How an architect who hit rock bottom learned to come home to her body
“In the symptoms there is already the answer, we just have to find our own way to it.”
Veronica always knew she needed to take better care of herself. But life, work, and stress had other plans - until her body finally said enough. This is the story of how she picked herself back up, rediscovered movement, and started feeling like herself again.
I am an architect as education, and I have been mainly working in cultural production with a focus on architecture, design and media arts. I live in Italy, my home country. I lived in Portugal and France, both for study and for work, two places I’m particularly fond of, as well as Berlin, which I’ve had the chance to explore in recent years while spending time with a German guy.
In my free time, I enjoy dancing, doing yoga, hiking, swimming, cuddling cats, visiting farmers' markets and cooking with friends. My vices are Asian food, gelato and natural wines.
I like my job, but it’s an industry with complex dynamics; I sit a lot in front of a screen, a big part of the work is conceptual, with deadlines and fluctuating schedules, just like my ups and downs in enthusiasm and motivation. I often find myself questioning it when it leads me to neglect self-care, my relationships, and a playful, wild side of myself that remained largely unexpressed during my youth due to my studies, and which emerged with greater intensity during the pandemic.
In 2021, as soon as conditions allowed, I joined an artistic community in rural France where I could combine my job with hands-on activities and live more in connection with nature (taking care of a guesthouse, cooking for groups, harvesting, gardening). That experience marked the beginning of a new very lively chapter of life during which I traveled and worked throughout Europe in search of new inputs and a new home base. I also fell in love. It did not end very well.
I think it’s necessary to say that I come from a period of depression caused by a burnout during summer of 2024. After months devoted only to restoring my basic biological functions and regaining energies, I am gradually finding again a flow with work, social relationships and the activities that used to bring me joy.
This question makes me smile because I think that my lifestyle itself, at least over the past 10 years, has been marked by excellent habits and intentions. "Illness", just like recovery, is always the result of a combination of factors. It’s impossible to identify a clear beginning or trigger.
What I can recognize is a highly detail-oriented and anxious attitude, which began to emerge during my university years when I had to handle a life away from home with a particularly demanding workload (long hours drawing in front of a screen, sleepless nights and irregular meals before project deadlines). I was pretty lazy overall, I could have slept in every morning. Time for leisure and sports was almost limited to weekends and in the summer.
In those years, the first psychosomatic symptoms appeared: rigid neck, dizziness, light tremors in the limbs and panic attacks. After a few medical exams, a physiatrist told me that my type of body (I am thin and my upper back is quite straight) couldn’t handle all that strain, and I wasn’t giving it any way to release the tension. I really didn't know anything about my body and NS.
I slowed down for 2 years and I gradually started to put pieces back together through Feldenkrais, osteopathy sessions, breath work and yoga, combined with natural remedies and probiotics to support the immune system. I knew nothing about somatic movement and trauma at that time.
I had established better habits and improved my wellbeing and vitality. I was curious and ambitious about my future steps as a young professional but, deep down, there was always a sense of alert and doubt that would come up, often unexpectedly. I knew what I wanted, but decision making was often overwhelming and I was blocked in looking for job opportunities, especially abroad.
So, I introduced psychotherapy, EMDR and reflexology treatments to strengthen a more independent identity but, despite having new tools to support my decisions, it was as if I couldn’t really build on the steps I was taking. In the years leading up to my breakdown, I had left space to possibilities, but I was cyclically returning to square one, alternating peaks of enthusiasm to low moments in which I often I was also experiencing brief periods of illness or fatigue. By feeling weak, confidence was wavering: it was a loop. I didn't pay much attention to the symptoms because I didn’t want to amplify the tangles of the mind, and I was objectively going through important decisions about my Life (a new base, an important sentimental relationship, another job search), but I was just repeating to myself: everything will be fine, you will make it, you just have to hold on.
That summer was exhausting and confused. I was unable to pause and recharge, listen to myself and act rationally. I felt that if I stopped, everything would fall apart. I was looking so desperate for stability, a clear communication and support from the people around me (at work, with my boyfriend, with my parents), but everything was going in the opposite direction. Once back home after a very intense hike in the Alps, the sense of failure and abandonment was complete: my body was heavy like in quicksand, my actions were delayed compared to my thoughts, I experienced moments of detachment, and even if I had bought a plane ticket, I found myself not packing and not leaving. It was like a script I couldn't escape. After days of constant tears, slowly my basic biological functions stopped. I couldn’t recognized those symptoms; they were very new to me.
What was the final straw that made you decide things had to change?
End of 2024 until spring 2025 was a lucid nightmare. I was a ghost, awake 24/7 alternating abulia with hysteric crisis. My family forced me to see a psychiatrist. I didn’t want to take antidepressants, but I was quite desperate and resigned since my body was not responding.
I always knew that movement was the way to react – my boyfriend always pushed me to do that, I wish he could read these lines. As a last attempt, my homeopathic doctor gave me another remedy and told me very bluntly: "Your cells are sealed. If you don’t give any input to your brain, no remedy works miracles. Either you start moving or you end up in a clinic". It was end of March.
