My Story: A Journey back to Myself

If we haven’t met, kia ora, my name is Lena.

As I was reflecting on my journey on this spinning space rock and the stepping stones I’ve taken to get to where I am now, I thought this would be a great opportunity to re-introduce myself here and start this blog.

Maybe you’re curious to read about me and my journey. Maybe you’re interested in hearing how I’ve come to work as a Sound Healer & Empowerment Coach. Everyone has their own unique pathway and mine has certainly been a wildly beautiful one so far. Looking back, on one hand I can see very clearly how I’ve ended up where I am now, but on the other hand it also seems like a quite strange and seemingly unrelated string of events that has led me here. Of course, I do believe it was all divinely orchestrated. A thread I followed, taking one step at a time, unknowingly letting myself be guided by listening to a very quiet voice within.

I grew up in a small village in southern Germany, in a loving home and a big family. We had family gatherings almost every week, sharing Nan’s best cakes, banter, walks together. My family was and still is a very musical bunch. Everyone plays an instrument or two, and singing or playing old german folk music together was on the regular. I can’t say I always loved applying my musical skills to this genre and playing at church, but am grateful for my Granddad for getting us together. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have brought my flute or guitar out even half the time. I lived a beautiful and protected childhood. However, I sensed from a young age that the life modelled to me wasn’t quite the life I was meant to live. This realisation hit me in my teens, when prodding questions were asked as to what I wanted to do in life. I never had much zest for the traditional 9-5 in prestigious office positions. I was always curious, always searching, always feeling a pull toward something beyond the familiar.

As a teenager, that curiosity became an ache - a deep knowing that there was more to explore, experience, and understand. This made me quite the rebel to the dislike of my Mom and Dad. I felt increasingly estranged from the cultural world I grew up in, as if I didn’t quite fit into the expectations laid out for me. I longed to get out into the world, to see life from different angles, to find out what else there was outside the norm.

Music was my first doorway into myself. Singing, immersing myself in sound, feeling the vibrations of the instruments I knew how to play. These were the earliest moments when I felt connected to something larger, something deeper and more true. Where I had been modelled to think my way through life, to analyse, sound allowed me to drop into my feeling sense, to come into my body. Sound held me and healed me, and I would immerse in vibration and song when I felt emotionally fragile, hurt, or confused. Music created a sense of safety that I hadn’t felt from anyone or anything else before, so it became my reprieve, my sanctuary.

Cluelessness and confusion were predominant states I remember being in more often than not. I had no idea where to go or what to do after finishing school. In an attempt to fit in I studied teaching for a couple of years, then tried myself at business management, which I ultimately finished but hated every moment of (apart from the distractions and parties). I was trying to answer a need within that couldn’t be met. I didn’t know who I truly was. I didn’t know what I wanted, because I hadn’t learned to listen inwards.

In those years of estrangement all the way into my early twenties, I fell into patterns of escapism, addiction, and self-abandonment. My inner world was loud, complex, and raw, and I didn’t yet have the tools to navigate it. So I turned outward in search of relief from the pain I was holding within - to substances, to distraction, to anything that softened the intensity of the things and emotions I didn’t know how to sit with. I developed an eating disorder and resorted to socialising, drinking, and physical exercise as my coping mechanisms. As much as it seemed like a fun time, today I can see and feel the deep seated pain I tried to mask.

After a few years of self-torture, I was at the end of it. Unhappy, a deep longing to reconnect with my passion for music, and so disoriented after finishing my business studies, I spontaneously booked flights overseas. I thought that the only way to end this abusive cycle was breaking out of the environment I felt captive to. 

Leaving home and travelling indeed was the beginning of my return to myself. I wandered through countries, cultures, and communities that showed me new ways of living and being. I didn’t feel the need to ‘fit in’ - people didn’t hold a certain picture of me in their minds, I finally felt like I could simply express my true nature, which was such a relief. It felt like taking off a heavy mask, an easing of constriction in my nervous system. I started trusting my instincts more. 

