I created The Occult Therapy to combine different practices that might looked so far from each other but to me were meant to be supporting each other.
I started my journey in 2010 when I did my first body suspension in London. I soon joined the suspension crew and easily made my way through learning to facilitate for others. A few months into this new path, my entire life started to rotate around body art. I then started my apprenticeship as a body piercer, and also began to learn basics about rope (commonly called shibari, kinbaku, or rope bondage).
By the end of 2013 I had moved to Berlin and was a full-time body piercer in one of the most reputable piercing studios in the city.
Through 2017-2018 I led a crew of body suspension and freak show performances. However after a little over a year, I realised this was not where I wanted to go, as my interest was more into giving people empowering life experiences, rather than leading a group of entertainers. I still love the stage, but I see myself more as a ritual performer rather than a freak performer.
My interest in spirituality and occultism re-emerged in my life as I was working on my own healing. I started to create my own rituals, while in parallel reading and educating myself on many spiritual forms. I had the chance to encounter spiritual people who brought lots of inspiration to my life.
Facilitating rope suspension was really what brought me to realise how healing, therapy, spirituality, witchcraft, and bodywork were related. My sessions became more and more spiritual and ritualistic each time as I made this connection. I noticed how people would open up at the end of each session and need to talk to me about life, issues, and trauma that might have emerged during the session through thoughts, visions, and feelings.
This is when I decided to study life coaching and to read more books that could help me become a good therapist, as well as taking the Mental Health First Aid course. If my sessions were bringing such a release to people that they needed to talk, then I was responsible for being able to hold that space safely.
Body suspension is also something that I have long since noticed was directly connected with healing, no matter if the suspendee himself was aware of it or not. As I like to say, “Suspension opens a little door within yourself, and it is up to you to go in and dig out and process it, or to ignore it”.
I finally decided to combine all these practices under the name of The Occult Therapy, to allow people to experience powerful rituals with their body as their main tool, while also tapping into their shadow work.
Find your light through the darkness.
Bleed, surrender, embrace the pain, release.
