About Alma – Why Touch Means More to Me Than Just Bodywork
What Does Touch Mean to Me
At first it was music that touched and moved me in my life. This led me in my youth to classical singing and a fascination with the world of opera and the training of my own voice. After studying the humanities, I worked as a Waldorf educator and music teacher with children and adolescents. This was followed by training in audiopaedics – working with sounds and their effects on the body and mental health.
Over the course of my educational work, my interest gradually shifted away from content-related questions toward the social and psychological dynamics within groups – toward what connects people or separates them from one another. This interest eventually led me to many years of training in Voice Dialogue according to Hal and Sidra Stone, a well-founded method for becoming aware of and accompanying inner personality parts.
Sometimes it is the crises in life that unexpectedly open up a new direction – at least that was true for me. A severe burnout, illness and profound life changes marked a decisive turning point and challenged me to fundamentally reshape my life. In this phase, my path into somatic therapeutic and trauma-sensitive work began.
Along this path, I completed the Tantra training at the Jembatan Institute Munich and subsequently began the training in Somatic Experiencing (SE) according to Dr. Peter Levine – a body-oriented, resource-based approach to integrating shock and developmental trauma through the autonomic nervous system.
For many years of my life I „survived“ and endured an embodied terror whose causes remained unknown to me for a long time. Only gradually did I begin to experience relief and to develop a deeper awareness of my body and its close connection to emotional well-being.
In this process I discovered how worthwhile it was to explore my capacity for touch in safe spaces and to befriend my body in a new, loving way.
Together with my partner I founded a practice in Murnau. Our intention is to support people in reconnecting with their inner resources – resources that are often overlaid or buried yet continue to exist in every human being as living potentials: body spaces that can at the same time be healing spaces. We named our practice Glücksmacherei – not as a promise to find happiness there, but as an invitation to accept support and to (re)forge your own happiness in contact with your personal resources. The name also felt fitting because both of us – after a long journey through illness, exhaustion and crises – began, with much support from others, to forge our own personal happiness anew. The word “Macherei” deliberately points to one’s own doing: a creative, craft-like and at the same time alchemical process in which transformation does not simply happen but is consciously shaped.
My work continues to evolve and remains closely connected to my own healing process. Touch has become one of the most fundamental elements in my life – it has become my elixir.
Education and Fields of Development
• Master of Arts (M.A.) – Humanities studies and music pedagogy, educational work with children and adolescents at independent Waldorf schools.
• Research work „The School of the Future“ – Participation in a research project accompanying studies on future-oriented educational and school concepts.
• Study group on Goethean sensory theory – initiated, co-led, and co-created. Perceptual training and phenomenological nature observation with a focus on inner experience.
• Completed training in Audiopedics according to Reinhild Brass (HörRaum®) – Work with sound, voice, and conscious auditory perception in the context of body awareness and mental health.
• Completed and certified training in Voice Dialogue according to Hal and Sidra Stone – Work with inner personality aspects and inner dialogues.
• Tantra training at Jembatan-Institut Munich, certification in tantric bodywork and Tantric Massage, TMV-certified.
• Collaboration with shamanically oriented practitioners – plant communication as well as sensory and seminar work focused on nature perception and spiritual self-connection (co-led).
• Founding and leading an EM group – a trauma-therapeutic dialogue format for authentic, dialogical exchange.
• Certified health practitioner BfG for sexual culture – body-oriented guidance on topics of touch, intimacy, and self-awareness.