About taking on responsibility adventures within

let me

tell you the story why

it is any of my business for you

to put and feel your feet

on the ground because i literally

fell from the sky and i’m very

appreciative and grateful to be standing

here on my own two

feet today and because it is

empowering and beautifully human

for you to feel your feet in the ground

and it brings you

immediately into the here

and now my story begins in march 1993

at the age of when i was moving to new

york city at the age of 19.

i just finished my diploma in hotel and

tourism management

started as a supervisor in housekeeping

chasing after chamber mates making sure

that hotel rooms were cleaned and

properly staged for the next

check-in i moved up that managerial

ladder

and found myself amongst the pretty cool

gang

of hotel industry movers and shakers as

the hotel company i worked for

truly redesigned reinterpreted and

reinvented

the hotel guest experience

and with that i was part of that new

hotel boutique hotel and design

movement from its infancy

there’s no star designer model

of the 90s i did not meet

you named them and i met them wrote the

mahogany elevator and

walked that blue ghost imprinted lobby

carpet with madonna zahadi

johnny depp just to name a few and there

are rumors

that i might have actually been the one

who hired bradley

cooper as a bellboy but what do i know i

was so busy

managing new york city’s hippest hotels

and being

euro cool and he was not the bradley

cooper if a star is born yet

so i was too snobbish to even notice

i was a busy new york city career

girl i had a lot of going out and

partying to do

i always say back then i owned

that city or i was hers and she

was mine i lived that heartbeat and had

my fingertips on that pulse of the city

that never sleeps

and rarely ever slept myself

i love the fast paced numbers oriented

goal

focused competitive nature of that world

fast forward by the age i was 30

i was breaking the six figure income

mark

and had transitioned from hotel

management into

the corporate events world

and how did i all do that

with a three-step process i didn’t even

know i was following yet

visualize feel act

step one visualize is

in simple terms the moment when you

start thinking about something

putting a feeling to it step two is

as you start visualizing something

you actually automatically put a feeling

and emotion with that in my case

it was visualizing myself living in new

york city

as choice of my career path and with

that i

felt the emotion of success and

belonging there

step three putting it into action this

is where you get

mind and body working together

you embody your vision

dr chody spencer calls it mind is

praying in action

and says when you start planning your

action

your brain naturally starts to fire

in my case or in my experience it

started walking me into

that direction so here i was

i had built myself a pretty good new

york city

living and i had dedicated my life to my

career in

sales and marketing and when i wasn’t

flying from sales call to site

inspection

to conference in airplanes i

was jumping out of them as i guess

an even more adrenal activation

and fight or flight practice

my feet were literally coming off

the ground a little bit

flying might be in my genes almost

my entire family is trying to

grow wings of some sort i love the

excitement of

pretending to fly like a flock of birds

the excitement the thrill the seeing the

world from a different perspective the

dance

in the sky the opening of the parachute

the slowing of things down the flying

yourself back to home base

and embracing that safe landing putting

my feet

back on the ground highly

and joyful moments

so on saturday october 11th

on my 601st skydive

i literally broke myself

in half

we had to land out away from the drop

zone

my canopy was slightly malfunctioning

and i crashed that landing

i slid in on my left ankle ouch

open fracture foot off to the side

talus bone sticking out at the bottom of

it with dirt

and grass on it too i pounded my coccyx

on mother earth

jackknifed forward lifted myself my

torso

up and back and was very aware

that i just had injured myself pretty

badly

or did i wish i could turn back time

10 seconds would have corrected the

mistake

people always think i face death

in that accident but that i actually

knew that it wasn’t about life or death

what i was really scared of was never

walking again

so that first that 600 in the first

landing

made me promise to the gods that i would

keep my

feet on the ground

i woke up after my first surgery

in the hospital to the news that my

ankle might need multiple foot ankle

surgeries and

most likely will need to get fused made

immobile

as in 85 of the cases that talus bone

doesn’t know how to get its own blood

supply after an injury

like that dries out

eventually dies hence the fusion and

then making it immobile

that tallest bone down there was

millions of miles and

worlds away from me i had no

connection or relationship with it

and to make a long story short i also

did not

know what to expect yet in terms of my

spine

which later on got fused in a nine hour

extensive surgery

from l2 to t11

i was scared i was all caught up in my

brain i was all

thoughts angst fear and

disconnection so in that very moment

that same day beautiful

inga show from belgium shows up on my

bedside in

intensive care offering to help

we were more like acquaintance not close

friends yet

she spent the summer jumping out of

airplanes at the same drop zone in new

york state as i was

an amazing character loving

caring pretty wild and free

because you know when you fall out of

the sky

you need to get your feet back on the

ground

and inga was amongst the ones who helped

me

do so by pointing out

that i had 15 to work with remember

85 were against my bone ever healing

and that that talisbone down there

needed blood

and that i could actively partake in

trying

to get some blood there and that i was

