TEAM
SVARA is shaped by people with different backgrounds and ways of working.
Breathwork, bodywork, nervous system education, movement, yoga, food and our relationship with nature all have a place within the training.
Each teacher brings their own experience and perspective into the work.
Mela Mariposa
Founder & Lead Facilitator of SVARA
Her work with people began more than 20 years ago through psychiatric nursing and has since moved through holistic nutrition, yoga, breathwork, somatic work and the study of the nervous system and Somatic Experiencing.
She has been working with breathwork for more than a decade and began teaching facilitators in 2018.
Over the years, her approach to breathwork has changed considerably. While she continues to value the depth and emotional expression that can emerge through conscious connected breathing, her work today places strong emphasis on pacing, observation, the nervous system and the capacity of the individual person.
In the training, Mela teaches both the practical foundations of breathwork facilitation and the less tangible parts of working with people: how to listen, how to respond to what is actually happening, how to recognise your own reactions as a facilitator, and how to work without needing to create a particular outcome.
Her teaching is also deeply connected to nature, ritual and personal process. She sees the facilitator's own willingness to keep learning and meeting themselves as an essential part of this work.
Katrin Heuser
Bodywork & Nervous System Facilitator
Her whole life, Katrin has been interested in the body and movement. After many years of dance, her Scoliosis led her to Pilates and finally to Yoga and Thai Massage, which then became her path in life.
For Katrin, her work is about the never-ending exploration of the body and mind, and a way of discovering the beauty of life. As we bring awareness to what is happening inside and where we are in the present moment, the body is encouraged to release where it is holding. Then we can embark on a journey of restoration and growth.
She holds a 500h Level 4 NVQ Yoga Teaching qualification, trained in Manual Lymph Drainage and has studied extensively in Thai Yoga Massage and Osteothai, including a Master Osteothai qualification, over the past years. Through her work as a bodyworker comes also her understanding of trauma, chronic conditions and pain, as well as the influence of working with fascia, the craniosacral system, structural support and regulation of the nervous system.
Katrin used to run a Yoga Festival in London and launched an online anti-stress breathing programme. Since 2015 she has lived in Lisbon and runs Little Yoga Space, where she teaches and gives Osteothai treatments, and she is the director of Hadadi, offering foundation and advanced training courses in Thai Massage and trauma-informed Yoga worldwide.
Teaching at the EARTH & AIR MODULE
Olga Viktoria Sadowski, Chef
Plant based chef, activist and author, focused on integrative nutrition & the politics of food. Her meals are crafted in reverence to the earth, reconnecting us with nature through the senses, inviting us to embrace a symbiotic relationship with the natural world.
She is a student of indigenous ways of life, dedicated to the well being of the earth and feminine health.
Olga expresses her enchantment for nature in her work as a chef, curator for handcrafted arts, interior designer and by organizing holistic retreats, workshops & markets.