I’m an explorer by nature. I love to discover and try new things, and it is no different with my embodiment practice. I’ve been lucky to try many kinds of activities as a kid (from snowboard to karate) and I have always been inspired by nature and the felt sense of wind in my hair. However, I ended up working long hours at a desk for more than a decade and missing things that I really liked doing. Being stressed and tense in my body and mind started to have an impact, bringing pain and frustration. When the mental crisis finally got me, it got me for long. But it also proved to be a transformation I would never have imagined possible.

My first encounter with mindful embodiment was in the spring of 2016 at my first Cantenica workshop in Kraków (which focuses on working with pelvic floor and deep muscles).

I was then practicing regularly with Kasia Dobrowolska, not knowing that I’d been planting a seed for a new life path that was to come after 2 years of severe anxiety disorder and depression. It was a seed of trusting my own body’s intelligence and my commitment to the practice. That turned out to be an essential part of my recovery and has been guiding me through life until today.

I found yoga, or indeed yoga found me while visiting my family in London in the summer of 2019. Yoga practice helped me recover from a mental health crisis I had been facing for two years. My first teachers (such as Tom Holmes) introduced me to vinyasa flow, yin yoga, and qigong and helped me to establish a healthy daily practice routine. Back in my home country, Poland, I continued practicing with Iyengar teachers, which proved to be a healing process not only for my body and spirit, but also for my relationship to others. The communities built around my practices around the word are what I find the most important element of my path as a practitioner and a teacher.

Thanks to regular practice I was better prepared to face another challenging physical injury: a deep-vein thrombosis episode in my left arm, which meant I couldn’t continue my practice in the same way anymore. That held me back temporarily, but amending my practice appropriately helped me recover and get back on track.

This was when qigong practice played its role. It helped me stay connected to the practice.

Thanks to qigong and Daoist philosophy my practice became even more connected to nature’s wisdom and cycles. As the forms very often refer to natural (animal) world I learn to move in a more creative, fluid and graceful way and was able to find more ease and peace in my body and mind.