“When we set about trying to transform society, we must remember that we ourselves will also need to transform.”
- Mariame Kaba
Photo by the phenomenal Livio Salvi
For the longest time, I’ve been interested in how people change themselves in order to change the conditions around them.
I have gone through many versions of change myself - some more functional than others – and each of them opened me up to new ways of understanding myself and the world around me.
They included starting over in a new language and country when I was 18 and un-following the path set out for me as an NGO worker after finishing a degree in international development.
For a while, I was an ideologically-driven young person in the charity sector in search of meaning, bouncing between short-term contracts. As I went from one institution to the next, I slowly began to see a pattern: we pour so much energy into perfecting our language, strategies, policies etc. and pay much less attention to how we ourselves need to change in order to embody the different world we say we want.
I could see that time and again, this was the missing glue that was driving a lot of conflict and collapse.
I realised I had to start with myself. Through somatic practice and many incredible teachers, friends and collaborators, I began to grapple with the conditioning of white supremacy and other forms of domination in my own body. This work is on-going.
Over the past 12 years, I have worked with dozens of charities, foundations and public bodies in the UK, Europe and the US, trying to figure out what it takes to align ourselves with the change we want to see.
In a world that is changing so rapidly and in terrifying ways, courage, integrity and authenticity become important qualities that can ground us.
It’s tempting to double down, numb out or fall into deep despair when confronted with so much uncertainty, moral dilemmas and our own complicity in harmful systems.
I have been in all of these places and still visit them sometimes.
I’m still finding out how I / you / we can expand our capacity to stay with it when things get messy, unpredictable, uncomfortable and overwhelming, so that we can remain connected to ourselves, each other and our shared humanity and create the conditions for a different kind of future to become possible.
I’d love to explore this question with you and watch what happens when we change ourselves as we change the conditions around us.
Certified facilitator of The Resilience Toolkit level 1 (2025)
Certificate in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy (2021)
MSc in Social Development Practice, University College London (2012)
BSc in Anthropology, University College London (2009)
+ over a decade of experience and on-going further development as a facilitator, consultant and somatic practitioner
I am fluent in English and German and open to working in both languages
