My Story

When I was a teenager, a serious car accident fractured my back. For years afterwards, whenever I sat in the passenger seat, I’d find myself grabbing at the wheel as we approached a kerb. Heart racing. No thought involved, just reaction.

My mind had moved on. My body hadn’t. It was still bracing for a danger that was no longer there.

It took years, one uneventful journey after another before that response settled, not because I willed it to, but because my body slowly learned that the past wasn’t the present.

I share this because it took me far longer to notice the same pattern showing up everywhere else in my life.

After losing my sister, grief arrived on top of things I’d already been carrying for years. Panic attacks, exhaustion, a mind that wouldn’t switch off and I found myself looking for ways to escape it, to numb the racing thoughts and emotions rather than face them. It became a regular theme, and eventually I hit a point I can only describe as rock bottom.

That’s when I reached out for help.

Counselling helped enormously. My thoughts started to make sense again.

As time passed, I noticed something counselling alone hadn’t touched: although I was slowly starting to understand my thought patterns and emotions, my body was still responding to triggers from past events.

If you’ve ever felt that gap where you understand yourself, and still can’t seem to change you’ll know how disorienting that is. It’s what led me to look at the connection between mind and body more closely.

What Changed

I’d already spent years working in the health sector, so I wasn’t short on knowledge about wellbeing. What I was missing was a framework that treated the body as more than a place where symptoms show up.

Reconnecting with my Māori whakapapa, and learning Romiromi and Mirimiri, gave me that. I began to understand that wellbeing isn’t something that lives only in the mind. It’s held by the whole person, as reflected in Te Whare Tapa Whā. This Māori model of health sees wellbeing as four connected dimensions: physical, mental, family, and spiritual, with whenua (land) serving as the foundational base beneath them.

It was during this time that I attended a hui (meeting) and listened to Māori wāhine (women) speak openly about their own experiences. Their honesty, strength, and willingness to share stayed with me.

I’d always known I wanted to work with wāhine in some way. That hui showed me how I saw the strength that comes when wāhine support each other, and how much it matters for women to know they’re not alone. It was the clarity I needed to start building what has become this practice.

Today, most of the women I work with want to understand themselves more clearly their thoughts, their patterns, the behaviours and triggers that keep showing up. They’re looking to make sense of how mind and body work together, and how that connection can support real healing.

That’s the space this work sits in: taking the time to understand what’s happening, and staying curious in both mind and body until something actually shifts.