I was born and raised in Düsseldorf, Germany and immigrated to the US in 1988 when I was 27. My life up to that point had been fairly "normal": I grew up in a family of bakers with strong work ethic, went to school, and learned to be a Dental Assistant. From the age of 15 until I came to the US, I was with my first long-term boyfriend and we lived together in Munich for 7 years.

Being raised by my mom (my father died when I was 3 1/2 years old), who had no interest in religion and spirituality and seemed to value mostly the manifest, external world, I had not felt the need for spirituality or to explore my internal reality until I read a book with the title "Who am I?" Before then, this question had never arisen in me. Reading this book, which was written by a woman who left her marriage in order to find herself, changed my life. The concept of "I" was so strange and yet so familiar! I started noticing the need to know who I am outside of my relationship with my boyfriend. This first longing for a sense of what is authentically me led me to eventually move out of our apartment into my own space and shortly after to travel to the US.

On my travels in the US, I met Gatja Reich, a student of the Indian spiritual teacher OSHO (aka Baghwan Rajneesh). Gatja, a very alive, loving and giving Austrian woman in her 40s, invited me to stay in her home in Mill Valley, California and I did because it just felt right. I fell in love with Marin County, especially Mill Valley and Mount Tamalpais. And I fell in love with the life-loving, students of OSHO with whom I came in contact. I never felt so seen & accepted and never so inspired before. And over the next few months, slowly, slowly I fell in love with the meditations and teachings of OSHO.

His teachings on finding the "light inside" (as opposed to up in heaven) and his active meditations (especially Kundalini meditation which includes dance and Dynamic meditation which allows one to express emotions) touched me at the place of my deepest longing and helped me come alive in ways I had not known to be possible.

The next 10 years of immersion into OSHO's tantric teaching on consciousness taught me a great deal about how to be in the World but not of it. In many therapy groups I learned about my conditioned self, and in countless hours of various meditations (I loved Vipassana meditation) I learned about the unconditioned state. I learned to celebrate life and my heart awakened to deep feeling.

But even with all this, a very deep longing for something intangible remained.

I had not yet found my "Authentic Face."

My search continued and led me to dip into Advaitic teachings for a few months, including finding and loosing consciousness awakening, guided me to work with a local shaman for four years, and led me to intensively study singing to express my heart & soul with a wonderful local teacher & friend Maniko Dadigan. During this period, I was only seeking to find myself, and to gain freedom from my conditioned patterns. I did learn a lot about those patterns, but I never really got who I am.

Now I know I couldn't wake up fully because I had no framework for the embodied awakened state - there was no one around me to serve as a template for my complete awakening.

Around that time, I was suffering deeply from a relationship breakup, and this caused me to reconsider the foundation I was operating from. And then Saniel Bonder came into my life in January of 2005. I was drawn to take his Tantra of Trust workshop in order to gain some freedom from my old patterns of intimate relating. At that time, I also read Saniel's Healing the Spirit/Matter Split and for the first time I got that it was possible for ME to have an awakening to my true and total self. This was something I had never really considered before - even though something had led me to continue seeking through all those years.

I immersed myself totally in everything I could take part in, including extended programs and individual sessions with Saniel and Linda, sittings with all the local teachers, and reading everything I could get a hold of. I was hungry and I was being FED!

In June of that same year, I had my non-dual, embodied consciousness awakening or Second Birth as this particular kind of awakening is named in the Waking Down in Mutuality framework.

In July of that year, I met my beloved Max and we're now married, and are living the kind of relationship that I always felt possible - but never had the opportunity to experience. Until now.

Update May 2009:

I am honored to be a Waking Down in Mutuality interning teacher and am looking forward to sharing my heart & soul & the gift of Embodied Consciousness Awakening with whoever feels touched by my presence.