Katerina
Katerina found breathwork in the middle of a turn: out of a demanding career in the UN world and toward something quieter and harder to name. She has practised yoga, meditation and breathwork steadily since 2019, and qualified to teach breathwork in 2024. Her first students were her co-workers, and she has been teaching them ever since. She is now training in kundalini.
Greek by birth and Swiss by adoption, she lives in Geneva, where she teaches a weekly class on Wednesdays. Anassa is the Greek word for breath. The retreats she most loves to lead are the ones that take people home with her, to Greece, looking for the same thing she has been looking for since 2019.
Ryan
For years Ryan did it in the wrong order. He sat down, got restless, and decided he was bad at meditating. The problem wasn't him and it wasn't the meditation. It was the order.
Qi gong and zen in Taipei taught him that, nearly thirty years ago. The body goes first. You move what the week left in your shoulders and hips, then you breathe, and then you sit on a body that will actually let you sit. It is still the thing he would most want to hand to someone.
Yoga came next: ten years teaching hot vinyasa and Bikram in Los Angeles. Breathwork came last, after a bike accident, when breathing properly was the only thing that helped. You don't need a reason that dramatic to want it.
He teaches all three in that order at The Big Room, two hours in Lisboa and once or twice a year in Zürich, with nothing to bring, no experience assumed, and no part of it that asks you to be flexible. On Ios he teaches asana, meditation and japa.