” really means. I have to admit that I’ve had reactions to the phrases “back to normal” and “returning to a new normal” that ranged from slight irritation to frustration as politicians kept...
How has your week been so far? It’s Thursday already. And for many of us it’s a short week because Monday was a holiday. Isn’t it strange somehow, thinking in weeks? Being in this special stay-at-home situation due to the Coronavirus I have started investigating how I...
This is the last part of the Spring cleaning. Today I want to invite you to not look for elephants and the big issues and blocks that we are mostly busy with. When I do a Spring clean in the house, I mostly attempt to tackle the big and important pieces first:...
Now that most of us are staying home, it might actually be beneficial to not only use the time to do a proper spring cleaning of our homes, but also to do inner work that supports us in dealing with the current global developments, stress and emotional overwhelm. Last...
When I do spring cleaning at home, I not only get rid of the dust in the corners and clean the windows, I also move the furniture to see if there is something hiding behind it. I also take out the stuff from the shelves and see what I still need and what’s served its...
Whenever I’m preparing for a workshop or have a focus subject for myself, I’m exploring it in different aspects of my daily life. It’s natural that you start seeing connections when you maintain an intention for a while. On my Sunday walk in the Viennese...
Have you already said thank you to your body today for doing a great job? Why not? You can show your gratitude by taking a deep breath and relaxing into how you are right now. Often, we only become aware of all the innumerable functions the body is carrying out to...
The year is still fresh and there’s plenty of time for you to shape your everyday life in small ways that can have a big impact over time. A couple of years ago I started having an annual theme or focus. This year it is ‘nourishing the essential’ as I shared in my...
Being aware that you have a choice is an essential element to embrace your leadership has a human being. Also knowing that when you don’t make a decision, you’ve made a decision is key to embracing your own strength and individuality. Owning your choice...
Is it odd that we seem to have more vocabulary for what is uncomfortable or doesn’t work? And how does this tendency influence our experience of life? We are more used to feel the uncomfortable What I have observed time and again in my work with clients is that...
Yesterday morning, I attended the CreativeMornings event in Vienna. Lukas Paltram, the speaker, shared what inspired him and his team in the development of the font for the Austrian capital. (Super interesting, even when you’re not a typography nerd. You can check out...
Being creative is an act of leadership. Leadership means bringing an intention into the space you share with others. Being creative is also an intentional act of bringing something new into the world. Creativity and leadership both allow for the unexpected....
I’ve been thinking of justice in the context of bodywork and embodied self-awareness. And what came up was this questions: How you can create a more just distribution of attention and energy for yourself, in your body? Very often, in the creative process...
write down what is on your mind not to get rid of your thoughts well, maybe to get rid of the annoying ones but also to keep what you don’t want to forget the good stuff, the bad stuff there is a place for everything on a blank page to surface the thoughts that...
Dieting is mostly spoken of in the context of food. To stay healthy and well, I think it’s also important what information we feed ourselves. Actually, the journey starts not only with what, but how much. Since we’ve had the government crisis in Austria,...
The summer season is full of life and energy. Everything is growing and expanding. The sun is at its most intense. It’s an inviting time to also show yourself, experiment and move. It’s a great time for outdoor activities and enjoying what life has to offer. ...
As we’ve had the first heat waves of the summer and water plays a vital element in staying refreshed, cool and mentally sane, I thought I’d share one day out of the Moments of Presence program with you. Before you get to it, I’d like to share what...
Tension is not the same as intensity. Tension is often equivalent with too much effort. We carry a lot of chronic tension in our bodies. By letting go of tension, we can discover new resources that emerge. Maybe you experience stillness, clarity, serenity, direction,...
The most common list is the to-do list. It’s useful. It saves your brain energy as you don’t need to remember things. But there are other lists that can also be helpful: The not-to-do list if you want to avoid falling into the same trap over and over...
I don’t know if you’ve ever got a massage or a bodywork session of some kind. If you have, you have your own experience if you enjoyed it and if you had a personal learning from the session. If yes, when was the last time? Can you recall this experience? Was...
Are you depending on outside perspectives more than your felt sense? How many mirrors do you have in your home? How often are you watching your own reflection in a shop window? How often does looking at yourself in the mirror really make sense? I’m not at home right...
A way of at looking at frustration: Being frustrated is a state of accumulated little annoyances whose energy hasn’t been used to resolve the issues at hand and instead manifest in a state of stuckness. Frustration is a bucket of ‘negative’ emotion that has...
Three weeks ago I was introduced to the concept of Coherent Breathing by my friend Elisha who is, among other things, a great breathing and meditation teacher. (If you’re curious about what she does, check out her website.) Learning is always a full-body...
