Karina

Presence, orientation and embodied work

Inside out is the orientation from which I live and work.

It reflects how I stay connected to the ground beneath me, guided from within rather than driven by external expectations. Inner clarity shapes how I meet people, situations and movement in the world around me.

 

Presence is central to how I work. I am calm, attentive and precise. I take time, listen carefully, and stay close to what is felt rather than what needs to be explained. In my presence, there is space to slow down and arrive fully. What emerges may be unfamiliar at first. Sometimes quiet, sometimes unclear, but from there, grounding can begin.

 

Like a lighthouse, I do not steer or hurry the pace. I stay steady, so you can sense your own rhythm and find your own compass. The light is not always comfortable, as entering a harbour rarely is, but it offers orientation and a clear sense of where you are. You don’t have to perform, explain or prove anything here. You are welcome as you are. Together, we stay with what is, until your own light becomes visible.

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How my way of working was shaped

Alongside my work with people, I spent many years working at sea, including on the sailing ship TX-51. It was an intense and formative period in my life. One that brought adventure, responsibility and profound personal growth. Long days, changing conditions, navigating tides, entering harbors, reading light and weather. Working in small teams and carrying responsibility, also when fatigue sets in or when circumstances required calm presence and clear leadership.

 

The sea is a place where nothing can be forced. You cannot control it, convince it or ignore it. It demands tuning, timing and the ability to stay in contact with what is needed, in yourself and in the whole. It was there that I encountered myself on a deeper level. Not through willpower or endurance. In that I was already skilled. But through learning to feel, to regulate naturally and to remain grounded while the outside world keeps moving.

 

This period remains a meaningful and alive part of my life. Not as an identity I carry, but as a source of embodied experience that continues to shape how I work today.

 

I still sail on the ship from a more grounded position and anchored place within myself. Present, steady and safe.

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Movement, body awareness and background

My work is grounded in a long-standing relationship with the body. I was trained in movement and sport education and worked as a teacher, which refined my ability to read what the body shows before words appear. How someone moves, stands, compensates or hesitates reveals where contact thins, where too much is carried, or where someone moves ahead of themselves.

 

Alongside this embodied foundation, I studied haptonomy at the Academy for Haptonomy in Doorn, where I developed language and phenomenological understanding of contact, presence and embodiment. I completed my haptotherapeutic training within a free, practice-oriented educational path, where learning was closely connected to lived experience and personal integration.

 

Together, these paths, movement, Haptonomy and lived practice, form the foundation of how I work today: attentive, embodied and grounded, staying close to what the body already shows.

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Vision

We often drift away from ourselves when coping takes precedence over listening to what we sense from within. This usually begins early in life as a natural response to what is needed in order to endure, adapt, or remain functional.

Over time, this affects the body, the nervous system, and our sense of direction. People continue to sense what is true for them, but gradually stop acting on it; their inner compass becomes less trusted, and coping replaces listening.

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In a world that is changing rapidly, where external structures and certainties increasingly fall away, this inner misalignment becomes more visible.

Therapy can support a return to inner orientation, helping people to listen again to what they sense, trust their inner compass, and stand more firmly in themselves.

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Mission

Alongside my broader work, my particular attention goes to people who are deeply stuck in coping, especially in freeze. The most unseen and often misunderstood survival response.

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They carry responsibility, keep going, and hold things together, while their inner world has been oriented toward survival for a long time. Because this form of survival already places an exceptional demand on the nervous system, and freeze so often remains unrecognised, it is frequently approached in ways that further increase strain rather than relieve it, with significant long-term consequences.

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My mission is to offer recognition of what is truly happening and to provide a safe place where someone can land, where nothing needs to be forced, and where the slow process of thawing may begin or continue, at a pace the body can bear, without pressure and without being left alone.