Your Wisdom Body: A Path of Unscripted Spiritual Practice

What if wisdom isn’t something you chase, but something that catches you when you slow down enough to notice? We sit with Anita Peterhansel—yogi, counselor, island elder—whose life moved without plans or credentials, yet landed in a steady, luminous clarity. From Amsterdam’s peep shows to Ibiza’s beaches, she practiced in unlikely places, listened harder than she spoke, and let purpose announce itself in real conversations and daily movement.

We trace the arc from intelligence to awareness: how facts and strategies can carry you far, then suddenly feel thin in midlife. Anita helps us name the wisdom body as the layer that turns stories into insight—why we chose certain partners, postponed old dreams, or underestimated our strength. She describes life as a series of invitations: jump or don’t, learn either way. During COVID, people began to call—friends and friends-of-friends in distress—and her “sharing” emerged. No funnels, no branding, just presence that relieved suffering enough for people to come back. The feedback loop became her proof.

Anita’s practice is refreshingly human. She never had a formal yoga teacher; the body taught her. She walks for hours, swims, dances, and adapts movement to season and energy, using motion to quiet the loud mind and dial up intuition. She feeds a deep spiritual hunger with books and long listens, using teachings as soul food rather than trophies. We explore practical tools for a fast, noisy world: five minutes of stillness before the phone, a walk that resets your nervous system, a single story you can retire today. Like Ayurveda, once you feel a bit better, the system remembers how to heal itself.

If you’re navigating midlife questions, craving meaning beyond productivity, or beginning a practice without a map, this conversation offers grounded guidance. You’ll learn how small, repeatable actions invite big inner shifts; how to spot the narratives that create pain; and how to turn your life into a quiet monastery wherever you live. Subscribe, share with a friend who could use gentle clarity, and leave a review with the one practice you’ll try this week.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I just do things because I do them. There is never kind of like a obvious reason for me. You know, in a kind of my my head, that's what what my whole life was actually how it seems to work. So my spiritual path is exactly the same. I never really know why I started to do what I did with the yoga, never had a teacher, just did what I did. Because it was just like the thing to do. I was kind of like not questioning it, but it was just like that was the thing to do. And I always somehow in my life kept on doing them. Like in the peep show or whatever, you know, I was always doing my yoga and reading my spiritual books all the time. You know, people they have plans and they go from plan A to plan B or from point A to B. Anita never had that. She had never point A, nor did she have a point B, nor did she know anything, why and how she did anything in her life. It just unfolded, and I just jumped on the train, or I didn't jump on the train, and that was all there's to it. Had my experiences that lasted however long they lasted till it was done, and then that was it. So it's it's a it's a hard topic to talk with me about, right? It doesn't make sense to most people, I guess.

Introducing The Wisdom Body

Beyond Intelligence To Awareness

SPEAKER_01 1:46

You've just heard from Anita Peter Hansel, who pretty much said what I predicted she would say when I asked her to be my wise woman guest on this episode, your wisdom body. You're listening to stories. I'm your host, Delia Quigley. We've been traveling together through the layers of your being. Began with your physical body, then your energy body, and your mental body. And now we arrive at the fourth layer, your wisdom body. Some call it the intellectual body. But at this stage of life, I think we know it's more than just the intellect. Because intelligence is something we've all cultivated. We've learned how to think, how to reason, how to gather information and apply it. We build careers on it. We raise children with it. We navigated relationships, crises, reinventions. But you know, there comes a moment, usually sometime in your 50s and beyond, when intelligence alone begins to feel insufficient. Because you can know all the right answers and still feel something is missing. Without awareness, intelligence is simply stored information, a lifetime of facts, strategies, opinions, and stories about who you are, or stories about who you were. Wisdom is what happens when awareness begins to illuminate those stories. It's when we start noticing the patterns, the relationships we choose, the risks we avoided, the dreams we postponed, oh, the strengths we underestimated. It's when we can look back at the warrior years, the striving, the building, the proving, and see not just what we did, but why we did it. To see ahead, we must first be willing to look behind. So the wisdom body invites reflection without harshness. It asks us to observe our life as if we were both participant and compassionate witness, to connect the dots between past and present, and to integrate what we've learned into how we move now. Wisdom is not about being right, it's about being awake. It is understanding the shape of your own life and choosing consciously how the next chapter unfolds. And that is where Anita and I are going today. You gave me a little bit about your story, which is interesting in that you've just gone with the flow in your life, right? And now this leads you here into this point of um exploration. Are you in that process of exploring this new, not new, but this phase of your life with the the wisdom you've gained? I mean, I think a lot of people come to you now and seeking your wisdom and asking for your advice. And um and so how are you about giving that? Do you give it freely? I just want to really kind of touch into you know where your story has led you after all these years.