and always

am in a place of being able to take

responsibility for the outcome

of my life and situation

she also suggested that the healing

needed to not just be in the hands of

amazing doctors

and statistics but that it had to become

a responsibility of my own

so i learned to build connections

in my body that i can have a

relationship

with that body and navigate in it

all the way to the soles of my feet

i also took on

great humility and awe

for that situation and life i was living

and in

and realized that the very moment

is the one that can affect my

future and

i decided to take on

that adventure within together

with inge as my guide

and she guided me through a process

that only later on i realized

i was a work already working with before

visualize feel act

visualize healthy bone hiking

biking snowboarding dancing running and

with that

activating muscle memory

putting a feeling with it happy healthy

mobile and putting it into action

visualize inhale visualize

oxygen rich nutritious

red dark red blood

bring it down all the way to the sole of

my foot squish it around

that bone visualize that bone

sucking up all the needed blood and

nutrition

exhale all the dirt bacteria out

let go repeat

inhale visualize dark red nutritional

oxygen rich blood

we did that process over and over and

over

again inga also put her hands on me in

order to share the

essence of human touch feeling safe

and trust putting mind

and body to work together

embodying your vision

she didn’t necessarily have a name

for that process it just kind of came

naturally to her

today i understand

that such processes have roots in many

teachings of well-being as well as in

the

yoga tradition where you integrate

mind and body in the present moment

to initiate transformation and change

the talus bone took on blood it healed

it never needed another surgery and

it’s pretty mobile today

i also underwent that nine hour

extensive spinal surgery spent about two

months in hospitals and

rehabilitation and recovered in a way

that

still makes doctors today quite

spellbound

i knew i experienced something

that needed to be shared i also knew

that i couldn’t have done it

with modern without modern medicine on

my side

i had to go back into my business career

because i didn’t know any better

and i also built a lifestyle that needed

a certain

income to be supported

everyone who get who remembers me from

back then

or got to watch me back then remembers

me in my

cow print cast crutches

pins sticking out at the bottom of my

leg hobbling

up and down the 80 or so stairs to my

williamsburg brooklyn loft

up and down stairs to subways in and

around

new york city my defined upper arms

still tell the story

today and to this day

i’m left with nerve damage

and incomplete paralyzation

that make my life a little bit more

interesting to care for

and reminds me on a daily basis how

close i’ve come

upon that issue of never walking

again i wanted to share

also the journey is still ongoing

and even back then i still had a long

way

ahead of me in building the pieces and

pathways

back together in my body mechanically

emotionally and neurologically

i wanted to share that experience of

recovery

but i also understood i didn’t have

the tools the knowledge the explanation

for it yet so i began

to study to integrate

to practice to observe

and i found that the yoga that i had

been doing

until then only because the sex and the

city girls were doing yoga too

held a lot of my answers

my going to yoga slowly transformed

into practicing yoga and i started

to not just show up for the fancy

warrior and handstand poses

but also all of the sudden for the

philosophy

for the mind-body integration for the

breathing

for the whole approach

meditation became a daily habit

to start bringing my mind a little bit

more into presence

i also took on trainings in all kinds of

bodywork modalities went to india to

study with great

masters and spend weeks

and months sitting and listening to

teachers and innovative thinkers of

mind-body integration work

but most importantly i implemented a

practice

into my daily life that seemed to

strengthen me from the

inside out and that made me take on

responsibility

in getting well and

learning how to manage my newly acquired

handicaps

so in order

to enter that new phase of my life

i left the us and moved

to my mother country austria i found

myself

refusing attractive jobs in hotel

management and the international

corporate events

industry just because i knew i already

had taken

too many detours

to say the least it wasn’t quite easy to

transform under the careful observing

eyes of friends

family and business colleagues but

throughout all of it

i made sure the practice to feel

my feet on the ground and with that

come into my own presence

today i’m a yoga teacher

a meditation instructor i

you can call me a self-empowerment guide

i dabble in arts

and producing and hosting my own little

yogic community radio show called venus

frequency like the second planet from

the sun

called shukra in sanskrit veda

vedantic or yoga terms

meaning bright lucid and clear

and i have made it my business

for you to put and feel

your feet on the ground

and i’ve taken away a few more learnings

from that transition

i’ve learned that i can leave the victim

behind

and that i can take on that great

vulnerable and joyful responsibility

of taking responsibility for the

outcome of my life i’ve also learned

that coming into your own presence is

the key

to transformation and that you have to

allow

that transformation to take some time

it’s a journey but if you keep on

feeling and

acting upon it you eventually will

find yourself living

your own way into that vision

and last but not least i’ve learned

that you can fall even

out of the sky you just have to put and

feel

your feet back on the ground

visualize feel

act here i am

feeling my feet on the ground

are you doing the same

thank you

you