ABOUT ZUZA

For a long time, this page has been and remains, like me, a work in progress. At present, I spend a lot of my time leading conscious movement classes and workshops in the US and Europe and teaching the Moving with Life Curriculum to groups and individuals. I am a lover of motion and stillness, trainer and mentor of teachers, devoted though imperfect wife, and a closet writer.

Fascinated by the mystery of embodiment and the journey of the human psyche, I have followed a path that has taken me from the Polish countryside to the Pacific Coast of California, from being a student of philosophy to teaching body-based awareness practices, from lonely travels to community living, from the serial drama of short-term, long-distance relationships to a magnificent and lasting marriage—in other words, from a limited, disembodied existence to levels of aliveness and fulfillment I have never imagined possible.

I owe the shape of my life as it is today to many excellent teachers with whom I have studied since 1986; some of them are listed on the Resources page. During my life-long intensive course in kinesthetic discovery I have engaged in psychospiritual inquiry, Buddhist meditation, relationship work, and conscious movement practices ranging from Tibetan Kum Nye and hatha yoga to expressive and meditative dance. All of these explorations influence and color my teaching today, as do my four years of hospice work and five decades of negotiating the terrain of love and loss in a human body.

I live in Northern California with my beloved, Scott Engler, whom I met in 1993 at a year-long Lomi Somatics training and married two years later while we were both living at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. He has been my most demanding and most forgiving teacher of what it means to love another human being. Now we often travel and teach together. To learn more about Scott, visit his website.

In the past, I have picked grapes in Provence, skied beyond the Polar Circle, bathed in seven seas, read thousands of novels, spoken fluent Polish, German, Finnish, and passable French (all gone now), cried at countless dance performances, and baked an enormous amount of bread. More recently, I have completed a doctorate in clinical psychology with a dissertation on the use of conscious movement in healing the mind-body split. But, like the Inuit song says:

I think over again my small adventures, my fears,
These small ones that seemed so big.
For all the vital things I had to get and to reach.
And yet there is only one great thing,
The only thing.
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.

May many great days yet dawn for us all and fill our hearts with delight.