A therapist who went looking past the edges of the field
I was born in Warsaw, Poland, into a family deeply shaped by the Second World War, the Nazi occupation, Stalinism, and communism.
Long before I had clinical language for it, I could feel how collective and family trauma lives on in relationships and in the body. I also sensed that we can know without consciously knowing, and that what remains unmetabolized and unspoken can shape future generations.
Psychotherapy was a lifeline for me, and I remain profoundly grateful for it. It helped me understand myself and gave me a language for suffering, relationships, and the unconscious. Eventually, it became my life’s work and remains one of my deepest passions.
“Whatever freedom we find has to be something the whole person can live.”
Expanding our understanding of healing
Some of my most important experiences of healing have happened outside Western psychotherapy. Working with Indigenous traditions—particularly with Kichwa practitioners in Ecuador and Shipibo healers in the Peruvian Amazon—has broken open my understanding of healing and transformed me in ways I had not imagined.
These traditions introduced me to forms of healing that included ceremony, ancestry, community, the natural world, Spirit, and expanded states of consciousness—dimensions largely absent from my clinical training.
I remain deeply grateful for what Western psychotherapy has taught me, particularly about development, trauma, and the unconscious. In my work, those insights now stand alongside other ways of knowing and healing.
More recently, I have been a student of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, studying the Five Elements within the Tibetan Bön tradition. I approach these teachings with deep respect for their distinct history and integrity, and for the wisdom carried through time-tested lineages.
Where I am now
Today, I bring these strands together in my work as a psychotherapist, teacher, supervisor, and writer. Each is part of the same continuing inquiry into healing and human liberation.