Life As Invitation, Not Plan

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah, my story has led me after all these years that this um this sharing or being asked from people about sharing my so-called wisdom has started in the has started by itself uh in the COVID times, where I basically stopped doing anything else. The cleaning stopped, which I did before to earn my money. And then suddenly people and I cannot really tell you how it all unfolded because I didn't do anything for or about it. It just started to happen that people started to call me friends, friends of friends. Especially in the in the especially in the in the COVID time, there was a lot of stress going on in the people, and they were quite distressed about everything that was going on and in themselves. And I felt without that I knew what was actually going on, that whatever I had to say or what came out of my mouth really served them. It served them because they told me so, and because they kept on, they kept on uh telling me or talking to me about it. And I didn't really make anything about that. I was just like, um, oh, that's interesting. And I really I really I I really enjoyed the feeling of like that I that I was of purpose, that I had a purpose. That means like that I could share something which came so naturally to me without making any effort, without having any uh thoughts about it or any schooling about it or anything about that. But their feedback was that it really served them, and that was basically or is still all that I need. And where did it come from for you? Where did it come from from? It's a very good question, Delia. Because I have no idea. I have really no idea. It's like everything in my life is just like a a non-stop surprising. Every moment is like surprising. It's like it's like this stands here and invites me to you want to jump in or you don't? And and and when I jump in, I'm like, wow, that's an interesting thing that I'm doing this here now. I'm like, whatever I did in my life was never that I went for it because I wanted to have this certain experience. It was just always that life invited me through life experience, through life. Basically, I would call it life invitations, and the invitations were taken or not taken. And when they were taken, I had a whole full blast experience of that invitation. And if it wasn't taken, of course, then it wasn't. And this was the same with this calling from the people. I didn't ask for it, I didn't wanted it, I didn't expect it, but it all of a sudden started to happen really honestly, Delia, by itself. And then I just went along with it, surprised that actually something came out of my mouth, which was like, that seems to be helpful, okay. I'm I'm I'm fine with that, and um, and that was it, basically. And it and and the only thing what I can share with you also, it gives me an incredible joy and happiness while I'm while the situation of sharing, I call it now a sharing or exchange or interchange is happening because there is it makes me happy, it it's fruitful. It's like it's like it's like something, you know, it's like maybe a piece of art. I'm not an artist, but you are, so you can maybe understand when you make a piece of art and it seems to unfold itself and you look at the outcome and it makes you really happy about what you see. It's a bit like that, you know. I mean, people respond to me, and I'm just really happy about that. It seemingly has then an impact in them, which has an impact on them and how they experience themselves in life. Um, let's go back.

COVID Calls And Found Purpose

SPEAKER_01 9:27

I mean, I met you uh back in I think uh 1999, um, the at Christmas. I had come to Abiza, that's where you live, in the island of Ibiza in Spain, and um I came to study with your companion at the time, Godfrey Devreau, with his dynamic yoga. And I was really taken by the fact that you just you basically just went along with life. You know, you had climbed up onto the roof of this ashram building one day and had said, Oh, I would like to have a yoga center here. And and then Godfrey showed up, and before long you had a yoga center there. You know, you have that kind of attraction, right? I know. And I mean, and that's what's always, you know, um, not amazed me because I'm very familiar with it in my own life, but that attraction to um the web or the cosmic web or the divine, however one might you know express it. And that I watched as your wisdom body is just kind of expanded. Now, you said you didn't have the education, you didn't have the degrees or whatnot, but you've had the experience. And I think this is really important when we're talking now about right, the intellectual and the wisdom body. Because first we've learned that discernment, we awaken our intellectual body, and through that we awaken our wisdom body, right? We get more in touch with our intuition. So, you know, your past coming from Germany, and you've had children, you've experienced all kinds of things. I mean, you even mentioned a peep show, which I'm sure people are a little interested in how you can have been in a peep show and still practice spiritual, you know, your spirituality. What did you do? You had a practice going on, and you yeah, come on, you couldn't have mentioned that. Yeah, because whoa, what was that? I don't know if you just want a peep show. I don't know what's that. I I kind of think you told me, but it's not really in my experience, and sure, not in a lot of other people's experience. So, what the hell is a peep show? It was in Amsterdam, right? Yes, it was in Amsterdam.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yes, yes. Well, it is a place, it's a very curious place. I'm still sure that they still exist. Where you go in, mango in, and they have like a they have like a you are in a room with all mirrors around you, with a big round bed, or uh, you know, whatever round or whatever size, and you're naked on that bed. And then they're all this around, like in a half circle, there are these little windows that open and close. And the men outside that look at you, they put their little one euro coins in it, and then the window opens and they look at you, and then a certain amount of time they look at you, and then the window closes again. And this is basically the what the what the how the peep show works as a as a as an institution, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

