healer & post-partum doula
Since Covid entered our world, more people have been awakening:
who are seeking spiritual and emotional healing for grief, loss, and separation,
who want to regain sovereignty, and learn to be with themselves by themselves,
who yearn to connect with other women and embrace what it meant to be feminine,
relief from aches and anxiety during pregnancy and to prepare themselves for the post-partum period to heal their bodies whilst caring for the baby.
where I emerged from
facing my darkness to find the truth
Since I was young, friends would share their problems with me and as I got older, strangers would tell me their deepest fears; it was easy for them to chat with me and they all seemed to feel lighter after doing so but I on the other hand was left drained and tearful. As the years went on, my emotional upsets became more frequent, longer and darker. It honestly seemed hopeless. I hadn’t been through an upsetting trauma or overly-harrowing childhood, yet the incessant feeling of loneliness and suffering grew stronger, more terrifying and the guilt that I didn’t warrant feeling any of these things only fueled the fear. In my twenties I found self-numbing behaviours that helped keep me from being with myself for too long. I didn’t know how to be with myself, I felt too much intensity and my mind played the same negative tapes over and over again. I found meditation and New Age spirituality but that only encouraged my need to ignore my fears, and the shame around the idea that I must be broken grew stronger.
In my early thirties I accessed a courage within to face and understand the darkness behind the anxiety and fear. I gave myself permission to question everything I’d been told was true about spirituality and began to listen to my own truths and to accept them as they were. This act of surrender led me to have a greater sense of what it means for me personally, to feel truly alive.
leaving England for China
It's funny where life takes you. If I'd have known I was going to move to Shanghai and end up living there for 11 years, I would have studied Mandarin at school, college and university rather than German!
A few months following my move East, I hit a wall of depression, insomnia and culture shock. This was one of the darkest periods I'd been through. For a few years I numbed the pain with city partying and keeping quiet about what was really going on. I didn’t have the confidence or strength to explain what was happening inside my body-mind, I just thought it was normal to feel this deep aching within, that it was normal to suffer and that everyone else went through it in silence, so why should I be any different? Around 2008, I was introduced to Usui Reiki and something within me awoke. My understanding of the subtle energy world deepened and Reiki taught me forms of self-protection and how to take better care of myself: it felt amazing. At the time I was working in the consulting sector as a behavioural trainer co-delivering creativity and innovation courses throughout Asia and in my free time I was giving energy healing treatments to willing friends and colleagues.
jumping heart first into the unknown
Despite enjoying my work, in the winter of 2012 a niggling feeling grew stronger guiding me to move on and step out of the world of marketing and consumption. I quit my job, gave away most of my possessions, said 'see you in 8 months' to my partner and friends and left for South America. During my travels I exchanged healing experiences with fellow travellers, wrote limericks, learned a lot about how impatient I was, and how beautiful our world is and how similar we all are, regardless of our cultures and nationalities. It seemed I was constantly cleansing and re-calibrating.
My final ten days were spent traveling within the confines of my mind at a Vipassana silent meditation centre in Malaysia which was honestly, disturbing. I'd been meditating on and off since 2007 but Vipassana was something else. A deeper shift was taking hold and I found more walls and barriers within my mind. Tired from the intense resistence I experienced, but feeling inspired, I returned to Shanghai where I studied a diploma in Alternative Medicine, continued giving healing sessions and workshops on the world of subtle energy and taught every level of Usui Reiki to people from all walks of life.
from Shanghai to Piedmont to Paris
In 2016 I left Shanghai with my partner to travel for 7 months through Asia, Mongolia and Russia. Beyond that we didn't have a plan: we were adamant that we wouldn't be moving to a big city straight away. Craving nature, clean air, rivers, lakes and space, we settled for almost a year in the stunning area of Piedmont, playing around with permaculture, creative pursuits, reading, studying and hiking in the forests. As a dear friend simply put it: living as human beings, not human doings.
Leaving the tranquility of our little nook in Italy and moving to Paris arose from the need to be close to family and reconnect with society. I launched my holistic practice HEALING WITH GINA in Paris, 2017 and became fluent in French which was a lot easier to grasp than Mandarin!
from Covid fear to embracing self-care
A big part of guiding others on their journey is continuing to work on every part of mySelf.
Movement, creation, community and my personal spiritual practice support my body-mind-soul. And it’s not always easy. Healing as you’ve heard me say before, is intense. Learning to take care of yourself takes practice and repetition and failing at it -which isn’t a bad thing! When Covid hit France, I was overwhelmed, unsure of anything and I entered a very broken part of myself. Through this healing journey with myself, with my coach and the healers I work with, I began to emerge from within my body. For most of my life I’d always functioned or existed from my mind. This healing process I experienced was something sacred, deep and incredibly intense.
When it comes to self-care there isn’t a one size fits all. I have found for me that each day varies from the next in terms of what I need to care for me. It might be jogging, kayaking and indoor climbing, or something more creatvie like dancing, painting and crafting or a more inward practice such as self-healing, embodiment, conscious breathing, meditation or self-massage. Sometimes it’s just doing NOTHING.
Maintaining a practice of self-forgiveness, self-gratitude and self-love for those times I am utterly and completely imperfect and mistaken is hugely important.
I don’t do all of this alone. I am guided by other holistic practitioners for shadow work, Zen meditation, somatic embodiment, emotional coaching, receiving massage, TCM and shamanic healing. And I have communities of wonderful people around me who support me in the work I’m doing and who remind me as I do them, that I am loved.
