Hera. From the same root as Hedera: Ivy.
Ivy grows around ruins. She arrives quietly in dead places and restores life through the slow reweaving of relationship. She protects exposed soil from erosion. Holds moisture inside depleted ground. Creates shelter for birds, insects, fungal networks. Softens stone. Patiently, almost invisibly, She begins rebuilding the conditions that allow life to return.
Internal Family Systems
A gentle way of listening inward. Meeting the many parts of you with presence, curiosity and care – until what was forgotten begins to relate again.
Mother-Centered & Aware Parenting
Herbalism & Plant Spirit Healing
The green world – they are not resources. They are kin. We learn to listen to their medicine – as substance, as spirit, as memory of the land.
Animism & Earth Reconnection
The world is alive, and in relationship with us. Reclaiming belonging through direct contact with place, cycles and the alchemical forces that shape our life.
This work is an invitation to return.
Here, we remember the life-organizing intelligence that allows bodies, relationships, projects, children, and communities to rebuild connection to life itself.
We remember softness, safety and repair. We remember delight.
Wilderness returning to the body.
Being full of our own wonder and enchantment.
what is ifs therapy?
“We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nonetheless”
Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi
Internal Family Systems is the practice of hearing your inner music more clearly.
Like Ivy reclaiming ruins, healing begins not through force, conquest, or domination, but through relationship – creating enough safety for life to return on its own.
For within every person there exists not one singular voice, but many living currents, not always in agreement with one another; and it is often the case that those qualities we most wish to dismiss have been labouring, however imperfectly, for our protection.
IFS understands symptoms not as brokenness or pathology, not as enemies to overpower, but as intelligent adaptations: parts of ourselves forced underground, hardened around old injuries, or pushed into survival functions.
To understand them without indulgence, and to regard them without judgement, is a form of self-knowledge not easily attained.
IFS heals through rebuilding the conditions that allow life to return: through enough reverence, dignity, reciprocity, and presence that vulnerable parts no longer need to remain hidden beneath survival.
What once felt fragmented may begin, slowly, to recover a sense of coherence and belonging.
It is less a transformation into someone new than a return to a more natural state of harmony – one in which each part is permitted its place, and something steadier, wiser, and more deeply rooted may finally lead.
Hi there, I am Ana.
MEDICAL DOCTOR | IFS THERAPIST | AWARE PARENTING INSTRUCTOR | WOMEN’S CIRCLE FACILITATOR
I am a medical doctor and Internal Medicine resident, and a certified Internal Family Systems Level 3 therapist, with extensive training in integrative medicine, clinical herbalism, and trauma-informed care. My work is rooted in both science and relationship – to the body, to the nervous system, to the land, to ancestry, and to the wider web of life.
There is room here for complexity. For personal grief and collective grief. For the many voices that live inside us. For healing that is both deeply intimate and inseparable from the world we belong to.
I work with individuals, couples, and families online, worldwide.
What my clients say
BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
If something in you recognizes this, all of you is welcome here.
My consultations offer a safe, ethical and compassionate space where you can explore your inner story with presence and depth. I use the approach of the IFS model, combined with clinical experience, somatic practices and an animistic relationship with all of life – on a path of reconnection with yourself, your rhythms and the wider web.
Blogs & Resources
Reflections and resources to help you meet your inner world with curiosity and compassion.
What Do You Mean, “Turn Inward”? There’s Nothing There
For many people, the beginning of IFS is not difficult because they are broken, blocked, or incapable of inner work. It is difficult because they were never taught what it actually means to turn inward.
How Internal Family Systems helped me prepare for Birth
I moved through birth the way you move through a storm you’re trying to survive. Bracing. Enduring. Praying for it to have mercy on me. Birth, as I understood it then, was something to get through. Something to manage. Something to survive. I didn’t question it.
How to Help Children Transition to a New School
What a school transition taught me about grief, safety, and alternative education in Portugal. Starting a new school is not merely adjusting to a new timetable or teacher. Something far more delicate is taking place.
You are not here to evolve.
This is a holy journey home to your Self.