And you're on the bed doing your yoga practice.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

And I'm yoga practice and your your spiritual reading. Yeah, I was on the bed doing my yoga practice and you know, and watching myself. It was actually the best ever, I'm telling you this. It was absolutely amazing. And the lucky thing, what I had, I don't know if we're gonna go a bit too far now, but the luck, what I must really mention also, what I had. It was in the time when a lot, a lot of these Osho people, meaning Osho, the Guru Osho, which in that time moved to America out of India into America, uh, into America. And so a lot of his female disciples were in this time in Amsterdam and worked alongside me in the peep shows and in striptees and whatever I else I was doing. So the scene that I was working was not the average kind of like, you know, people who normally might work in peep shows. It was these cool girlies that made money to go to see Osho the Guru in America. Not all of them, but a good part of them, which made the whole thing a bit more juicy or enjoyable, let's say it like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Okay, and so then you made your way to Abitha. How did you get to Abitha? That's the party island, right?

Peep Shows, Practice, And Presence

SPEAKER_00 13:54

I got to yes, that's the it's called the party insul. Yes, and it is a party insel because that's just one part of the island. The other island is at the other part of the island, it's the deep spiritual goddess, uh Tanid uh site, and then the Bakus, which is the in the god of the enjoyment and parties and celebration. And and Abita is ruled by the Bogot, by both gods and goddess. So you have like half, half, whatever. You know, if this means anything, this is just an explanation of the energy here on the island. And I in that time lived with a very good girlfriend of mine, um, Dutch, and she fell in love with a man here in um in Ibiza, and she more and more and more spent time in Ibiza and less time with me in the apartment in Amsterdam because she really was in love with him. And then I had holidays, and she said, Why don't you come to Ibiza and visit me? Uh, because she was here in that time. And I just did, and I never, ever, ever left the island ever since.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

I know, and it's really become you're really you're centered, right? And people, um I remember uh at the ashram when you and you were taking care of everything. You were doing the cooking, you were doing the cleaning, and you were doing the counseling. But you were that was kind of like you know, you didn't think about it. It wasn't like, oh, go talk to Anita. People just drawn to, which I think is really interesting because as you say, COVID times, that began to to really emerge, right? This this awakening of your your wisdom, but also then would you say you have a really deep connection to your intuition?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

I would say, Delia, yes, seemingly, which I didn't know really, because I'm not really, yes, I seemingly don't work along these lines of making courses or knowing, oh, this is something which I seemingly latently have dormant in me, and I would like to develop that. It doesn't seem to me like my life path in this lifetime. It all just seems to unfold in the moment. And I and everybody, all of us, we are born with certain qualities, and these qualities they attract then the people who attracted or like these qualities, and vice versa. So that's very true what you say. I always had this facility that people came to talk to me or wanting to talk to me or wanting to, you know, it was always like that, but um, it all playing out in a very different way, you know, it in a very kind of like maybe you want to call it worldly way, of course that I just was partying and having, you know, people loved my energy. They just loved to have me around, they invited me to be part of the party because they knew when Anita was part of the party, the party will be definitely better than when she's not there, because Anita was on the dancing floor basically the whole time. And whatever I whatever my energy represented in the body on the dancing floor or just standing there was seemingly so kind of like attractive that I got invited, especially for me being myself, that energetically I seem to have this uh capacity or maybe capacity, uh capacity, but I don't claim it as my capacity. It just seems to be a capacity that gets that gets manifested through this form of basically um uh making uh creating a field around me which creates them its itself that makes people feel good and comfortable around me.

