About Us
In short
We cultivate AUTHENTIC & SECURE RELATING through SELF & CO-REGULATION merging TRAUMA-SENSITIVE Psychology with EMBODIMENT PRACTICES and ancient Temple Arts. Our mission is to end the passing on of trauma from one generation to the next. Every training, event or mentoring program you take part in allows us to offer trainings for FREE in low resource areas & slums in Africa - alone we can change, together we CAN change the world.
Heart Warrior Movement is about…
The (r)evolutionary Art of Connection & re-learning to TRUST ourselves. With an emphasis on emotion regulation exercises, breathwork, devotional Tantric & embodiment practices, we learn to CREATE SAFETY WITHIN that then emanates to the outside and into our relationships.
Join the mentoring, gatherings, immersions, quests, workshops, trainings and retreats; meet like-minded individuals who are ready to drop their masks, as true HEART WARRIORS.
Our main aim is to offer this work in the low-resource & high-crime areas of South African townships where we believe the trainings have immense impact on not just individual persons and couples, but entire communities. We offer trainings in the townships FREE OF CHARGE + aim to provide FREE mindful child care whilst parents take part in the trainings. Hence, your investment in YOURSELF is simultaneously a gift to someone living in a slum.
Let’s take self-development to the next level: BEYOND the SELF.
Hello, my name is Katharina Sha’Aya, and I help you break down barriers to INTIMACY.
I am founder of the Heart Warrior Movement and my call is to help people around the globe to feel SAFE in relating. Working on physical, mental, emotional resilience, I support you to feel safe in your body, drop your masks, un-shame and love lost parts back home so you can feel safe to enter into the delicate Art of Connection and true authentic relating.
I am an intimacy mentor, a mindfulness researcher, and trauma-informed bodywork facilitator with a Master’s Degree in Development Studies and Traumatic Stress Studies Certification (Trauma Research Foundation's Certificate Program with Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk©). Over the past 8 years, I have studied with many exceptional teachers in the fields of embodiment and intimacy, such as Deep Nervous System Embodiment (Soma Mystica©) with Sigourney Belle Weldon as well as Feminine Embodiment & Leadership at the Wild Grace Movement©, Temple Arts Priestess School based on Taoist and Kashmiri Shaivist teachings with Sofia Sundari©, with Laura Deva (Dancing Eros©), Conscious Shibari with Bina Taverna, Heart-Brain Coherence with Dr. Joe Dispenza©, and practiced and assisted the transformational body de-armouring work of Elliott Saxby (School of Energetic Bodywork©).
Next to my Master’s Degree in Development Studies I completed additional master studies in Social Psychology & Neuroethics at Uppsala University, Sweden, which I combined in my Master’s Thesis in 2019 where I analyzed the ‘Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on School Children in South African Townships’. Currently, I research the connection between resilience and mindfulness in a mindfulness intervention for adolescents (Mindfulteens Study, a randomized control study) in a fantastic team of Neuroscientists and Psychiatrists at Neuroscience Department of the University of Geneva together with the Swiss National Centre Competence in Research NCCR-SYNAPSY. We look at many measures from self-assessed questionnaires and psychometric scales, over fMRI (brain) scans to biological data such as hair cortisol and HRV (Heart-rate-variability).
My vision is a world in which children grow up in families and societies where trauma, and violence is not passed on from one generation to the next thanks to awareness, tools and a supportive environment where numbing and suppressing of one’s emotions and expression is not needed, because safety and presence are the norm and basis of all relationships.
♡
Photography by Andre Wels
Join our online course + upcoming live Events
Important notice: We are currently building our online course platform. Join the waiting list to get FIRST ACCESS to our online courses on AUTHENTIC RELATING and our upcoming in-person retreats & trainings in Portugal, Tenerife, Norway and the Netherlands.
Or scroll down to apply for
private mentoring.
“And in the end, all that matters is the people we touched on our way - and may we have left positive traces on the canvas of their memories.”
— Katharina Sha’Aya, Founder Heart Warrior Movement