Hey there,

thank you for stopping by and for taking some time reading me.

My name is Barbara, most commonly known as Babs or Babsie. Also known for my ‘guiding inwards’ somatic movement practices which - people say - helps cultivate and refine one’s self awareness and embodiment (presence in one’s body), along with a inner calm and ease and a “that’s just what I needed”. 

I was born and raised in Milan. I moved to London in 1998. I was 22 years old.

I was always an active kid and teenager until I fell into the depth of anorexia and bulimia at the age of 14. I had severely disordered patterns with food and exercise throughout my teens and twenties. I quickly spiralled into depressive behaviours, anxiety and for long time I felt like I was frozen and stuck in a body I didn’t want. It was only in my early thirties that things began to shift slightly; however, I was far from being able to nourish myself, neither I wanted to because the shame, the guilt, the fear of losing control of food and body weight were too powerful.

I still saw food as my worse enemy and skinny-body compulsive obsessions were still a dominating feature of my thinking patterns. And I thought I would never, ever, live completely free from this exhausting and gripping relationship.

When I was 32 my dad unexpectedly passed away. It was a deeply traumatic experience and knowing no other way to cope with the pain, apart from numbing it, I refused to eat, again. I was hospitalised in a mental institution where they tried to fix me and my addictive behaviours, but it didn’t really work... I left the hospital feeling misunderstood, broken and like there was something really wrong with me because everyone else seemed to respond well to the treatments offered.

It was then that a friend of mine at work suggested I attended a yoga class she was attending. It was then, in 2008, that things really started to shift...even though back then, for me, it was just about the fact I could flex and bend like rubber. But you know, we all need to start somewhere...

Fast forward to today - and many classes and self practices, trainings and courses, insights, discoveries, mentoring, body and nutrition coaching and many, many teachers - and who I am today is just the narrative of me.

A narrative at the heart of which there is a desire to come home to myself.

A narrative of how I am healing.

I believe that the most valuable gift of all this on-going work and self inquiry is the art of knowing myself in more profound, nourishing and accepting ways, knowing what it means for me to self care, knowing what works and what doesn’t with compassion and kindness, and to set myself free from rigid ideals of how I should be functioning in today’s society in a female body. I have realised that life becomes so much richer when I give myself permission to experience the many and variable moments available. 

My current work integrates what I have learned in years of mental and physical struggle, of eating disorders, of inner self work, of studying and practicing various forms of yoga and exercise, somatic movement, meditation and mindfulness. My work consists in creating situations where people are invited to move various body areas, individually and globally, in explorative, playful and creative ways and to open up to their senses.

My job is not to teach a student how to align parts of their body into shapes; it isn’t about yoga poses flows and it isn’t about exercise either. Having said that, I do not disqualify the value of any of these approaches. They all have their place.

I believe my job is to give students clear guidance to move their body; to give them space and time to become curious about the body they inhabit, how it can move and how that feels.

Variety, mindful and slow transitions and repetitions are all pillars of my work.

“For, if we have no alternatives, we have no choice at all”- M. Feldenkrais.

I believe this approach enhances awareness, promotes freedom of choice, helps understand how a, possibly compromised, function can be better performed, and eventually gives students a variety of “to-go-to” tools for self empowerment and healing.

Biologists, neuroscientists and neurologists have accepted the idea that the brain of an adult isn’t hardwired, and that, instead, it can change and so can the nervous system. This quality is called neuroplasticity and it defines the ability of the brain, and of the nervous system, to change structure and function through mental experience and activity.

Life experiences rewire the brain.

Sensory experiences rewire the brain.

In order not to lose this neuroplastic quality, we need some exposure to chaos and confusion, we need variety of movement, known and unknown, so that the nervous system can learn to do its job: build maps of our inner and outer environments and create clarity.

Thanks to this learning, we will have our won library of  different brain maps onto which we can acquire new abilities spontaneously, instead of trying to fix ourselves, to behave or move correctly - or as we should - at the cost of losing our individuality.

Thank you so much for reading.

With Love,

Babs