On my travels I studied yoga in France, which brought me closer to my body and felt sense. My creativity not only found an outlet in music, I also started handpoke tattooing during an intense winter in the French Alps, where whiteout conditions and avalanche risks kept me locked inside a small apartment. I got very curious about nutrition, sharing my fascination with a food blog for a couple of years. In this time of healing my body, western medicine didn’t have the answers for me, which initiated a turn to alternative and more holistic ways of healing. My first encounter was with herbalism, which I studied in Canada. Additionally, one of the most profound tools for me on my healing journey at this time was Ecstatic Dance. With three dances weekly, movement became my medicine. This was also where I encountered breathwork for the first time. I had finally found my way back home. Into my body, into sensation. I was able to listen in and hear the messages within that I had shut down for so many years. My overtired nervous system was slowly healing from the years of abuse through mindful movement, breath, and herbal support. The subtle messages underneath the noise were becoming more audible to me.

Through these modalities I learned about the body not just as a physical structure but as a vessel of emotion, memory, and energy - a true revelation for someone having grown up in a conservative small German village. Some might say Canada was where I had my ‘spiritual awakening’. In other words, I developed my ability to feel and connect to the deeper parts within me. I also began to understand that healing wasn’t something outside myself - it was a remembering. A return. A reconnection with the parts of me I had abandoned along the way.

It was in Canada where I also had my first experience with Crystal Bowls and Sound Healing. Here I heard a very strong calling back to the music. Suddenly there was so much clarity, an inner knowing arose of what the next steps would be that I needed to take.

On my return to New Zealand I started pursuing this dream. I pitched my idea to a friend who invited me to share sound healing in her weekly Yin Yoga class. I started with one single Tibetan Bowl and my voice! What followed this challenge was the purchase of a multitude of other instruments, including my first set of Crystal Singing Bowls. As this practice grew, I added more skills to my belt to bring healing from the group into the one-on-one space. First I became a Reiki practitioner, experiencing for the first time what it meant to connect to healing energy. This led me to HonoHono, a traditional Maori healing modality which taught me more about the body-mind-spirit connection. I went in deep, reconnecting with my intuition and learning to read my and other people’s energy field.

Massage therapy became another doorway. Through touch, I learned to listen - not just to muscle and fascia, but to the stories the body carries beneath the surface. This was ultimately the opportunity for me to connect what people were familiar with to the more mysterious energy work, bridging this gap for my clients to also meet themselves more deeply. Clients began opening up, sharing their insights and realisations, which showed me that I was on the right path.

There was curiosity here for me to explore more, which led me to start doing the deep inner work on myself - the kind that strips away illusion and calls you right back to your heart. I learned about programming, trauma, energetic imprints, ancestral patterns, and the subtle ways we disconnect from ourselves to survive and manage our suffering. I began meeting my own shadow, my old wounds, the parts of me I had long kept hidden. And instead of running from them, I learned to sit with them, listen to them, breathe with them. 

This was when everything changed: I became my own healer instead of seeking healing from outside of me. I had reconnected to my essence and own inner wisdom, I had found my source of power within.

I realised my purpose wasn’t just to heal myself - it was to guide others back to themselves too in sharing the modalities that helped me on my own healing journey.

The work I offer now - coaching, sound healing, bodywork -  arises from a desire to help people reconnect with their inner wisdom, their heart, their power. Not by giving them answers, but by helping them re-establish their inner sanctum to remember that the answers have always been within them.

This work isn’t just theory. It’s lived, embodied, and continually unfolding. Every person I work with teaches me something new about what it means to be human. Every story reminds me that healing is possible, that we’re innately whole, not broken, that we just need to remember who we are at our core. And every session - whether through sound, touch, or deep emotional inquiry - reinforces my belief that when we reconnect with our true self, we reconnect with life itself.

In no way or form do I want to convey the message that I’ve got it all figured out or am fully healed. This journey is never complete. I will forever keep evolving and learning. Oftentimes we’re held back by the belief that we have to heal first in order to take our next step in life. If you’ve read my story all the way to this point, you may start to see that walking our path and healing go hand in hand. One complements the other. It’s the motion forward, a readiness, and an openness to what’s going to unfold, while listening inwards with every pore, that lets us grow and heal along the way.

For me it's been a wild ride that led to Self-Empowerment, Clarity, and Inner Freedom.

This is the beginning of my new blog - not to tell you how to live, but to share what I’ve learned, what I continue to learn, and what it means to walk this path of remembering and getting to know yourself deeply.

Welcome, and thanks for being here. I’m honoured to walk alongside you.

All the best on your journey.

Lena x