Marita Nienstedt, Pantarei Approach Practitioner

From an open heart – a journey into yourself

I talk to Marita on a late summer’s day. It’s warm and sunny outside, but you can almost smell autumn approaching. The room is flooded with light, and invites in an open heart. When I ask her how she would describe her surroundings, she responds: “I am at home. For me it’s a cozy sanctuary”. She points to the different corners of the room as she sits at her desk, describing what she feels. Her eyes are glowing. “It’s a bit chaotic, but I feel a lot of warmth here. I really have the feeling I am here at my source. I feel very much in my strength here.”

Apart from working as Pantarei Approach practitioner, Marita is also a writer. She glances outside the window to her left, and says, “When I write, I can look outside and see the treetops and the sky”. She looks at me with a warm smile and adds: “It’s also the place where I lived with my husband, before he died. But I don’t live alone. I have the greatest person in the world by my side: my seven and half year-old daughter. She is amazing!”

We never know where the journey will lead us

We speak about her touching journey and Marita says, “I have always been interested in people and the way in which we think and feel. After I graduated from high school, I chose between studying acting and psychology. I chose acting, which for me, was a way in which to heal myself. I’m very happy that I decided against psychology. I am not so much of a head person. And through acting, I could work a lot with my own body. It was a way for me to learn how to express my feelings through my body. It was a way to understand how others feel and why they act and behave in certain ways. The writing then developed organically. It took me a while to realize that I was always interested in people’s life stories. That’s what touches me the most. So writing stories feels natural.”

But life has its own rhythm and it doesn’t always follow the directions we plan for. When their daughter was 8 months old, Marita’s beloved husband suddenly died.

She describes how her entire world felt like it had broken into pieces and come to a sudden halt. And at the same time, she had to get back up on her feet quickly to care for her daughter. Although she had a lot of support from her family and friends, she knew she needed something that also included her body. That is when she found Merav Gur Arie and started taking somatic sessions with her. After some time, Merav suggested that Marita might like to learn the Pantarei Approach and become a practitioner herself.

Marita says: “The bodywork with Merav helped me survive and find new strength. So I thought that the studies would be a great opportunity to continue my healing process. I started the training with Vered and Claudia. This was truly the best thing that has happened to me in the last years. I immediately realized that this is not only for my own process, but that I really wanted to become a practitioner myself. It’s as if everything came together; all my interests, my experiences, what I stand for and what I can give and offer to the world.”

What is it that touches you most about working with people?

“What touches me the most are all the stories of my clients.” She answered. “How they grew up and what they experienced, but also what they have to carry and how they survive hardship. For me it’s truly amazing how much strength we really have and how much we can grow in challenging situations. And often clients won’t see that. When I witness how my clients can really start seeing and feeling themselves the way they are, it warms my heart. It is so empowering when a client truly allows themselves to feel and be in their own body. When we include the body in our process, it becomes so obvious that there is so much wisdom in our body. We often already know the answers to our questions.”

For Marita it is important to create a space in which her clients can connect to their unique and innate answers.

“I know that life sometimes brings so many challenges and I think the way we choose to go through them is important. If we are able to go through a crisis, through staying connected to ourselves and with an open heart, it can bring us much closer to ourselves and our loved ones. It can help us realize what is important in life for us and how we want to spend our time here. It is really humbling to be part of such a process and to accompany someone on their journey to gain more trust in life or in whatever situation they are in”.

Finding strength in our challenges

“I think strength has a lot to do with allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. I truly listen beyond what my clients say, in order to create space for them to experience and explore their uniqueness and inner strength. We often divide between good and bad feelings. We fear the feelings of sadness or anger, because we judge them as ‘bad’. If we let all these feelings flow through our body without judgement, it gives us the chance to move through whatever challenge we are in.

If we allow the sadness of a loss to truly be there, the sadness will be there. But there will also be love, longing, gratitude, curiosity and so much more. This allows us to connect to something that is behind the emotions and that is really our inner source and wisdom. In this source, I get the feeling that everything is okay. It is pure love. If we are able to connect to this, it also allows us, not only see ourselves differently and with more empathy, but also to see our surroundings in this light. And that is amazing! That is the reason why I am convinced that the Pantarei Approach is also great for couples. It has the ability to open up a space where they can meet themselves again in totally new ways and with an open heart”.

You lost the love of your life and at the same time you seem to have found something in the grief that is so deep and profound. How would you describe what you found in the process of grieving?

“I’m still in the middle of the process.” Marita looks at me. A big smile lights up her face. It takes her a moment to answer, and she thoughtfully says, “We live in a society where we don’t learn anything about death and grieving. We rarely even see a dead body. I also had the feeling that for a certain time it was okay to grieve, but then one should really go on and move forward. In my experience, people often don’t know what to do with these intense feelings, because they are frightening for them.”

“What I realized is that the more we allow ourselves to feel our loss and the love we feel, the more strength we find in it. I don’t mean that you have to believe in life after death or anything. For me, it’s about the energy of that person. The more I really allow myself to feel my husband, Jussi, and what I miss about him, the more open I am to life.”

Keeping an open heart

Grieving is really a point in our lives when we get the opportunity to go deeper. Because death brutally threw me out of my comfort zone. There, in this falling and finally flying, I was able to grow in a way that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to. I am never again the Marita I was before he died, because he really is a part of me. Death can be a great and challenging teacher. No one knows how much time we have. And this made me realize how I want to live my life. What is important for me and what I want to pass on to our daughter.”

“When I have clients who grieve, I often sense that allowing the people they lost to be with them is the most important thing. When we allow ourselves to feel the people we lost, we can survive and find a new way of living. With time, we learn to embrace the grief much more. It’s a great challenge because we live in a world where we only trust the things we can see and what we feel with our hands. But for me it’s an opportunity to allow ourselves to feel through our body, our heart and to truly experience these connections with the body.”

What is your dream?

“My dream is to continue this path: to really live in the moment, full of trust in life and with an open heart, no matter what happens. If we allow our heart to stay open and curious, there are so many miracles that open up in front of us. And the wave that we once thought would drown us, will take us up to where we can see the miracles again.

Through my work, I dream of taking everyone there – to the source of all wonders, where our hearts get filled with love and faith again, no matter what we have had to experience so far.” 

“About a year after Jussi died I went to the cemetery where my brother is buried. It’s an important place for me. I was standing there and I heard Jussi saying inside of me: ‘Marita, take it easy. Life is a playground.’ And it really can be…”

Marita gives one-to-one sessions in Berlin, and also works with couples.

You can get in touch with Marita via her Website, or write her an email: to***@pa************.de

By Lena-Philine Zinser