Born in the Netherlands and raised in Lima, Peru, I was surrounded from a young age by a culture that celebrates life through dance. I found great joy in performing traditional folklore at school, which fostered a sense of expression through movement and body awareness. Years later, back in the Netherlands, this inspired me to embark on the long and demanding journey of becoming a professional dancer.

Throughout my dance training and career, I developed a fondness for giving and receiving massage and experiencing different forms of bodywork, both with peers and professionals. Our bodies needed a great deal of care after long days of intensive training, and I became increasingly fascinated by how touch could support recovery, awareness, and wellbeing.

After obtaining my Bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Dance and working for several years as a professional dancer, I found myself increasingly drawn towards body-centred therapies.

In 2012, I began working professionally as a massage and Shiatsu therapist, building on my four-year Shiatsu education in Amsterdam, additional training in traditional massage, and the understanding of the body I had developed through many years of dance.

Later, during a challenging chapter in my own life, I was introduced to Craniosacral Biodynamics alongside cognitive therapy. The experience profoundly impacted me. While therapy gave me a space to understand and explore what I was going through mentally and emotionally, craniosacral work offered my body its own way of processing and integrating these experiences.It felt as though a whole new world had opened up. I knew immediately that this was something I wanted to learn one day.

In December 2015, my partner and I first crossed paths in Barcelona. That meeting marked the beginning of a new chapter in both our lives and, over time, also planted the seed for what would become our shared professional vision. With his background as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and mine in body-centred therapy, bringing these two perspectives together felt like a natural next step.

I relocated to Zurich in 2017, where my partner and I joined forces with an acupuncturist and a psychologist to found New Leaves Gemeinschaftspraxis. Together, the four of us created a multidisciplinary practice where psychological and body-centred approaches to health and wellbeing could work alongside and complement one another.

From 2017 onwards, alongside my work in Zurich, I deepened my therapeutic path through studies in Craniosacral Biodynamics, first in Hamburg and later in Switzerland. Over the following years, this became an increasingly important part of my work and eventually led to its recognition within the Swiss complementary healthcare system.

Over the years, working closely with clients has continued to shape and deepen my understanding of therapeutic work. I have become increasingly interested in the role of the nervous system and what can become possible when the body is included in the therapeutic process, not simply as something to be treated, but as an integral part of how we experience, respond to, process, and integrate our lives.

Working alongside psychotherapy has further strengthened this understanding. 

In February 2023, my partner and I founded Holistic Practice. We felt it was time to create a space of our own, one that would allow us to focus more closely on the vision and way of working we had developed together over the years.

My own work continues to evolve . My curiosity about the body, the nervous system, and our capacity for regulation and integration leads me into new areas of learning. I am currently training in Somatic Experiencing in Belgium, building on previous studies in breathwork and many years of body-centred therapeutic practice. These perspectives continue to deepen and inform my work, while each person I meet brings their own unique story and process into the therapeutic space.

Perhaps what I’ve shared here has given you a sense of who I am and how I work. If this resonates with you and you feel curious to explore working together, please feel welcome to get in touch.

Warmly,

Orestes Léon Hellewegen