Helping women break free from ‘being nice’
and expand into their courage-led life.
Welcome, I’m Erika. And I help women be less nice.
Yes, you read that right.
Somatic coach, embodiment teacher and freedom seeker: my life’s work is to help women break free from the embodied social conditioning that keeps us caged in feelings of unworthiness, never-enoughness, self-doubt and fear.
Because most of us grew up still being trained to be good girls, as women we find ourselves instinctively being nice by default.
Being nice can look like:
People-pleasing, unhealthy levels of self-sacrifice, always prioritising other people’s needs over your own.
Holding yourself back, waiting for permission, doubting your instincts.
Keeping quiet, fearing visibility, hiding your brilliance.
Over-efforting, feeling like you need to work hard to prove your worth, never able to truly relax, rest and receive.
The kind of nice I’m talking about is actually deeply unkind.
Let’s change that!
Nice women are everywhere.
Deeply loving and empathic. They are sensitive and smart and fiercely loyal.
Their worst fear is not being liked, so they have a hard time saying no or setting boundaries (No = selfish!)
So they try to please everyone but end up exhausting themselves in the process and feeling resentful. Deep down they are tired of always being in service.
But they learnt early on that it was safer to please, and to appease than to challenge - and now it’s just so deeply ingrained its become automatic.
As a result they find it hard to know what THEY truly want, there have been so many 'shoulds' pressing down on them.
They’ve lost themselves in romantic partners, or among friendship groups that never felt ‘quite right’, they’ve worked hard in careers and to the outside world life looks great.
But by trying to be everything they think they 'should' be they’ve lost touch with who they REALLY are, and what makes them really come ALIVE.
Their confidence is shaky, they’re quietly sinking and they can’t escape the nagging feeling that life could be so much more than this.
They are sick of staying small, of settling for safe. There’s the glimpse of a bolder, more authentic life… and they are wavering on the threshold it.
If this is you, know that you are not alone.
Nor are you to blame, even after decades of feminism our culture still raises ‘good girls’ - to behave, conform, oblige.
You are however, responsible for taking hold of this inheritance, saying ‘f*%k that’ and creating a new way of being, for yourself and for us all.
The system stinks, and personal healing isn’t the whole solution - but it is a place to begin. Women coming into their full potency and power will change the world. This I know.
Embodied education.
If you’re anything like me, at this point you’re asking ‘but how?!’ … you’ve read the self-help books, said the affirmations, tried alternative therapies, mindfulness, counselling … but the patterns of behaviour just don’t seem to shift.
And that’s because these patterns are deeply held in our bodies.
Everything that has ever happened to you has happened through your body, she is the sole witness to your entire life, and has been shaped by every. single. experience.
Your body is your biography.
The way you hold your body, the way you move, how it feels to be you in your body, has been formed by your history. It’s the culture moving through you without your permission.
That’s why you can read all the books about confidence and freedom you like, but until your body knows how to change and your nervous system feels safe enough to - there is just no way that you can embody even the very best advice. This isn’t failure, it’s physiology. And it’s the missing piece to real, long-term change.
I don’t believe in just healing, I believe in action and education.
I empower women. I support them to identify for themselves the patterns that are stuck in their bodies and to find and embody their own alternative, new possibilities.
Embodied work can be very subtle. It doesn’t involve anything athletic, there are no pretzel yoga moves or magical thinking, and the process is always led by you.