About Me

“She is poetic, yet grounded. She is experiential yet confident in the benefits of exploring different ‘ways in’ to yoga and movement. She is fluid and inspiring…”

This feedback by a participant of my workshop from years ago, still describes well how I am as a teacher / educator and how I share the materials and perhaps how I meet my clients.

I am a mover, dancer, musician and artist at heart.

Professionally, I am a teacher, trainer & therapist in movement, touch and early trauma. I am on the faculty of Embody-Move UK, the official licensed organisation for offering Body-Mind Centering® in the UK and Poland. I am also a faculty member of several yoga teachers trainings where I teach somatic movement & anatomy modules. I teach some classes online & in studios, run my own annual trainings on somatic approach to living called “Nourishment & Depletion”. I also see private clients for trauma therapy and this is currently what occupies a larger portion of my work. My interest revolves around all things about “being human”.  

Over the years, I have learnt and embodied the infant developmental movement, primitive reflexes and various body systems (embodied anatomy) through School for Body-Mind Centering® (BMC®) and Institute of Integral Bodywork and Movement Therapy (IBMT). I learnt about a process of embodiment, tactile and playful learning from Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen and other teachers and colleagues of BMC®. I learnt how to hold a therapeutic space and how to listen & respond in the most supportive ways from Linda Hartley of IBMT and through the discipline of Authentic Movement. I learnt how to support people who want to heal from early developmental trauma from Dr. Laurence Heller of Neuro-Affective Relational Model® (NARM®). Meeting Dr. Peter Levine of Somatic Experiencing (SE®) in person, in hind sight, largely impacted the course of my life. I continue to learn and refine skills of working with trauma through SE®, Neuro-Affective Touch® and aspects from Internal Family System. So many wonderful people I have met in my life - teachers, therapists, friends, students, clients and colleagues or just people - who showed me things through interacting with me in one way or another, and all somehow indicated me to move on and be myself, do my things.

Moving through Yoga / Somatics / Therapy / Trauma

Yoga & Somatics: I taught yoga for over 20 years and I came across somatic approach to movement and I was immediately drawn to it. I became more seriously interested when I happened to suffer from a damage in my nerves and became part paralysed for a while. I continued to teach yoga classes but there was no way I could do any of the moves so I had to just talk through without much demonstration. However, I discovered that through somatic movement and returning to early developmental movement, getting down on the ground level, I could still move pretty well. So I continued to explore and eventually I regained the movement capacity that was close to what it was, and in so many ways, I became a “better” mover. I began to integrate somatic movement into my yoga because it felt so much more wholesome. I was breaking “rules” and almost going against “expectations” of yoga classes back then - going off the mat, rolling on the floor, breaking established sequences and creating more fluid movements and sequences, bending knees where they were “not supposed to” etc… asking people to feel themselves more, be curious, instead of imposing asanas blindly. For those who wanted to be told what to do, my class was somehow demanding because I invite them to ask themselves how they were. Some of the nature of somatic approach is to enquire. So I would lead the class with many enquiries and questions. Each student needed to engage with their autonomy to feel themselves, instead of being spoon-fed… I must admit, there were often times I felt like I was going against the grain in the yoga industry and trends and felt undermined. Yet, I could not approach it in any other ways than this wholesome path. I remember a conversation I had with a friend, who was training in Feldenkrais method at the time, when I was telling her that I felt I was up against it and felt so discouraged and perhaps I was wrong in pursuing the way I was going. She said to me, “Aki, you are not wrong. You are ahead of the time. You will see…” and she was of course right. Now the yoga world is filled with creative sequences and fluid joint actions and frequent mentions of somatic…. These days, I feel proud of my contribution in the field, in the knowledge that I have been a part of paving of this path of enquiry.

I had gone through many years of practicing yoga as both physical & spiritual practices and so many years of training in somatic movement practices - I was dedicated in all of these and yet I felt something was missing in my process. No matter how dedicated I was to those practices, I still struggled the way my mind was. I had a complex early history and while those practices gave me so many tools, I felt I was somehow not being able to meet myself where I needed because it was well hidden from my conscious awareness. I needed a therapy as in psychotherapy. Then after a while with a psychotherapist, I noticed something was still getting in the way of me accessing certain parts of me. I felt like I was an impossible client. Then I met Dr. Peter Levine, and through that I came to know about the trauma work. That changed everything for me. Having done some trauma work enabled me to form a more trusting and productive relationship with my psychotherapist in years that followed. I understood about the nature of human body-mind and how we build our relationships more clearly. All things I learnt from somatic practices, especially the developmental movement aspects and the nervous system and more, also fell into place in a wholesome way. I was able to meet the most vulnerable parts of myself that previously were protected or unconsciously was ashamed of, and form much more honest and kinder relationships with each part. It gave me a larger picture that was clearer, safer and more embodied. So it was natural for me to then follow my path to be a trauma therapist as well as a somatic movement and touch therapist I already was and integrating them all in an organic way.

Everything in life - joys and pains, people and events - has led me to be where I am now and I feel content.

We are constantly affected by our ever changing environments, both external and internal and we are constantly responding to them - both in our psyche and the body. I am forever curious and excited about how we can continue to learn how to respond and act in an increasingly authentic way, and embrace who we are a little bit more at a time. And each time, we become freer & braver - all the way through our life time.

I was born in Japan and moved to the UK in mid-1980’s. Now I live in London with a loving and supportive partner with no kids nor pets. Though I aspire to have a dog one day!

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it” by Rabindranath Tagore

(This lovely quote I learnt from my friend and colleague, Jane Okondo. Thanks Jane.)