ABOUT — JAY'S STORY
I know what it feels like when the body holds something the mind has yet to reach.
I know it because mine did too. I grew up in Germany holding things I had yet to find words for, anxiety, self-doubt, an eating disorder that quietly governed the relationship I had with my own body for years. And underneath all of that, something else entirely, something my mind had completely deleted in order to protect me.
In the tension I lived with. In the way I moved through the world. In the relationships I chose and the ones I left. My body knew what my mind had put away, and it held that knowing with extraordinary faithfulness, waiting for the moment I would finally be ready to achnowledge it.
I left Germany at 19, searching for something with a name I had yet to find. Most people call it finding yourself, and that is part of it, though looking back I understand it differently now. I was following the only thread available to me at the time, the one that led away from everything that had shaped me, toward something that might finally feel true.
That thread took me across the world, through many versions of myself, and eventually to New Zealand, a land that resonated with something deep and quiet in me that I had been trying to locate for as long as I could remember.
The loss that broke me open
A few years into building my life here, working toward permanent residency and making New Zealand genuinely my home, I got a dog. His name was Snicks, and anyone who has ever had a dog like that will understand immediately what I mean when I say he was far more than a companion.
He was a teacher. He was a mirror. He was the kind of daily presence that makes you more honest about what is happening inside you, because dogs always know, and they have a way of showing you things about yourself that you would otherwise find reasons to look away from.
It was a beautiful summer day at the end of January when a friend invited me down to the river. Before we left I had a strange feeling, something sitting in my gut telling me to stay home, and I chose to go anyway. We had a beautiful afternoon together. Snicks played in the river, and I took a video of him throwing rocks and sent it to my family, to my grandmother, which I almost never did. Something in me was marking that moment without yet understanding why.
On the way home Snicks began behaving strangely, struggling to breathe, looking for me, trying to climb into my lap. We decided to leave, and before getting into the car I turned back and looked at the river one more time, feeling something I struggled to name, a deep unease sitting in my stomach. I was looking for toxic algae and could see nothing. By the time we arrived home he was vomiting, and shortly after he was unconscious in his kennel.
I pulled him out and tried to do mouth to mouth, completely frozen, adrenaline moving through my entire body, and at the same time a knowing already present in my gut telling me something I was yet to be ready to hear. I lifted him and held him as I drove to the neighbours, and while I was driving I became aware of his breathing slowing. I could feel him fighting to stay, trying with everything he had to hold on. And then, quietly, his breathing stopped. His heart stopped. Blue- green algae, picked up while playing in the river. He was gone within 20 minutes.
I remember falling backwards. The floor completely taken from under me. I have never felt so heartbroken in my life, and I have never felt so alone. I was in a different country, thousands of miles from my family, surrounded by people who were kind and genuinely meant well, and the grief I was in was something that existed outside of what most people around me had the language or the experience to fully hold. That particular kind of alone, the one where you are surrounded by care and still feel utterly unseen in your pain, taught me something I have never forgotten.
That grief cracked something open in me that needed to be cracked open. And it sent me in exactly the direction I was always meant to go.
Three days later I began looking for another dog. People around me had opinions about that, and I understood where they came from, and I also knew with complete clarity what I needed. Zibu came into my life as the next chapter of a much longer story, his own soul, his own gifts, his own way of continuing to teach me things about myself that I would otherwise find ways to avoid. He is very much part of who I am and who I am becoming.
The path that changed everything
In the rawness of that grief I became willing to go places inside myself I had previously kept at a careful distance. I dove into breathwork, into plant medicine journeys, into anything that offered a way deeper than the surface I had been maintaining for most of my life. A few months later, in one of those breathwork journeys, someone mentioned a name, a mentor, a traditional Māori healing practice. Something in me recognised it immediately with a kind of quiet certainty, even though I was yet to be ready to walk through that particular door.
About a year later, travelling the South Island with one of my closest friends from Denmark, I found myself in a treatment room receiving Honohono and Mirimiri for the first time, the body-based holistic practice that would become the foundation of everything I now offer. What happened in that session goes beyond anything words can accurately hold. There was a release so complete, so physical, so emotional all at once, that I lay there afterwards in a stillness I had yet to find language for, with only the feeling of having arrived somewhere I had been trying to reach for a very long time.
That session also began to surface what my body had been holding for decades. The memories of a situation I had zero conscious access to began to reveal themselves, gradually and in layers, through the body rather than the mind, which is precisely how the body moves. It holds what we have yet to be ready to know, and it waits with extraordinary patience. Understanding this changed everything about how I relate to this path, to the body, and to the people who come to me with things they have yet to name or remember or explain. I have been in that room. I know what it is to have your body hold a truth your mind has protected you from, and I know what becomes possible when that truth is finally given the space to move.
With every challenge, hardship and lesson, I was being shown the greater purpose behind my journey.
I have been swimming against the stream my whole life. It turns out that is exactly how I was built.
I completed levels one through four of my Māori training within five months, a period of transformation that the word 'massive' barely begins to touch. I was unravelling decades of conditioning, trauma responses, and coping mechanisms I had built so skillfully I had long since forgotten they were there.
My nervous system, which had been dysregulated for most of my life, began for the first time to find genuine and lasting ground. Since stepping fully into this path, I have experienced more regulation, more capacity, and more of myself than in all my previous years combined.
This is lived knowledge, every part of it. Embodied knowledge. Every session I offer is rooted in what I have actually moved through, in my own body, in my own time, with the full weight of my own history behind it.
I walk alongside adults navigating burnout, anxiety, trauma, and the kind of emotional weight that accumulates so quietly over time that you stop noticing how heavy it has become.
With children and teenagers who feel the world intensely and are yet to find the language for what lives inside them.
With animals, who absorb the emotional energy of their environments with extraordinary sensitivity and deserve support just as much as the humans around them.
And with families and couples, where one person beginning to settle and reconnect with themselves often creates a quiet and profound ripple through everyone close to them.
Whether sessions take place in person at my practice in Ferrymead, Christchurch, or through distance energy healing from anywhere in the world, each one is shaped entirely by presence, attentiveness, and a deep respect for wherever you are in your own journey. The pace is yours. The shape of your integration belongs entirely to you.
Training and Practice
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Honohono and Mirimiri, traditional Māori energy healing and bodywork
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Romiromi, deep therapeutic bodywork working with emotional memory and the muscular system
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Intuitive energy healing and nervous system regulation
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Distance healing, available worldwide
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Trauma-informed Yin Yoga Facilitator
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Hatha Yoga Facilitator
Oceans Melody Aligned is based at 4/1063 Ferry Road, Ferrymead, Christchurch. Remote sessions are available globally.
If something in my story reaches you, if you recognise yourself anywhere in it, I would be deeply honoured to walk alongside yours.
The meaning behind Oceans Melody Aligned
The ocean has played a meaningful role in my own journey. Time spent near the water often offered space for reflection and reconnection. The steady rhythm of the waves carries a reminder that life moves in cycles of movement, release, and renewal.
The name Oceans Melody Aligned grew from this experience and reflects the intention behind the work. Creating space where people can settle, listen inwardly, and reconnect with their natural rhythm.
