We recently connected with Juliette Viger and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Juliette thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

As a Grinberg Method practitioner, I get to teach my clients to rely on their body’s innate abilities to face any experiences or challenges in their lives. I work with people who struggle with chronic pain, with stress, with specific situations, with manifesting their goals, etc. And sometimes I work with people who are in the midst of a crisis and urgently need care.

I rarely work with my own family, but last year came an event I would not have imagined that changed the approach to my work.
My grandmother, whom I grew up with and had a really beautiful relationship with, got sick with blood cancer.

She was 84 and not only did the diagnosis weaken her, but she had to start a heavy chemotherapy treatment for many months. After 3 months of chemo, her state degraded greatly, she caught a lung infection and had to stop the treatment to heal. When the infection was treated, she had lost all hope and will to fight for her life, knowing how painful and exhausting it had been to go through chemo at her age.

Out of this realization, she became clear on what she wanted: she wished for assisted suicide, and to die consciously surrounded by her loved ones.

When it came to this decision, all of my family started to come together and work with the doctors and legal team in Austria, where she lived, to help her on that new path.

About 10 days before the date of her planned death, she asked me to come by her side to spend her last week with her.

Each day was made of many hours of talking, resting, eating together, laughing, crying, sorting things for her, and taking care of her in many ways. I helped her with being washed, brushing her hair, and giving her soft and gentle bodywork sessions by touching her legs, belly, arms, chest, and head, when she was in a lot of pain from being unable to move her lower body, or when she would be taken by waves of terror, anxiety or stress, thinking about her decision.

I had chosen when I stepped into her flat at the beginning of my stay that I would do all that I could to surrender to the present, to be in my body, and to be as authentic as I could, for I wanted to be one with the reality of this time, and the wild and hard truth that she would be gone very soon.

When touching her body, I allowed myself to not “do” anything but to listen to her through my hands fully. She would be the one giving and telling me what was needed. That gave me a chance to support her precisely as she needed and to also accept the unknown and mystery of life unfolding, as well as to accept the fear that connected us at that moment when facing fate.

On the day of her death, many things happened that were so incredible and intense. But thanks to my practice, my experience, and my willingness, I was able to stay connected and present while letting deep love, sorrow, sadness, grief, rage, pride, terror, and peace go through my body as she pressed the switch that would bring her to take her last breath.

I stayed with her inanimate body for a bit after this, taking the time to make room for this new reality with each breath I took, and each tear I shed. I had never seen death happening before. 
I tried to stay present while my body processed it all, and a few days later, I met with a colleague who supported me through Grinberg Method sessions.

After this moment started a long process of digestion for me, that still is going on ever since.

I consider this time a defining moment in my professional career because, in that short time, I became a way more embodied, present, honest, and connected person than I ever was before. In time, I saw that it truly changed the relationship I had with my craft and the connection I have now with my clients, and generally anyone. 

I realized it when I came back to my workroom 10 days after she passed, and when my hands touched the body of my first client then: the experience I had of being touched by life energy, and death with my grandmother had brought my whole attention and energy to a place of greater humility, silence, power, and confidence. 

The sessions I gave from that point onward were so powerful and life-changing for my clients, that I experienced a huge peak of motivation, trust, wealth, and health in my career.

I am not stuck in my mind anymore, busy with myself or with expectations of what and how I should be “helping” people, but I am really in touch with being here now, flexible and effortless when it comes to containing my clients and their experiences throughout their sessions.

Juliette, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Juliette, and I’m 32. Born and raised in France, I moved to Denmark at 19 to study filmmaking, drawing, and character animation. After working as a freelance director and animator, I realized I was missing a deeper connection to my body.

At 24, I relocated to Berlin to explore embodiment practices while continuing my work as a visual artist. I was also seeking personal growth and healing from chronic pain and anxiety. That’s when I discovered movement therapy through Hadas Fisher Oren. After six months of attending her classes, I became a Freeform dance facilitator which healed my relationship to my body.

During that time, I was also struggling with chronic inflammation in my shoulders and various minor health issues, which were preventing me from thriving as an artist. Because of this, I sought ways to heal and discovered an approach that changed my life. 

I underwent two years of regular sessions with a practitioner of this method, which helped resolve most of my long-term chronic issues. This experience inspired me to study with the founder of the method, Avi Grinberg, and eventually become a practitioner myself. Today, I practice full-time in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I live and am building my life and business.

This practice is called the Grinberg Method. It is a holistic, body-based approach to personal development and well-being, aiming at teaching individuals to reconnect to their full potential and to their innate ability to heal themselves.

