Hi there, I´m Anna!
I didn't take a straight path to becoming a therapist. But looking back, every step was pointing in the same direction — toward understanding what really happens inside people, and between people and the systems they live within.
The Long Way Round
I grew up in Olsztyn, a small town in Poland, and at eighteen I did what felt like the only logical thing — I packed my bags and moved to Germany to study. I enrolled at Viadrina Europa University in cultural science, drawn to sociology and sociolinguistics, to the question of how culture shapes the way we think, speak, and see ourselves.
But it was a two-year detour to Mexico that changed everything.
As part of an interdisciplinary program integrating applied psychology and anthropology, I researched prehispanic dance practiced in modern contexts — as spiritual connection, as identity, as a form of body-based healing. It was the first time I understood, not just intellectually but physically, that transformation doesn't only happen in the mind. It happens in the body. In movement. In the space between people.
I carried that understanding back to Berlin, where I completed my Masters in interdisciplinary studies with a focus on cultural anthropology.
After graduating, I spent two years in academic research in psychological and medical anthropology — work that eventually became a book: Szamanki w wielkim mieście (Shamans in the Big City) — an exploration of how ancient healing wisdom lives on in urban, modern life.
From Research to Practice
In 2014, I stepped out of academia and into the work directly. I began designing coaching programs for Berlin's startup scene — exploring what it meant to build cultures that actually supported people, not just productivity.
Alongside that, I developed an early pilot project integrating intercultural female wellbeing through dance and bodywork — a seed of what would later become a much deeper practice.
At the same time, I was building a parallel career in People & Culture, working inside organizations to co-shape systems that genuinely supported human potential and mental health.
I saw patterns repeat across companies, teams, and individuals — the same exhaustion, the same pressure, the same quiet unraveling beneath a functional exterior.
And I began to notice the limits of what coaching could do.
The Question Coaching couldn´t answer
I started to see the limits of what coaching could do. Anxiety and chronic stress don't respond to mindset work alone — and no goal-setting framework helps when someone's nervous system is dysregulated. The body holds years of accumulated pressure in places that reframing thoughts simply can't reach.
To really help people, I needed to understand the nervous system. How the brain works under stress. The mind-body connection — not as a concept, but as something you can actually work with in a session.
So in 2019 I began studying psychology, and in 2022 started the practical training toward my license as a Heilpraktiker für Psychotherapie — which I completed in 2024. Alongside, I specialized in cognitive behavioral techniques, ACT, mindfulness, somatic and emotion-focused methods, integrating everything I had learned as a yoga, meditation, and mindfulness teacher.
AlignPaths grew from all of this. Not as a brand, but as a natural continuation of the same question I've been asking since Mexico: how do we help people find their way back to themselves?
CalmA Collective came later — born from what I kept seeing in my 1:1 work. Not everyone is ready for therapy, or able to commit to it right now. But they still need a way in. The Collective is that space — self-paced online programs with gentle guidance, for those who want to do the inner work in their own time.
Online & In Person — Berlin and Beyond
Therapy should fit your life, not add to the pressure.
I offer sessions online and in person at my practice in Berlin. Online works beautifully for many people — it removes the commute, fits more easily into a busy schedule, and means that travel, transitions, or life disruptions don't have to interrupt the work.
In-person sessions offer a different quality of presence — and for some people and some topics, being in the same room matters.
We can talk through what makes most sense for you in our first conversation.
Living and working in a culture that isn't your own adds a layer to everything — to stress, to identity, to the way you relate to yourself and others. I understand that context personally and professionally.
My sessions are primarily in English. If you feel more comfortable in another language, I also work in Polish, German, and Spanish.