I got an haircut, I started swimming with an instructor, cold showers every mornings, sunlight, no sugars, only red lights after the sunset. I went for walks more regularly, I joined a gym to do functional training and yoga in a very small group. I was rigid as a stick, with severe joint and lower back pain after months of numbness.
Pushed by the need to find alternative ways to heal and to understand the root causes of my suffering, I have started a somatic method working on trauma and prenatal trauma (Metodo Freni ® by Graziella Concetta Freni).
I am an "alone-born twin": surreal, unsettling, but I felt it matched my perceptions. There are painful imprints resulting from early losses – occurring before the development of the cerebral cortex – which the body stores as information and vibrations, and which certain events can reactivate.
I already knew the amazing research and practice of Manu. In 2023 I had already signed up for Hips Like Honey and Heart Wide Open programs and I started to do them again. When the app went online I was very curious and I joined Kaya’s community in January 2026 to have a safe place to practice more from home and not feel alone.
I’m still getting back into a daily routine, there’s so much to rebuild. Overall, I’m trying to savor the small achievements, learning to be kind with myself and to accept compromises. I'm regaining my vitality, but managing my time and my ability to plan remains a challenge.
For this reason, Kaya is fantastic, it’s like a companion who is always with me. I try to move after waking up before breakfast and at the end of the workday to release accumulated tensions. It feels so good when I am able to do longer sessions (1 hour at least) and mix journeys, or to combine that with an outdoor activity (hiking or cycling). Sometimes I would just moving all day long! Recently, I started studying/practicing Contact Improvisation again—a type of dance I had discovered during a workshop in Berlin in 2024 that had remained an isolated experience. Through that I’m meeting new interesting people. Overall, I am getting back to the joy of social life.
Practing with Kaya it’s helping me with feeling more centered and stronger (especially in my upper back and in my core) and more fluid and flexible (neck and shoulders, gut, hips-hamstrings). I want to learn more about how my body works overall and when I can push my limits, when I have to opt for a softer practice, or when it is better to go for another nourishing activity (i.e. journaling, cooking, calling a friend, reading, …). Kaya can also be used simply as a toolbox to cope immediately with emotions that, often in the past, I kept inside for days. When I feel stuck, angry, frustrated or sad, for example, I force myself to more spicy journeys in order to warm up and activate myself, and sweat off bad energies, instead of trying to calm down.
So far, I notice a shift mainly in my posture – the way I stand, I breath, I sit, I drive – and in the way I communicate. I notice for example that before responding I try to do a quick inner check to see whether what comes to my door resonate with me or not, whether I’m reacting, whether my words might hurt someone I love, whether I can find alternatives to not give up on my opinion or on my plans; instead of making assumptions, I ask twice. I am getting more able to say "yes" and "no", but also to stay in the terrain of dialogue if it's necessary (at work, with my parents) or if I think it's worth it (love, friendship).
It’s a constant exercise for now, often painful and non linear. In this process, I’m realizing firsthand how simply a strong will or a brilliant intuition have been never enough for me: the alignment between thoughts, words and actions, then, consequently, the possibility to build step by step with confidence the quality of life we desire, ultimately comes from feeling well and safe innerly.
It may sound controversial, but a strict routine won’t be the ultimate solution to our problems, if they have deeper causes. Don’t get me wrong… All tools that help us in navigating through Life are precious, especially during transitional phases: our system needs anchor points, regular stimuli or conditions to set a field of habit. But Life is constant movement! I don’t want to be smashed by it, but I also don’t want to give up a certain amount of unpredictability, creative madness and emotional intensity. I want to learn to dance in the storm without losing myself :)
We can’t fully control our surroundings or other people’s survival mechanism. Through somatic movement (depending on the severity of the symptoms), first we can learn how our NS works, then we can learn how to regulate it, and at the same time we can improve strength, balance, flexibility, and, eventually, having a healthier body as well!
Trust what your body tells you and if what it tells you is preventing you from achieving what you desire, don’t "keep up", don’t stay stuck in mental loops or in discomfort thinking that you are defective: this leads to not expressing what you need and to wasting a lot of energy trying to compensate. The rational brain, in need for an explanation, creates a narration which support the body to a certain extent, but often the symptoms remain or reappear cyclically.
If you realize you are not able to shift your perspective on your own, that your efforts aren't getting you anywhere, or you start noticing invalidating patterns, pause and ask for help! It’s not a matter of lacking willpower or capacities, you are not a victim of bad luck, you are not a psychiatric case: your system is applying automatically a "survival program" learned in a phase in which you were not even able to speak. The first interrupted movement it’s within us and then towards the others. In the symptoms there is already the answer, we just have to find our own way to it.
At the moment, I enjoy a lot, "I Am Strong" and "Back Armor" for the upper back, all hips- hamstrings journeys and "The Purge". I like it when I feel flexible and toned at the same time. Very curious about "Jaw Unlock" but I still have to explore it.