Ibiza’s Dual Spirit

SPEAKER_01 17:57

You know, a lot of people listening, you know, have a yoga practice or you know, a counseling practice, or you know, and they've gone through years of study and getting degrees or you know, licensing and whatnot. And I think this is a really important point of the attraction, the energetic frequency and attraction of just being yourself within your, you know, comfortable in your bodies, all five of your bodies, and just allowing the you know, the wisdom body to express itself through, you know, the experiences that you've had because you've been aware of those experiences when they were happening in the moment. So would you say, I mean, that almost sounds like you were uh possibly recognizing something you've already known, a I mean, just innately, oh, I know this, you know, and and the books would just bring it back up, and it's like, oh my God, it's reminding me of it. And at the same time, you know, someone might argue that, oh, that could have been a past life coming forward. Like, oh, again, I recognize this because I've experienced it before. You know, I mean, there's a there's a you know, there's a different way to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

You're so right. You're so absolutely right. I mean, I also want to tell you, Telia, I was since I was 15, 16, I was always like longing to go to a monastery, but life really did never allow this to happen. It was my deepest longing because I was like, I was very clear that something in this world and me does not really. I don't know what I want to say because I wouldn't say I couldn't use the word attractive because attractive doesn't, because I really love life. I love everything in life, I love everything that happens. So it's not that attraction, it's just like I felt a bit alien and I was always like, oh, just monastery. That sounds very, very familiar to me. But life always like whenever I was on my way to go somewhere in a monastery, life came up with some kind of in life situation that made it impossible for me to leave. So I stayed, and another roller coaster of some sorts happened, and I was like, okay, good, fun.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

But the ashram with Canam, then you were creating again, you were creating your own monastery there. And then now where you are in this beautiful place in uh along the Mediterranean, right? You have your own little monastery, right? You live privately, you're quiet, people come to you, and you have your practice. So, really, you have manifested that monastery right now, right at this time in your life, correct?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Beautifully said. I love the verse that totally resonated in me, and I completely and 100% agree with it, Telia, and you have no idea how grateful I am for that. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

So let's talk a little bit about your practice. So I know that's changed over time. You know, it probably began with a yoga practice and and just really evolved. And I'm sure people listening would go, okay, well, what what is your practice now? Or maybe a little bit about where it began and where it is now. And by a practice, I'm talking about yoga practice, a meditation by a spiritual practice.

Intuition Over Credentials

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yoga practice was that is a very, very curious thing. I I never had a yoga teacher. I don't even know where I got my practices from and where do they come from. I just always found myself that my body was doing this, what I noticed from Godfrey, but I noticed from other people, which you call yoga. I wouldn't, you know, not all the different. I don't even know what what what kind of yoga I was practicing. It just came by itself. As you said, Delia. It changed. It changed according to what circumstances I was in, how much time I had, how much, you know, it changed all the time. So that was never kind, but it was always part of my life because it felt really good in my body to do that. It was like a a kind of a need, a hunger. It was like I want this. I need this. It was like my daily walks. I walk a lot. I walk for hours every day, since like basically forever. And this walking is the same kind of like need in my system because the walking, the simply walking, walking in nature, or also in the city, by the way, this simply movement of walking aligns me or realigns me with the universe, if you want to call it like this, with the energy of the and opening the tenants, which you called before intuition. Yeah, out of the mind, fuck the loud mind screaming into the silence of the intuition of the silent mind or intuition mind. So these are and the swimming also, dancing were always my main tools and practices on the physical level and on the spirit and mental level, endlessly, endlessly, hours and hours. I cannot say how many hours, I think millions of hours of listening. Especially since the time when I got my when the smartphones come in, when the social media got in, of uh teachers that caught me. And I could spend here three, four, five, six hours every day listening. It was like a it was like a gasoline from my being. It was just like soul food.

Making A Monastery Of Life

SPEAKER_01 23:53

You know, I thought the word you were gonna use, you didn't use it, but it came to my mind with all of that uh learning and the books and everything, and because I experienced it as a hunger. There was, I just had this hunger to um to know more and to experience more uh on a spiritual level through the books and through my practice. And I think the first I had a few yoga classes uh initially when I was a young woman in my 30s, and then one day I took a yoga class, and there's this this hunger arose in me where it was like, oh, this is it, this is it. This I did this, this is it. And I never stopped after that. You know, there's just this awakening. You talk about awakening, everybody's like, awakening is this enlightenment, and you know, you're in nirvana. I know that was an awakening. It was like this is it. And you know, I pushed it over the years in my practice, you know, in my Aries way. And, you know, coming to it now, it's none of that is necessary. It's just I still have the hunger, I still do my practice. And I understand what you're saying, but you've just evolved it to what your body, mind, all your bodies are asking for, instead of saying, no, it has to be this way because and then you just begin to create it and shape it to, you know, to align with who you are in this time. So who are you at this time?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Who am I in this time, Delia? I seem to be, I seem to find myself in a in a in a state in my life that I become more and more conscious about what really drives this body, what life uses this body for, uh a huge cleaning out of all kind of uh past accumulated burdens from the from the condition mind, which is the ego mind, which we which we call the loud mind. This is what you were talking about before, and and being just more and more consciously conscious of myself as the consciousness that I am.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