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. – Epictetus This quote was on my calendar a couple of days ago. On the way to work it struck me to see so many people wearing headphones in public. So am I occasionally, for that...
Energy follows attention – applied to one-to-one bodywork sessions Energy follows attention is a universal principle. As with anything, you should try and experiment with it for yourself to see if it works for you and if it feels true to you and brings...
Effective action is a natural result of alignment. When your thinking, your emotions and your physical being are attuned to each other, it is clear if, how and when action wants to happen. I believe we are all doing too much. We definitely make too much effort...
There are visible and invisible aspects that form part of self-care. Some things you can see and touch and measure: the food you eat, your hours of exercise, the amount of water you drink, the hours of sleep you get, just to name a few practical ones. And then there...
An observation that I have made again and again is that when someone is emotional – feeling lost, alone, sad, overly joyful, or angry – they often do not stay connected – to themselves and the world. One way how I notice this is that their eyes are...
Two parameters that make building healthy habits easyier: Build on an existing habit It doesn’t work to replace habits you’d like to get rid of. There are neural pathways engrained in your brain that your system is used to using. Instead of wanting to get...
aka strength isn’t force Being strong doesn’t mean using force to achieve what you think you need to do. Being strong means being flexible, in flow, receptive to life. It also means holding still, at times, and tuning in to yourself and what surrounds you so you can...
Presence is a beautiful state of being. It means being fully in the here and now. Yet, it can also be this vague and abstract concept when you’re not in the right space. It can seem like a distant place to reach when you are stuck. It is often said that all...
Everything you do, any movement you make can be ‘just’ an exercise or it can be an embodied practice that invites growing awareness, more choices and presence. There are a few pointers that help you identify what kind of practice you are engaging in....
I am committed to practicing a balanced way of taking in and integrating what I’m taking it. And I’m not only talking about food or other consumer goods. I am mainly focusing on information – verbal, emotional, physical. I have been practicing for a good while...
Every time you take a breath, your lungs are hugging your heart. Isn’t this a beautiful visual for what happens in your body!? The inspiration for this illustration came from Leila Stuart who has given a session on Embodied Anatomy at the online Embodiment...
In the world of mechanics, there are rules. More makes more. Faster is faster. Bigger is better. The machine is running longer, and it produces more pieces. You create a faster way of doing the process, you will be able to produce more. The body is effective in a...
Continuing from last week, I’m sticking with the subject of the eyes. I just finished ‘Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshé Feldenkrais.’ Chapter 5, Man and the World, tells about Feldenkrais’ encounter with Van Foerster at an event, where Van Foerster...
As I am a body and book nerd, I read a lot about what it means to be human. My little home library covers diverse areas from business psychology, neuroscience to old bodywork literature and stuff on systems thinking and how people connect. I can’t remember what...
A Guardian article with the title ‘Whisper it… ASMR videos are the quiet revolution going global’ found its way in my inbox this morning. And it nicely shows what happens with research and how it can easily miss its purpose. The problem I have with research and...
When it comes to stress, one of the main blocks I encounter – in myself and in my work with people – is the effort we make to not feel stressed. I have come to understand stress as a boost of energy that the body provides to make you awake and give you...
An expectation … is what you bring into the situation that is based on old experiences. It is coming from your mind. It’s what you project onto others or the situation thus limiting the possibilities you can experience. You’re putting people and circumstances...
When we hold on to something for a long time, it goes all the way to our core. It can pervade every cell of our being. Letting go of ideas, fixed postures and patterns is a vital element in becoming more present and having your energy available for your goals in the...
What if you didn’t have an idea of who you are? What if you weren’t limited by your self-image? What if there were no fixed ways of thinking, moving, feeling? What would you do? What would you wear? Who would you talk to? How would you move on the street? Would you...
A way to deal with overwhelm, inspired by Leopold Kohr This blog introduces Leopold Kohr and how his “small is beautiful” could be translated into my kind of body language I spent the last days in my home town of Salzburg. In a conversation, I learned about Leopold...
Change and transformation in a person involve the dropping of old and building of new habits. It’s a process of becoming aware of elements that you considered ‘normal’ to realizing you can change them if you pay attention and integrate a new way into...
Simple steps to become more present – with the goal to have all your abilities and skills available so you can use them as needed in daily life. Presence is not a goal in itself, it’s a means to an end: self-empowered individuals in community. 1 ...
Integration and integrity are related. This is the week for integrating what you’ve learned about ease in the past weeks. As important as integrating what supports you is letting go again of what you don’t need. Maybe you have had a few new ideas, but you...
Easy is still right, right?! After having learned a bit more about what ease means to you in a very physical way and identifying situations when you have it or when you miss it and would like to be able to access this quality, it’s time to bring the experience even...
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkRead more
