Hi, I’m Kirien 🌱

(you can pronounce that any way you like, and use any pronouns you want for me.)

I’ve lived in many countries. I’ve learned several languages. I’ve legally, medically & socially lived as “both” and “more” genders. For most of my life I did not think I was human at all. I once had a “corporate career”, yet the motivation to do so was as non-normative as it comes.

I understand my life purpose as bridging and unifying the many polarities which appear to divide and fragment our individual and collective ecologies: east and west, male and female, ecology and technology, wild and urban, spirit and science, and many more. My main method is nurturing experiences of deeply embodied quietness, slowness & awareness of being [in connection with] nature — particularly in ecosystems where this is most needed and missing: high-pace, high-stress urban environments and digitally-created “virtual” ones.

I am also a bridge between the human and more-than-human world — supporting human-bodied persons to have deeper relationships with the many more-than-human persons all around us [and sometimes within us] — relationships with great potential to be a source of healing and reclaimed belonging. As a guide and facilitator, I trust the innate intelligence of the ecosystems within & surrounding your body to know how to restore balance and connection to themselves — when they are allowed the silence, spaciousness and gentle attentiveness to do so.

Lineages of Practice

In my lifelong search for the answer to "why was I born the way I am?" and "are there others like me?", I have encountered many human and more-than-human teachers, learned many different healing and growth modalities, some of which I now have "certificates" in, and which I draw upon when supporting others who are grappling with questions of their own belonging and wholeness.

I am grateful to the teachers and mentors who have supported me in the journey of transforming lived experiences into a formal vocational path. Here you can read about every modality I have (completed or am finalising) training in, and how specifically it informs my overall practice. In 1-1 guidance & mentorship sessions, any of these perspectives & practices may be explored according to your specific needs and intentions.

I deeply value collaborations and community connections with others working in similar or adjacent ways - feel free to get in touch if you sense a resonance. 🙏

  • At the beginning of everything was a clear and lonely knowing: I am meant to live a life dedicated to spiritual practice. I want to live in community with others who share this dedication, and to do so as quietly as possible. Nothing about the “mundane world” ever interested or motivated me other than feeling deeply aware of suffering on a global scale and needing to know why & where it came from.

    I joined my first meditation course at 13 and it instantly became my greatest hobby. I started studying Buddhism intensively and travelled to Plum Village shortly after turning 18, already eager to take monastic vows for life. The reasons this did not end up happening are many-fold — the main one being that my sense of spirituality is entirely Earth- and nature-based, and it did not feel like Buddhism emphasised this to enough of an extent such that I could commit to following it exclusively for life.

    In the monastery, every action in every moment of every day becomes a meditation practice in its own right. It taught me to have an expansive understanding of what “meditation” is — a way of being, rather than a specific activity to do in specific ways. I still love leading group meditations, reciting & recording guided meditations, and supporting individuals to invite more meditative moments into their daily life in ways that are sustainable and nourishing in their unique personal context (aka: “mindfulness coaching”).

  • at the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy ~ (2021)

    From my earliest memories to the day I joined this training, I believed there was no other modern urban human like me who not only recognised the animacy and relational agency of all land and place beings, but whose life centred around caring for those relationships. I came to this training wanting to learn how to be able to talk to other humans about what being me is like without “sounding crazy” — and became initiated into a set of practices that are now increasingly being identified as ecosomatics.

    I learned how to invite others into this way of being through embodiment practices that bring awareness to how our human bodies are in constant reciprocal exchange with other embodied beings in our environments. As my training started during the height of covid-lockdowns, I quickly discovered that I had a talent for bringing embodied nature connection practices into contexts typically thought of as “unnatural”: backyards, balconies, indoor spaces, zoom meetings.

    I deeply enjoy guiding forest therapy walks online, inviting everyone to join from their own forested corner of the world, and facilitating these ecosystems to directly come into audiovisual contact with one another.

    The forest is the therapist, the guide opens the doors”. — ANFT

  • with Sámi noaidi Astrid Ingebjørg Swart ~ (2022) and Mandy Pullen ~ (2025)

    While living in Norway, I had the beautiful opportunity to connect with the ecology & cosmology of the indigenous Sámi peoples of the far north. While not of Sámi descent, my body has always recognised the mountainous far north regions of Earth as its most resonant place to be — as its true physical home. Mentorship with Astrid helped me embrace the nature of my path as two balanced halves: one who connects humans with land spirits (“shamanic practitioner”), and one who connects the spirits of different human-inhabited lands around the world with one another (“cultural ambassador”).

    My ancestral lineage is one of migration, primarily towards & between major world cities. I do not embody the deep knowledge of any specific local ecosystem refined over generations, which traditional shamanic practices are based on. As a result, I rarely journey on behalf of others or engage in direct mediation between a person and the spirits of their local ecosystem. I believe that you most likely know your local ecosystem, and can learn to communicate intimately with its resident spirits in their native languages, way better than I ever will. I can share with you techniques which may help you to navigate these communications more effectively, and stories from personal experience of intimate exchanges with land beings all over the world.

