I was raised as a super sensitive little cancer soul. I have always been in touch with my emotions. I spent the majority of my twenties in either spiritual settings such as meditating with monks and nuns in a Buddhist temple/monastery in Myanmar, or in Berlin’s dark and dirty sex positive underworld such as riding on a strangers back with him naked on all fours pretending be a horse, through all the dancefloors this club had to offer.

Here I was ‘knowing’ how to feel, be spiritual and play and fuck - all of that felt disconnected and somehow not fulfilling at all. 

Then I found temple. Not the ones I knew but a different one. One moment I witnessed a woman punching a man’s chest letting out her rage, the next I saw a few people crying deeply and praying “for the world” (back then I was like wtf? but now I understand actually), other moments the group dissolved into a big pile of tongues and hands exploring bodies, there were people crying, moaning, being still.

And yeh - then there was also that moment when I was non-consensually choked unconscious and when I came back to my senses, I cried and he licked away my tears. There was so much WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK in that experience and I have to admit I liked it, all of it. This was the beginning of a journey that has burnt so many of my parts down, birthed new, brought love to the unloved, uncovered the unseen, tore me apart…

And not often stitched me back together.

In the beginning I often had the same observation: many spaces went too radical, too intense, too fast from the very start and lost me. I was too busy protecting myself because my survival mechanisms were activated.

But I held on over and over again.

Even though my resilience allowed me to plow through the wounds, trauma and shadows that were arising for me in those temples, I was desiring this framework, just a bit softer, slower, more gentle, a little bit more grounded and relatable. I knew many people who didn’t hold on and dismissed the whole temple thing, maybe even came out scarred.

I grieve this deeply today because I believe so much in the concept of temple- I believe it is peacework, inner and outer. And how many people were lost to do this powerful work and/or were hurt because they weren’t initiated in a sustainable way.

This isn’t to shame or blame any facilitators and institutions who choose a more radical approach, this is how I found out what I want my service to the world to look and feel like.

Going back to the analogy of how temple is about stirring your own boat with the natural current of the river: some of us master stirring the boat in really rough, wild waters and some of us capsize when the smallest wave hits - and there is no judgement in either of that.

Turns out, I love supporting people in building the muscle in calm waters to eventually be able to navigate rip currents and monster waves if they want to ride their boat in those.

And if this analogy isn’t clear enough: I don’t believe we need forced intensity to grow, I believe in creating a setting that follows the innate intelligence of timings in our systems which allows us to feel and integrate as much as possible in real time. 

This is why I have turned to building bridges, creating beginner spaces, slow and soft settings, creating the A Temple Initiation retreat.

All that to say that this isn’t going to be exclusively comfortable, temple is deep shadow work and that can sometimes still split you wide open.