Crippled with pain and with her self-confidence gutted Tahnee completely turned her life and self-concept around ... it's a spectacular journey to freedom.

I am a thirty-six year old dreamer on a profound journey of growth. I adore complex, unusual, earth-shaking people. I'm very close to my family and have beautiful friends. Healthy vegetarian food, spirituality and alternative living are a big part of my life. I spend a ridiculous amount of time laughing.

My life has gone in so many unexpected directions, and yet it feels like it is coming back full circle now. Actually, it’s more a spiral than a circle - coming back to similar places but always at a higher point on the spiral.

I was raised in a very unusual, eccentric, new age family in Melbourne. As a child I was very poetic, creative and soulful, always writing, singing and dreaming.

But as I grew older, I bowed to the pressures of conforming to society and fitting in. I squashed myself and my heart in order to become a “success” and paid an extreme price with my health.

Having become a classic type A over-achiever, I started out my career working as a high powered corporate lawyer (stress!), then won a scholarship and studied my Masters in International Law on scholarship at Oxford University (glamour and more stress!) and then worked at the British Law Commission.

However, I had started suffering from back pain in high school, and by the time I was at Oxford it had become completely debilitating. I could no longer sit and could barely walk, was in constant pain 24 hours a day, and had to work lying down on the floor. So, at the age of 30, I was forced to leave my skyrocketing legal career.

Still determined to stay positive, I decided to follow my heart and pursue the thing that was my greatest love as a child - writing - hoping that that would cure my back pain, but it didn’t. (I later learned that it’s not enough to change what you’re doing, you have to change who you’re being.)

I started working as a screenwriter for film and TV in London, which I loved. But my back pain continued to get worse, until I was basically crippled. At that point, my self-confidence really began to go and I started to suffer fairly severe depression.

I returned to Australia and spent two long bleak years barely leaving my house, trying every therapy known to man to try to get well, including spending six months sitting for 4 hours a day in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

But nothing helped. I had almost given up and was receiving psychotherapy for dealing with an expected life of chronic pain, when by a miracle I stumbled upon the Feldenkrais Method.

I started seeing a Feldenkrais Practitioner and from that day onwards I was on a journey of recovery, relearning how to move, rediscovering how to inhabit a free and comfortable body, and regaining my life.

I am now completely well, and am walking, running, dancing, and sitting easily again! I was so inspired by my transformation that I went on to do the four years Feldenkrais training, and I am now a Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner.

My journey to wellness has required me to completely strip away all the artifice in my life. All the ways of moving, thinking and being in the world that I had built to hide and protect my true, sensitive self.  I changed my self-concept.

I had to learn to slow down, to stop being an over-achiever, to stop trying to please everybody, to stop being the life of the party and the centre of attention, to stop ignoring my body and pushing myself, to stop projecting this image of the perfect superwoman able to cope with anything.

I had to learn to show my vulnerability, to get in touch with my body, to completely transform the way I moved, to slow down my racing mind, to catch my habitual responses to my family, to listen deeply, to hold the space for others to grow without trying to change them, to trust my intuition, to sink more deeply into the feminine, to listen to my heart, to live in the now, to connect to spirit.

Learning these things was not easy, but it has been a fascinating, inspiring and totally fulfilling journey.

As a result of these monumental shifts in my self-concept, my life has been completely transformed. These days, my time is divided between many things I dearly love to do.

I run a thriving private Feldenkrais practice from my home and also run workshops all over Victoria teaching people how to keep their bodies pain-free for life. I am building a pioneering online program called Body Mastery, giving people all over the world the tools to keep themselves out of pain.

I also coach people to shift themselves out of their limiting thinking patterns and psychic blocks. I facilitate a one-day transformational program called “Changing the Dream”, helping to shift people on environmental, spiritual and social-justice issues. I also organise events, bringing out various spiritual teachers to Melbourne, and have created a thriving community here who all support each other in their spiritual growth.

I am a member of XL, an international network of Social Entrepreneurs, and of The Difference project, a global movie project to open humanity’s heart, as well as many other community groups.

My relationship with my family has transformed, as has my relationship with my self! I have dear friends all around the world whom I love and adore and who keep me ever humble and feeling loved.

And now my career life is coming back full circle to the things I most loved to do as a child: speak and write. But I am doing them in such a different way!

I’m no longer trying to make it in Hollywood as a glamorous screenwriter. Now I’m writing an epic novel for children, a kind of rollicking spiritual adventure set in outer space!

Recently, people have started asking me to speak at their events, as a keynote speaker and as an MC. I’ve always loved public speaking, but my style has dramatically changed since undergoing my healing journey. When I was a lawyer, I was very much in my head. I was always being told that I was “witty and clever”. Now I am told that I'm “inspiring, warm, and authentic”. Most excitingly, I’m now being asked to teach other people how to speak in public.

It makes me realise that all the trials and tribulations we go through in our lives can actually lead us to the future we were always meant to have.

My lack of confidence was at an all time low when I was living with chronic pain. I felt like a weak, stiff, sore, old woman, unable to work, go out or even look after myself and my self-confidence and self-concept were at an all time low.

I overcame a lack of confidence by completely relearning how to move, through the amazing Feldenkrais Method. I am now free, flexible, fit, energetic and graceful. I now have the self-confidence in my own body that I had lacked all my life.

I have the self-confidence to know that if I injure myself I can get myself out of pain by myself, without being dependent on physiotherapists, masseurs, chiropractors or pain-killers. I trust my body to handle anything. And even more fundamentally, I am confident that my skeleton, my very bones, will support me. That’s about as profound as self-confidence can get!

I gained self-confidence and a clearer self-concept through my journey of deep personal growth. I am now confident that I have developed a deep pool of personal awareness that gives me great wisdom in my choices.

I am confident that I have the mental and emotional skills and internal resources to handle any challenge. I am confident that I can powerfully speak my truth so that others will hear it, and that I can deeply listen to the truths of others. I am confident that I can learn from any situation, and that I will always continue to grow and expand as a person.

My spiritual journey has also given me self-confidence. I have learned to listen deeply to my heart, to be guided by my gut, and to trust my intuition. I know that my soul has designed the lessons I’m learning, and that my higher self is guiding me at all times. I feel supported by the highest levels of the spirit world. This gives me a profound self-confidence that I can meet whatever is thrown at me, moment by moment, with full acceptance and trust.

My favourite quote: "The only people for me are the mad ones. Mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
(This was written to me anonymously in a Valentine's Day card I received in Oxford in 2000. I never found out who it was from but it's the most beautiful thing anyone's ever given me. If you are out there, please reveal yourself!)

Being confident has meant I am back out there in the world again, socialising, working, travelling, exercising. These are all things I had thought I would never be able to do again when I was living with chronic pain. I am stepping fully into my power.

Tahnee's Body Mastery website.

Tahnee’s Feldenkrais classes. 

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