I did not arrive here by calling. I arrived by exhaustion.
Seven years working inside aeroplanes, a death in the family, a Hindu goddess telling me to quit, and a trip alone to the other side of the world to learn massage. This is the part that does not fit on the front page, for anyone who wants to know who they will be alone in a room with for an hour or two.
Seven years living in no time zone at all.
I was cabin crew for seven years. From outside it is a beautiful life: you wake in Lisbon and have dinner on another continent. From inside it is a body that never knows what time it is. I slept badly and at absurd hours. I ate whatever there was, whenever there was. I worked whole shifts with my nervous system at full volume, because in a cabin that is what they ask of you: be ready for whatever might go wrong, with a smile over the top. Nobody warned me it had a price. I found out through my body, which is how these things are found out. Tiredness a weekend would not lift. Anxiety about nothing in particular. The permanent sense of running late. That is also where I received my massages, as a client. It was always an important moment for me, where I allowed myself to relax. When I say I have been the person who arrives here unable to switch off, this is what I mean.
My mother.
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 16. She died ten years later, in the middle of my flying years.
That is as far as it goes. It is no secret, and it is also not a credential: losing a mother qualifies me for nothing and I am not going to use it as if it did.
It is on this page for one reason. It was in grief that I went looking for something else, and that is where the rest begins.
The goddess who told me to quit.
A colleague took me to a shamanism gathering in Lisbon. I went out of curiosity and with no faith at all, and I left feeling I had found a language I already knew how to speak. With the pandemic and the planes grounded, I studied everything I could reach: shamanism, tarot, chi kung, and in 2020 I did my first proper training, as a yoga teacher. That is where it happened. We were in a kirtan, a devotional chant dedicated to Kali, the goddess who in the Hindu tradition destroys what no longer serves. Halfway through I started crying without knowing why, and I heard an instruction, in plain words: you are going to leave aviation. Read that however you like. A message, the subconscious finally speaking up, or seven years of tiredness finding a way out. For all practical purposes it makes no difference: I quit anyway, and the rest of this page is what happened next.
Before the eyebrow goes up.
A pause here, for the question you are asking.
Some people think shamanism is rapé and drums. I do both, when they make sense, but that is not where the essential part is. To me, shamanism is reconnecting with the elements of nature and with what is true for you. Breath is air. Music can be water. And it does not even have to be a drum: any instrument, played with attention, does exactly the same work.
It is not a religion, I ask you for no faith, and you will not lie down here listening to someone talk about spirits over your head. What people most often tell me at the end of a session is that they felt like going to hug a tree. It is roughly that.
And if it still does not sit right, I explain everything in the conversation before we start. Nothing enters the session that you do not want.
The two years when I had no idea what I was doing.
The heroic part ends here. I quit in 2021 and spent the next two years doing a bit of everything: yoga classes, qigong classes, one training after another, unable to say in a single sentence what it was that I did. In 2023 I went to Asia. Vietnam and Thailand, alone, and it was the first time in seven years I boarded a plane without a uniform. In Chiang Mai I learned Thai foot massage at the Old Medicine Hospital, and Chi Nei Tsang, which is abdominal work, in the part of the body where what has not been digested is kept. I learned qigong. I came back with my hands knowing things my head was still filing away.
I do not do miracles. I keep your nervous system company for an hour, and I teach you to do it yourself.
What is on a piece of paper I can show you.
I have been seeing people since 2020. None of this is worth more than what you feel on the table, but some people need to see before they book, and rightly so. These are the trainings I have certificates for, with the school, the place and the year.
I have every certificate scanned. If you want to see one before you book, ask.
If you read this far, you already know who you will be with.
The session is built around the state you arrive in that day. If you already know what you want, book. If you do not know where to start, answer five questions and I will tell you.
Not sure where to start?
Five questions, two minutes