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Yoga, Ayurveda & Somatic Wisdom for Modern Life
Are you someone with a full life who has genuinely tried a lot - different practices, different approaches, different ways of feeling better - and still find yourself wondering why something isn't quite landing? Or maybe you're a yoga practitioner or teacher who loves the mat, and is starting to sense there's a deeper layer waiting: in Ayurveda, in nervous system work, in understanding what's actually happening underneath the poses?
This podcast lives at that intersection.
I'm Maxi Meissner - yoga teacher, Ayurveda counselor, nervous system coach, and PhD in medical sciences. My work draws on 20+ years of Ashtanga yoga and Ayurveda practice, Somatic Experiencing training, and years of biomedical research. What fascinates me - and what this podcast is really about - is that ancient Vedic wisdom and modern nervous system science are often describing the same thing. Just in different language. And when you start to understand both, something clicks.
Here we go beyond quick fixes and surface-level wellness. We talk honestly about rhythm, regulation, and what it means to digest life - not just food, but experiences, stress, change, and everything in between. About why knowing what helps isn't always enough. And about how real, lasting change tends to be quieter, slower, and kinder than we've been told.
No rigid rules. No performing wellness. Just grounded conversations where science, lived experience, and ancient wisdom sit comfortably at the same table.
Episodes are in English and Dutch - because language, like healing, is personal.
Welcome. I'm glad you're here.
More of my work lives at www.maximeissner.nl.
Come say hello on Instagram @maximeissner or LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/maximeissner.
Yoga, Ayurveda & Somatic Wisdom for Modern Life
You Were Never Actually on Trial: For anyone who has ever felt like they had to earn their place
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This episode runs 50 minutes - grab a tea.
Maybe you know the feeling of working hard to be believed. Of achieving a lot and still waiting, somewhere underneath, to be found out. Of freezing exactly when you most want to speak up.
In this episode I share something personal - more personal than I usually go. I talk about being born two months premature, what the doctors told my mother, and the math sessions that followed. And I talk about what my nervous system was actually doing in those moments - and how that pattern travelled with me for decades, through relationships, work, sports and all parts of life.
This episode is also an introduction to Somatic Experiencing - what it is, why the name puts people off and what it actually is. A little bit of theory and also lived experience. Including what shifted for me from the very first session, and why I still go regularly - sometimes without knowing what to actually bring, as nothing feels urgent - and am still amazed at the doors that keep opening. Doors I didn't even know were shut.
I also talk about the difference between freeze and overactivation - and why they so often live in the same person. About fawn. About why yoga, as much as it has supported me deeply over twenty years, couldn't reach certain layers on its own. And about what it means to work with the body rather than just the mind - without willpower, without quick fixes, without yet another thing to figure out.
This one is for you if you recognise that quiet exhaustion of always being on trial with yourself. And if you've ever wondered why knowing something isn't the same as embodying it.
More of my work lives at www.maximeissner.nl
Come say hello on:
- Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/maximeissner/
- or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeissner/