Yoga is an ancient physical, mental, and spiritual practice originating in India that aims to unite the body, mind, and spirit. Derived from the Sanskrit word "yuj" (to yoke or unite), it combines physical postures, controlled breathing and meditation to improve overall health, reduce stress, and achieve inner peace.

Zena was introduced to yoga while through two dear mentors, Deborah Felmeth and Tasnim Kassem, while in her home town of Damascus. With their encouragement and mentorship, she enrolled to become a certified yoga teacher in 2009, by the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Ashram in Austria. Her preferred approach to teaching and sharing the benefits of yoga where it is most needed is the gentle approach. During a ten-year period, she co-created and co-facilated as yoga for trauma workshops for refugees as part of the UK-based charity Trustee of Tools for Inner Peace.

From the worlds of Traditional Chinese Medicine and martial arts come the ancient practices of Qi Gong (Chi Kung) and Tai Chi. Qi Gong remains a more private and mentorship-guided process, maintaining the old ways of apprenticeship and self-discipline. Zena has learned from several highly qualified teachers including Sifu Amira Chouaib in Beirut and Sifu Yasser Bilgrami in Dubai. These practices help deepen connection to the source of vitality, power and wellbeing, while relaxing and toning the body at the same time.

For our earliest wounds, accidents, emergencies or misattunements, the trauma effect is known as an 'imprint'. They can be related to pre-conception, womb-time, birth, infancy, and toddlerhood. In the pre-verbal years, primitive reflexes and defensive response are close to the relationship with life itself. Energies are pre-verbal, procedural patterns that need help finding their completion and are often experienced in an embryonic or fetal or neonatal sense of time and space. Under the guidance of pioneering practitioners in the field, Kate White and Lois Tresize, Zena became certified in IPPD - Integrated Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics, an advanced somatic training for working with adults seeking to heal their earliest embodiment and attachment processes.

Touch is probably the first language of all the sense, where even the water in the womb is a skin-felt experience as well as an internal undulation. Ancient traditions have known the profound power of healing through touch and modern science confirms the vital role of using one's hands to sense and connect with the body's experience to provide healing. Zena's practice is informed by SE Touch, as well as Neuro Affective Touch as trained by Dr. Aline La Pierre.

Approaching touchwork somatically is to work with an intention of restoring safety; it is not massage/muscle kneading, nor physiotherapy/mobility training, but a neurological and cellular co-regulation. Touch is the primary language through which one is welcomed into the world, pre-words and pre-thought.

Of all the various somatic therapies out there, Somatic Experiencing is, without a doubt, the most beautifully integrative and honouring of life and the capacity to transform through gentleness, compassion, and a deeply embodied knowledge of the autonomic nervous system's survival mechanisms as a lived experience. It is a comprehensive approach to being alive, bravely and gracefully, allowing the body's intelligence to unfold. Learning to become compassionate with ourselves and with others is one of the greatest take-aways from this practice, as it allows trauma healing to be held with a depth of presence, subtlety and skill, helping clients to discover innate strengths and capacities they never realized they had.