Born to loving and caring Iranian parents, my formative early years were spent in a close knit family with strong bonds, surrounded by kindness and love. This safe environment, however, was disrupted by war and political instability which forced my parents to relocate me to Western Europe as an unaccompanied minor refugee. This disruption, I believe, created within me a need to help others and to help myself to return to wholeness. Leaving school I decided to study nursing. But after years of working at the gynaecological operating theatre as well as one of the biggest breast cancer centres of Germany, I realised that modern medicine is primarily concerned with the “body”, separating it from the mind. It became more and more clear to me that we don’t really heal the patient but merely treat the symptoms. I was left wondering if I had chosen the right career path.
Alongside my university programme and still with a strong love for India in my heart, I also began the practice and study of yoga within a local studio. I became a committed and eager student of the Ashtanga System, a rather intense and rigid yoga style with a then quite strict formula that for a while seemed to fit my need for discipline. After 10 years of interwoven trajectories of study, yoga, and professional work within the healthcare system, I found Dr. Gabor Maté’s work. It finally brought everything together for me; the missing link between the realm of scientific work and the realm of the “spirit” like yoga, meditation, and the ancient healing practices of the East and indigenous people around the world. Once I certified as a Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner I immediately started coaching my clients with Dr. Maté’s approach to therapy.
My own trauma integration journey has helped me process and deal with arriving to Europe as an unaccompanied minor refugee and growing up in children’s care homes and foster care system. I am very familiar with the trauma of war, forced uprooting, multiple losses and unstable home/family system and the myriad changes that come with migration. On my personal quest for true health I have had a long endeavour of trial and error in the Western medical approach. I grew up often feeling disconnected from my body, instincts and emotions and suffering from chronic stomach aches and digestive problems that no doctor was able to find a physiological reason for. People told me I was shelled off, a “hard nut to crack”. Realising that trauma was at the core of my body and mind issues brought a major shift in my perspective, and a profound internal understanding and connection.
Today I am fully dedicated to integrating trauma into wholeness. My yoga practice and teaching style has changed into a much more gentle and explorative experience of self-discovery and a somatic healing process including a strong trauma sensitive approach. This, together with witnessing my CI clients’ transformations and their empowerment and self-determination into their own capacities of the body and mind, is what drives me today.