With the understanding that the body holds valuable information and potential for change, this method emphasizes the power of body attention, self-regulation, and intentional focus. It goes beyond traditional therapy by incorporating somatic practices, empowering individuals to break free from limiting patterns and fostering a greater sense of vitality and autonomy.

In the Grinberg Method, the learning process with a practitioner (a set of one-on-one sessions) focuses on helping clients achieve a personal aim. This is done by learning to identify and transform, through the body, whatever stands between them and their goal.

Individuals get to learn to release unnecessary physical, mental, and emotional effort, explore different breathing techniques, quiet the mind, and allow the body to reconnect with its natural state of homeostasis (self-regulation).
Sessions can be conducted in person or online and can be sought for a wide range of reasons. Some clients come to address specific conditions like digestive issues, headaches, or other physical illnesses or pain. Others seek to tackle emotional challenges or situational difficulties. The scope is broad—some begin this process to manifest personal projects, enhance talents, or develop desired qualities. It is also possible to use the Grinberg Method to process trauma or recover from crises such as emergencies, surgeries, accidents, or illnesses.

The tools I use include presence, touch, verbal guidance, movement, and exercises.

The issues I help my clients address and transform with this approach involve feelings of victimhood, hopelessness, and a lack of responsibility when it comes to their lives, health, situations, or challenges. Many of my clients come to me feeling stuck—unable to move beyond states of stagnation, suffering, and pain. They feel unfree, lacking trust or confidence to try or persist in changing their circumstances.

What I provide is a space, presence, time, and tools that allow them to experience the power of directing their attention toward their bodies and habits. This helps them realize that many of the automatic reactions they have in the face of hardship (pain, fear, emotions, intensity…), which keep them stuck, can be stopped by learning to physically stop the efforts that maintain these reactions, and by being open to the new, through expanding body attention, breathing and relaxing.
When they reconnect to their ability to pay attention and stop the harmful, automatic patterns they hold in their bodies, transformation occurs. Their bodies begin to self-regulate, and they regain the energy and power needed to face and change the situations that once kept them stuck. This is how one can truly evolve, grow, learn, and create.

Being able to share this approach sets me apart from others because I am giving people the gift of taking care of themselves and realizing that they have it in themselves and in their bodies to meet life’s challenges and waves without resisting pushing or making any extra effort. My sessions teach people resilience, self-empowerment, and self-care without the use of mantras, belief systems, or mind interpretation, but instead, through the reality of the experience of their bodies and life moving and dancing with them.

Today, I am offering 1:1 learning processes and bodywork sessions, group training, and freeform dance classes, live and online, under the name of “Juliette Viger – Body Learning”. I am so proud of my path and accomplishment for I have stayed true to my love and needs to reconnect to my body to evolve, and being able to share this with others daily makes me beyond grateful and happy to be alive.

Moreover, seeing my clients taking charge of their health and well-being after having worked with me makes me trust in a more sustainable and responsible future for humanity, where each starts to fully lean into their individuality, their aspirations, their powers, and innate strengths to be alive and participate in the communal human experience with care and connection.

All of that by agreeing to be a body.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I realized that, for me, the best way to grow my clientele is to create opportunities for people to simply experience my sessions. For a long time, I was afraid to “work for free” and had so much resistance to just do the work I love for free. But I realized that for me, giving a session was greater than explaining. So I use referrals and just the chance for people I meet to try out a session before taking a longer process. It works perfectly for me. Another great strategy is too unapologetically talk and share about my work as I love it and want more people to know about it.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

To succeed in this field, I know that one needs to either love working with people or learn to relax into the fear of being so close to people. This field requires you to witness people in very vulnerable ways as you get to sometimes feel their fears, and pains, learn about them by hearing their stories, and by witnessing them going through difficult situations. It can become overwhelming, exhausting, or frightening sometimes to have such proximity with people. That is why it is essential that you, as a practitioner/bodyworker/therapist, truly learn to relax your body and mind to be able to contain another person’s experience, without hurting yourself and while having integrity. In my work, I found that the best way to do that is to practice accepting my fears and feelings, not repressing them but using their energy to move with them, breathe, relax, staying open and clear in my attention and body. In that way, I am working with others from a place of respect and being able to hold whatever space unfolds in the learning process with my clients, which creates an excellent and honest space for success.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://julietteviger.com/bodylearning
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julietteviger.bodylearning/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliettevigerbodylearning
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliette-viger-45837127

Image Credits

Photos taken by Freja Ingrid Lehrmann.