ABOUT SOUL SPA ALCHEMY
Soul Spa Alchemy is a private, home based somatic practice in East London focused on nervous system regulation, embodied safety, and long term recovery from stress and burnout.
My work supports women who function highly in daily life but feel depleted, tense, or disconnected within their own body. Sessions are designed to help the nervous system settle, release chronic holding patterns, and restore internal coherence over time.
MY APPROACH
I have over 13 years of experience in holistic bodywork and somatic care. My work is trauma informed, science led, and guided by close attention to the body’s non verbal signals. I focus on how the nervous system responds to touch, breath, rhythm, sound, and sensory input. Each session is paced carefully and shaped by what the body is ready for in that moment.
The aim is not quick fixes, but steady, sustainable regulation that supports resilience, emotional balance, and vitality.
WHY THIS WORK IS PERSONAL
My sensitivity to the body developed through lived experience. Growing up with limited safety, affection, and space to express myself, I learned early how much the body carries when words are not available. Movement, especially dance, became a way to regulate, ground, and reconnect when other forms of support were not accessible.
This experience informs how I work today. I understand how important it is for the body to feel safe before change can occur.
PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS
I am a qualified holistic therapist with formal training in massage and bodywork since 2012. I am a member of the Federation of Holistic Therapists and fully insured with Hiscox. My work is informed by an ongoing path of study in somatic awareness, nervous system regulation, and embodied practice. This includes training in body listening and introductory body psychotherapy, reiki, zyto bio communication scanning, and therapeutic aromatherapy through doTERRA. I have completed full training within the Rose Lineage, including initiation and training as a Rose Priestess through the Rose Chapel in Glastonbury under Annabel du Boulay. This training is rooted in Jungian and transpersonal psychology, working with archetypes, symbolism, and embodied integration. It informs how I recognise patterns and inner movement held within the body. Movement has been central to my work since the early 2010s. My background in belly dance and embodied movement is rooted in self expression, rhythm, emotional release, and reconnection to vitality and joy.
My work is informed by contemporary thinkers and researchers in trauma, neuroscience and embodiment, including Gabor Maté, Stephen Porges, Joe Dispenza, Mantak Chia, and Robert J. Gilbert.
THE SPACE
Sessions take place in Alina’s calm, light filled home studio in East London. The environment is intentionally quiet and personal, chosen to support nervous system ease and a sense of safety. All work is by appointment only.
Alina's Story
My journey as a therapist began long before any formal training. It started with my own life and the experiences that shaped me.
I grew up in rural Romania, surrounded by nature and animals, but without the safety or affection I needed. I did not have a voice or space to express myself. I learned to survive, to adapt, and to hold everything in when there was nowhere for it to go. Those early years, full of both beauty and struggle, awakened a strong sensitivity in me. I became deeply aware of what others need, especially when they cannot say it out loud. Over time this sensitivity became a guiding force and led to a clear wish to offer the kind of care I had missed. That wish is what brought me to bodywork.
Later in life I met other edges. Difficult relationships. Moving to foreign places with no support network. Periods of isolation, betrayal and grief. These experiences stripped away the familiar and forced me to find ground inside myself, not in outside approval. I began to see how much the body holds when there is no safe place to speak.
Movement helped before language did. Belly dance became my first real language of expression. Through rhythm and repetition my body started to thaw. I felt my feet on the ground again. It was not about performance. It was a way to release pressure, to feel, and to return to myself, to learn how self expression, passion and aliveness move through the body. This history shapes how I work now.
My approach is warm, but not vague. I care about truth. I have learned that empathy without discernment often turns into rescuing, pleasing, or avoiding hard truths. That does not help in the long term. So I work where compassion and clear seeing meet. Sometimes that means naming what feels uncomfortable. Sometimes it means saying less and staying present while the body speaks in its own time. Respect for the body is central. I do not push for emotional displays or dramatic releases. I pay close attention to breath, muscle tone, micro movements and how someone responds to simple questions. These signals are often clearer than long explanations. I adjust pace and touch in response to these cues, not fixed protocols.
Over the years I have woven together massage, somatic awareness, body listening, aromatherapy, energy work, movement, Rose Lineage training and archetypal psychology. Study with teachers in trauma, neuroscience and vibrational therapies has given structure to what I already sensed in the body. These frameworks support the work, but they never replace direct human contact.
Nurture the vibrations within, the essence of your being. Like the ocean's grace and depth, your soul's unique resonance creates waves that shape your reality. - A.S
Our Philosophy
Healing, as I understand it, is a return to wholeness.
A remembering of what the body already knows.
Body, mind and emotional life move together. When pressure, stress or unresolved experience pull that system off balance, the body often speaks first. Tension, pain, fatigue and nervous system chaos are not random. They are signals.
Traditional systems such as Chinese Medicine, Taoism, shamanic lineages and Ayurveda have pointed to this link for a long time. Current research in neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology and neuroendocrinology reflects the same truth. Long term stress patterns and emotional states shape physiology.
Soul Spa Alchemy sits in that meeting point. The work does not push the body, it offers conditions for regulation, integration and repair.
Beyond the Body
The body holds the record of what you have lived.
Before words, there is sensation. Touch, rhythm and tone. Early in life the body learns how to stay alert, how to endure and how to adjust to the environment. When fear, loss or lack of support are present, the body does what is needed to survive.
Most of this learning happens outside conscious awareness. The body takes in information, responds, and stores that response in the nervous system, fascia, muscles, breath and posture, and in the way you relate to others. Later, what shows up as symptoms is often the body speaking in the only language available.
My understanding comes from lived experience and years of listening to my own body and to my clients. When stress has no outlet, it does not disappear. It turns into fatigue, numbness, agitation or collapse. Over time, vitality dulls.
For this reason, my work starts with safety. The first step is to create a setting where your body feels held enough to soften. When the nervous system senses this, it begins to organise itself differently. Breath shifts. Tension eases. Energy starts to return.
Many women reach this point and feel a deep change already. After long periods of coping, they remember what comfort and ease feel like. Sleep often becomes deeper. Emotions feel less sharp. The body feels more like a place to live in, not only something to manage.
As survival takes less space, more energy becomes free for life. Curiosity, movement, desire and ideas start to surface again. These are small, real shifts that change how each day feels.
With time and repetition, new patterns settle. The system holds more safety and less strain. This is transformation in practice. Quiet, steady, lived from the inside.
To me, healing is the first step in this arc. A return to wholeness and to your own inner coherence. From there, deeper change grows at a pace that respects your body.