    I can also support you in developing a personal shamanic journeying practice — regardless of your cultural background & experience level.

  • with Mariana Luna ~ (Master Level 3, 2025)

    Before Mariana, I had taken both levels 1 & 2 twice, with 2 different teachers. It never managed to resonate with me, but I was motivated to keep trying, due to consistent feedback from people around me that they could see me as a “Reiki person”. Eventually, I decided to search for a Reiki Master with explicit lived experience of queerness, immigration and racialisation. Receiving attunement from Mariana, everything finally fell naturally into place.

    I see being a Reiki practitioner as primarily a way of life — in some ways similar to training as a Buddhist monastic — the more we embody commitment to living gently, with gratitude and reverence for the smallest things, the more we are tuning the instrument of our bodies in such a way that our gentle & reverent touch may transmit healing to other bodies.

    Reiki supports the body’s innate healing mechanisms, through entering and sustaining a state of deep relaxation. It can be difficult to get there by yourself. In a reiki treatment, my relaxed and gently attentive body is directly communicating with and guiding your body to join me. As tension releases, the body’s energy channels begin to flow more smoothly again.

    My approach to teaching and representing Reiki as a practice is that of blending east & west, science & mystery. How & why Reiki works, how to live & be it & integrate it with other things — can be approached in many different ways — I support my students and mentees to find their most authentic way.

  • at The Relateful Company and ART International ~ (2024)

    Before stumbling upon my first Authentic Relating group, I had believed for my whole life that I was “bad at” socialising in groups. This practice offered me the life-changing insight that I could deeply enjoy relating with others in groups and even have a talent for “leading” them - as long as we as a group agreed to move slowly, speak gently, from a heart-centred place, with a commitment to self-awareness and care for one another.

    My biggest learning from the practitioner trainings in this lineage is the transformative potential of working with a practitioner (of any modality) who is committed to staying authentic to themselves and skilfully revealing their own experience. What I can offer as a practitioner and guide for another person’s healing, is fundamentally intertwined with who I am as a person and the journey I have undertaken towards my own wholeness. This is a primary motivation behind the level of detail offered in this section of the website: so that you, the reader, might know enough about me as a person to have an intuitive sense about whether I am the right guide, facilitator, or collaborator for you.

    I am a regular facilitator on Authentic Relating Go. I also (co-) lead circles for BIPOC persons and Queer persons approximately on a monthly basis.

  • with Kat Mertens ~ (2025)

    Kat was one of my original Forest Therapy teachers, and I felt the call to learn from her directly in the first months of living in the Netherlands. EcoNIDRA is a merging of the practices of Yoga Nidra with Forest Therapy.

    I would describe EcoNIDRA first and foremost as a method of inner journeying in support of nature connection. Compared to a “shamanic” journey, it is gentler and simpler, with a stronger focus on relaxation.

    What if you can’t “go to the forest”? What if you’re surrounded by loud, dirty, busy city energy? What if you don’t have the energy to sit cross-legged or go for a walk or even “focus on your breath”? Through the practice of EcoNIDRA, we discover that we don’t have to physically go anywhere in order to experience nature connection, and we don’t have to do anything in order to experience healing.

    I often recommend EcoNIDRA practice to people who struggle with “traditional” yoga or meditation, as well as those with personal circumstances that make “being outside in nature” difficult to access for any reasons.

  • with Stacey Griffin ~ (2025)

    Music - tone, melody, vibration, frequency - is a universal language that connects across all cultures; including between human cultures & the more-than-human world. The instruments we work with (many of which are shown on this website) came into my life during a time when I was feeling intimately aware of how loud the modern world is, and how much “noise” contributes to chronic stress related dis-eases. I wanted to counteract this, by bringing a different kind of frequency to the collective soundscape.

    I had also been searching, for many years, for a way to pass along those intuitive messages I frequently receive when I am in a place, from the animate being of the place itself. Every sound session or performance, whether indoors or outdoors, is a co-creation with the frequencies and acoustic personality of the place where it happens. The instruments invite the place to speak, and the people to listen, in a way that is perhaps very unique and difficult to access in daily life.

    Sound healing brings together elements of all of the other practices I have learned….
    - It supports slowing down and letting go of “doing” or “getting somewhere”
    - It can help the body & mind to enter a sustained state of deep relaxation
    - It can take our consciousness on journeys to non-ordinary dimensions
    - It can bring us into deeper connection with the ground we lay on and the place we are in
    - It can help us feel in an embodied way, how we are all connected, regardless of personal & cultural differences

    Sound combines well with many other modalities & offerings, and has been inviting me to step into creative collaboration with others on a whole new level. We are particularly interested in collaborations with retreat centres, hotels, guided tour operators, nature-focused festivals & other organisations [anywhere in Europe] that want to provide experiences of relaxation as well as place connection to their humans 🌲