Many years I have devoted myself to working with the mind. Alongside training in humanistic and alternative psychotherapy methods, I have received initiations into Eastern teachings, above all Advaita and Atiyoga. These are ancient teachings about the primordial state of being, which is inherent in everyone from the very beginning as their inner and natural essence.
In my therapeutic work, I do not use approaches in which the client’s beliefs are replaced by the therapist’s beliefs. Nor do I use approaches that manipulate the mind in any way to make the client feel better. This is despite having completed training and certification in them.
Instead, I place emphasis on each person’s own insight. Only this kind of insight sparks real change and is truly transformative. It frees us from doubt and, together with self-awareness, builds self-trust. Only then does the therapist, with all their knowledge, avoid becoming yet another obstacle in a person’s life, and avoid turning them into a long-term or lifelong patient.
My path to therapy was a fairly long one. Ever since childhood, I asked myself who I am. At the same time, I suffered from difficulties that would today be diagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder. During adolescence, I managed to free myself from most of them. I deliberately exposed myself to triggers, did not react to them, and simply observed my mind. At the time I knew nothing about therapy or meditation; it simply felt like the right and natural approach.
This was later confirmed when I met my first teacher, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. I was struck by his directness in working with the mind. Having already overcome my childhood difficulties, I had enough capacity to receive it. I traveled to him and spent the following years studying and practicing Atiyoga, into which he initiated me.
A few years later, I met Nukunu Jørgen Larsen, a Danish psychologist and an awakened human being. I studied non-dual therapy with him for several years. Once again, I was won over by the complete directness, efficiency, and effectiveness of his approach and methods, which go right to the core of the very nature of experience. The depth of insight and the changes that took place in me and in my life were immense, and they motivated me to continue this work. Nukunu brought his whole approach together in a teaching he called Non-dual Therapy. It is a coherent combination of methods drawn from Eastern teachings and Western therapy. Its aim is to reach, in a natural way, lasting inner transformation and freedom from inner conflict. It leads to a connection with what is natural, authentic, and lasting within us: our true nature.
Why do I keep emphasizing directness and one’s own insight? If therapy is to succeed, it cannot shield a person from life or manipulate them in any way, however well-intentioned. It must guide them to recognize and understand their own burden themselves, because only that sets us free. No one can do this for you. On the contrary, a therapist’s learned knowledge and their own psychological burden will reliably get in the way. No one can protect themselves from their own conditioning and projections until they have completely freed themselves from them.
Our civilization has reached a higher level of comfort than any before it, at least in our part of the world. Yet it is fearful and anxious. We can explain a great deal to ourselves without noticing that we lack real understanding, and therefore inner maturity. We mistake knowledge for insight, and words and opinions for reality. We get rid of what is difficult under the illusion that we have understood it.
I do not teach or pass on anything I have not tried and realized in my own life myself. It cannot be done any other way. The only way to truly know something is to experience it, and ultimately to become free even of that.
THERAPY | COACHING | PROBLEM SOLVING