About Me

I came to that conclusion while I was studying fine arts in Italy and frequenting an optional class for performance art.  During the teaching we were challenged to expose ourselves in different situations and contexts to train our body awareness.

The objective of that classes was, that the students would be able to create an Art piece with body art elements.

I remember myself always as a tuff young woman and believed that my mind controls my body. Body and mind operated separately and the worst thing was, that I have been completely unconscious about that.

I remember when I was asking to show a square just through walking in front of the professor and students.

In consequence I was criticized by the teacher; “I don´t see a square here. You walk like if you are drunken, are you kidding?” Actually, I was taken the task pretty serious and I was completely convinced that I walked the perfect square. I totally believed that my mind dominates my body.

 Feeling offended by the teacher comment, I left the ongoing class and cried the rest of the day in my bed.

That was the day when my mask felt on the ground and broke into a million of pieces.

Something in me changed immediately because I knew now; “My mind don´t controls the body’s sensations and emotions.” Yes, maybe the mind can help us to contain body sensations but for that a body awareness as well is needed that I didn´t had in those times.

I continued to frequent the classes and to expose my body to different situations. For example; trusting blindfolded another person, singing my favourite song as a child in front of my mates, falling down to the floor and so on.

Memories came up, memories of the little helpless child in me. I learned about my vulnerable part in me and how much I was scared to lose control. On the other hand, I admired my capacity to overcompensate the “weak” part in me with strongness and confidence.

My body-awareness was the door-opener to accede at my memories, inner pictures, sensations and emotions.

From that moment on, I knew that the body stores past memories and that my mission in this life is to heal myself through conscient bodywork and to bring that knowledge into the world.

I frequented classes of different bodywork approaches like Shiatsu, yoga, vipassana, conscient breathing, calatonia and dance.

Later, I became a Matridança- facilitator (dance of the matrix), that becomes for me a therapy through dance and an access to the sacred feminine.

Art and therapy became one for me and so I decided to do my master in fine arts and to become a somatic psychotherapist (Bodynamic) at the same time.

During the creation of my master thesis in fine arts, I investigated the seven chacras in relationship to seven universal valid patterns, archetypes, that I related with corresponding traumatic experiences and the bodywork that is needed to integrate them. 

“The act of drawing can be in mutual connection with the performance when my body
embodies the seven archetypes, in a relationship with the seven chakras. I start from
this possibility to create my artistic project, which materially is visibly through drawing
and the documentation through video and photography. What can happen, if the
primordial pattern, the archetypes, extend all over the body during a continuous
process of transformation? How this movements could be replayed? Could drawing be
a way? How to create a mutual connection between drawing, performance, the body,
archetypes and the ambient? In my practical and theoretic research, with my
experience in Matridança and with my professional experience in Bodynamic (somatic
psychotherapy), I tried to connect the bodies-wisdom in movement, with the act of
drawing. Through the studies about the archetypes in the works of the psychoanalytic
C.G Jung, I tried to recognize a possible relationship between movement, psyche and
body. This dissertation approaches interdisciplinary research that involves the
scientific fields of arts, the somatic and analytic psychotherapy, biology and in a sociocultural contemporary context, the importance of a relationship between the body,
the human mind and nature.”

(Brigitte Canepa 2022. master’s thesis syllabus of plastic arts, Portugal) 

Through the duality of the archetypes in their light and shadow aspects, I learned that the real goal of a successful therapy is, when the client integrates both aspects by adding new resources and not by “eliminating” a bothering aspect of the personality.

Archetypes, connect us to the laws of the universe, god/goddess, a higher powerful force and reclaim the intelligence of the morphogenetic field that again connect our individual “Me” to the collective subconscious.

While working with clients, I noticed that trauma can be restored through the conscious activation of certain muscle groups and body-tissue in relation to traumatic events with the empathic care of a therapist.

 Sometimes I noticed, the learning of new resources through the body became difficult at a specific level and I related it to certain pattern of behaviour or symptoms that have been transmitted trans generationally and repeated within the family system of my clients.

Again, I started to study; Family-Constellations corresponding to the founder of systematic Therapy, Bert Hellinger.

Today I´m confident and really happy about my individual therapy approach, that includes a holistic frame of therapy- tools, that I adapt to my client’s individual needs.

As well I´m convinced that therapy don´t need to go on forever and open the whole past of my client’s. My therapy-goal is that my clients learn to be able to manage and accept their present life and relationships.