Susanne Karlsson is a certified practitioner in the Grinberg Method.
Her mission is to transform your life, improve your health, reduce your stress levels and gain freedom to be well through focused body awareness. When searching for ways of how to deal with the impacts on her life she discovered approaches using another way to get straight to the point. For more than 13 years it has been her profession to teach people how to heal themselves through deep body awareness. She loves to be part of the satisfaction that comes with increased awareness of the body, helping people to learn to control and eventually stop a life habit that is no longer useful and thus gain the freedom to be healthy and well.
I was fortunate enough to sit down with her and chat; I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.
Sunita
Sunita Sehmi: Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you end up coming to Switzerland?
Susanne Karlsson: I grew up in Sweden where I studied law at the University of Gothenburg and Maritime Law at the University in Oslo. Later I added business and finance to facilitate international opportunities. I like Finance as a discipline, it is pragmatic and allows us to go directly into the centre of a problem.
My professional career began in audit before taking on the Finance & Administration function with Reuters (now Thomson Reuters) in Stockholm. I came to Geneva in 1996 to take on various change projects for Reuters; the arrival of the euro and Shared Finance Service centres implementation. Then I joined Capital International in 2000, before leaving for my current activity - teaching people how to change life patterns.
Sunita Sehmi: What got you into the Grinberg Method?
Susanne Karlsson: Life in big international companies involves a particular life-style that has many components; it is exciting, it makes you grow, gives opportunities and new horizons, possibility to travel etc. It is also coupled with constraints, demands, travel, often very long hours and stress. After many years of experience of this lifestyle in my body I was looking for ways to handle this differently and for more options how to act, react and be. I found that working though the body provides very rapid and effective responses.
Sunita Sehmi: What is Grinberg Method and why is it so important?
Susanne Karlsson: Today’s way of life emphasizes our brains; we sit in front of computers, search and read to understand how to improve and change. It is essential to use our brains, but I see in my work that it often takes more to really change. When we have learnt a way of functioning it is in all of our being, even if the brain understands that something new is needed the rest of our body needs to be helped and trained to make this happen.
The Grinberg Method is a structured training aimed at shifting your attention to your body, focusing on habits or behaviours that have become obstacles; we can call them fixed life patterns. Specifically you learn how you hold fixed patterns in your body and how to stop holding them. It is a very direct and pragmatic way to stop something you no longer need. What I like is that it is an excellent method to go straight to the point, bypassing all explanations and just focusing on what is.
We all fall so easily into our known habits, even when they do not serve us, and then our options for how to deal with life events are reduced. Our most important patterns often developed in an attempt to avoid fear or pain, this part of life we find difficult to deal with. When repeated it has the effect that we take many of our important life decisions based on what makes us the least afraid or causes the least pain, rather than making choices based on what we really want. The Grinberg Method allows us to become conscious of this and to pass through what limits us to find a multitude of new options.
Sunita Sehmi: In your opinion what are the real well-being challenges for professionals?
Susanne Karlsson: I think a major challenge is the impression that we can be in many places and doing many things, all at the same time. Technology provides us with new ways to work and connect, but physically you can only be in one place. The illusion of, or our attempts to, being everywhere all the time causes huge stress.
Another huge challenge is to reinvent the overall structures of the business world. Many organizations work with sets of hierarchy and control that are not really appropriate for an overall well-educated work force that could take on responsibility in a new way. Inappropriate structures makes work complicated and means that a large portion of the time is focusing on satisfying internal demands and too little time spent focusing externally. Again this causes stress and dissatisfaction and loss of vital energy.
Sunita Sehmi: How important is the Grinberg method in busting stress?
Susanne Karlsson: The external pressures that we all experience are real and uncontrollable. But we can learn to manage how we react to pressure; we all have our own very individual manner to deal with this. I often meet people with physical symptoms that they do not recognize as stress; migraines, back pain, short breathing or a general mishandling of the body which can cause serious symptoms or illness. When you know how you create your specific stress symptoms you can also learn to not create or repeat them, this gives a sense of being in control. To focus on how you physically respond to pressure in certain situations is a first important step to get out of the stress-circle, which often gives quick results.
Sunita Sehmi: Why is it important to create habits and grow new ones?
Susanne Karlsson: Habits, or our ability to repeat things we have already learned, make our life easier and more efficient in many aspects. When we know how to drive a car for instance, we do this automatically and do not need to relearn the movements every morning. This should make driving more relaxed and allow the attention to focus on the traffic or on what happens around us.
But many habits that we have learned throughout our lives we repeat even when they are not necessary or redundant. Habits gets anchored, or stuck, in our bodies and over time they reduce or constrain our lives. In order to keep our lives more open and with more options it is important to work on controlling habits that do no longer serve us and tweak them, shake them, try new ways, sometimes replacing them with a more effective habit.
Changing patterns impact life expectancy. To be curious and wanting to learn throughout life means that we stay flexible and that we become less predictable, this makes life more interesting and rich.
Sunita Sehmi: What is the best piece of advice you can share with us?
Susanne Karlsson: Focus externally or outside yourself, is the best advice I can give, at all levels. This might seem contradictory to the work I do with my clients when I teach them to pay attention to their habits or patterns in order to control and be responsible for whom they are in given situations. But the aim of this training is ultimately to be less focused on yourself. When stopped by a familiar pattern it means that a portion of my attention is on me; how I feel or who I am, what I am capable of or not, why I am reacting this way etc. Freedom from fixed patterns means freedom to focus externally and to act appropriately in each moment of life.
Sunita Sehmi: What's next for us?
Susanne Karlsson: I am not sure I would like to speculate. You know the saying? Life happens while we are busy with something else; I prefer to be busy with life now.
Sunita Sehmi: What's next for you?
Susanne Karlsson: I am really passionate about incorporating ‘body-work’ into change management, coaching and learning. I love to be part of the satisfaction I see in people when they really experience their body and thus get access to more of themselves, which is bigger than their brain. I see that this can transform their work, relationships and life, as it did mine. I discovered this at a fairly mature age and am happy that I dared to follow this path and make it my profession. I look forward to continue for many years and to create liaisons with other disciplines focusing on health and development.
“To be curious and wanting to learn throughout life means that we stay flexible and that we become less predictable, this makes life more interesting and rich.” Susanne Karlsson
Reference: Susanne’s website http://www.susannekarlsson.ch/
Susanne is a member of ASCA. Therefore, companies which adhere to ASCA's recommendation cover her treatments under complementary insurance.
Bio
Sunita is an Executive Coach, Trainer and Consultant. She is of Indian origin and was born in London before moving to Geneva in 1992. She has a Psychology background (specialising in Occupational Psychology) and a Post Graduate in the Development and Training of Adults. She also completed a Masters in Ressources Humaines, Coaching et Gestion des Carrières at the University of Geneva.
During her 25 years experience Sunita's drive has always been to help people to do their best and hence led her to create Walk The Talk.
In her free time Sunita is a Mentor for the Branson Center of Entrepreneurship and a proud member of the School in The Cloud Team.
