Mindfulness Wasn’t Working… Until I Remembered Where I’m From
The story behind Nordic Mindfulness™ and the unexpected path that brought me back to myself.
I didn’t set out to create a new mindfulness path. In fact, at the time, I was just trying to survive.
A few years ago, I hit burnout hard. The kind that doesn’t knock politely but slams you into the ground. What’s strange is that I genuinely thought I was doing everything right. I was turning things around, ticking all the boxes of what success was supposed to look like. I had systems in place, I was “managing” everything, and it looked like things were finally working.
Then one day, without warning, my body told a different story.
Heart palpitations started. My nervous system went into overdrive. I ended up in the emergency room. And just like that, everything paused. What followed was a long road back—one that changed not just how I lived, but who I was.
As a high achiever, it wasn’t easy to surrender. But I got serious about healing. I returned to mindfulness and meditation. I asked for help. I sought support with my business. I took care of myself in all the right ways. And slowly, gently, I began to recover.
But even after a couple of years, something still felt… off.
I was doing everything “right,” yet a part of me remained untouched. I felt like I was healing, but not fully arriving.
Around that time, I returned to my home country for a visit. As I stood on the familiar land of my childhood, something stirred. A deep, ancestral pull. A remembering.
I started to notice things I had forgotten—traditions, rhythms, moments from my upbringing that held a kind of quiet presence. I realised that, for years, I had practised mindfulness steeped in Eastern traditions. And while I deeply valued those practices, something about them didn’t fully align with the way I move through the world.
I come from the North. From long winters, deep forests, shifting light, and silence that speaks. And I began to see that we, too, have mindfulness embedded in our culture—it’s just never been called that.
It lives in our rituals. In how we listen to the land. In how we move slowly through snow. In the stories we tell. In the way we honour seasons and silence.
That was the beginning of what would become Nordic Mindfulness™.
I didn’t plan it. I simply followed the threads. I began weaving together my recovery, my heritage, my creativity, and my deepening presence with nature. And from that, the B.R.A.I.S.S.™ principles emerged—Balance, Resilience, Adaptability, Integration, Simplicity, and Synergy. Not just as ideas, but as reminders of how we once lived—and how we could live again.
As I began to practise this new form of mindfulness, I noticed something remarkable: I didn’t just heal. I changed. I became more grounded, more attuned, more me.
And then it flipped. I realised I wasn’t creating Nordic Mindfulness™ anymore—it was creating me. Teaching me. Guiding me back to what I already knew deep down.
Even now, as I use tools like biofeedback to make music from trees, I know I’m not doing it to be clever or technical. I’m doing it because it helps me listen—to nature, to the world, to myself. This is not about inventing something new. It’s about returning to an ancient, embodied way of being. A way of feeling life, not just observing it.
These traditions are Nordic, yes—but they’re also universal. Before we industrialised everything, most of us lived this way: in rhythm, in presence, in relationship with the land and each other. Somewhere along the way, we forgot.
Nordic Mindfulness™ simply offers a way back.
So—even if I gave it a name and gathered it into a structure, Nordic Mindfulness™ doesn’t come from just me.
It comes from our nordic culture.
From our ancestry.
From remembering something deep down about how we used to live, how we used to be.
And so, rather than calling myself the “founder” of Nordic Mindfulness™, I see myself as its translator, facilitator, and lifelong student—someone privileged to live it, season by season, day by day. And for that, I’m deeply grateful.