So there's so much suffering in the world right now. And I mean, it's yeah, I mean, come on, suffering's been going on since the beginning of time, but because of the internet and social media and everybody's connection in that way, there's it's it's just screaming. The suffering is just screaming out at all of us in you know in the world. So, you know, from your wisdom body, your intuitive body, and then connect, I mean, all your bodies and that and that cosmic divine body. How would you counsel someone, um, someone younger, someone who's just you know awakening to a spiritual practice, right? So many of them are like, what's the use? And yet um that's a crucial point in uh in our awakening when we come to that. What's the use? Well, that's the time when we find out.

Practice That Evolves With You

SPEAKER_00 27:09

That is very, very true, Dilia. I completely agree with that. And that is a crucial point, and that is also I cannot tell you how I would do it because everybody I talk to comes up, a very unique recipe for accepting that person comes up. It's never the same. So I wouldn't even start to explain to you how. I just do notice something which might be useful to you while you uh to hear from me. What you just expressed is the biggest calundrum that human beings have probably always had, but now maybe even more in this fast speed living time that people seemingly have no time, never have any time. I mean, they're hand it's like it's busy, busy, busy, fast, fast, fast. But uh the development, or let's say the spiritual path takes time, takes time, takes attention, takes a certain determination, without which uh nothing happens. You can have your moments of insight and alleviation, but if you don't stick to it, it's gonna dissipate again and it's gonna it's gonna be it's gonna be it's gonna it's gonna be the same like before again. It means like it's going to um uh renew itself constantly. And this is something which I find in my experience in the moment, that this is the biggest, biggest calundrum that probably our teachers were always dealing with, but the teachers before, their students, um always and mostly, nearly always people who were really interested in spirituality. Now the people that, for example, come to me are people that are not even necessarily uh interested in spirituality. They are just simply suffering, they are just simply feeling like shit. And this is the tool, this is why they come to somebody like me and say, oh my God. And then I can I can tell them or start or try to tell them just simply by listening to them in their life story, because I immediately see the storylines that they get telling to themselves that creates the suffering, and anything else, what I very clearly get as clear messages, this is this is the tool, this is exactly the causes what creates suffering, and then slowly transmitting into them in a package field that makes sense to them, in words that make sense to them, in an energetic content that makes sense to them. And then also, my experience is clear that the only way that I would continue and things start to make sense is because they start to feel better. I think it's a little bit like the Ayurvedic medicines work, like the body, it's not the healing of the body, you just make the body, and in the moment the body feels better, it starts to heal itself. It basically the drive of the body is naturally to heal itself. So you just help it to help it through the globulin or whatever medicine you're taking to heal itself. And in the moment that the body feels like, oh, oh, that feels good, zoom, it goes directly, unless you keep on putting shit in it in the same time, then of course nothing happens. But then you change your diet or whatever you're doing, then it if the healing happens by itself. So, what I notice it's exactly the same with the spiritual process. When people start to feed better, they're basically the interest starts to show up by itself, and they're suddenly like, wow, I'm I'm I'm basically starting to sit five minutes every morning instead of immediately putting my phone on, or you know, and that's a good start, man. Like, good, yeah, let's keep on going, man, you know, because it is these little changes that get more and more and more, and then the impact becomes more and more and more evident, and this evident feeling good, simply feeling good is a wonderful drive. Because basically they're waking themselves up then. You know, I just like it's just like giving the tools.

Walking Into Silence

SPEAKER_01 31:45

You've been listening to my interview with Anita Peterhansel on how she manages her wisdom body. I know there's a lot there to break down and integrate into your own personal understanding of your wisdom body. Okay, so there's no website or email for Anita, and as you heard, she lives on a small island in the Mediterranean Sea. So if you want to comment, write it in the deliaquigly.substack.com podcast section, and I'll make sure she gets your message. You've been listening to stories, and I'm your host, Delia Quigley. I'll complete this journey through the five bodies in our next episode, your divine body, where we go deeper and probably to places you didn't even know were yours to discover. I'm looking forward to that one. And I'm looking forward to being your guide. So, until next time, thanks for being with me.