Meet  Sylviane

Educator, Lecturer, Chronic pain expert,

Hypno-somatic Therapist and intuitive Healer, Yoga Teacher and Mentor, Self educated, Lateral thinker,

63 and loving Life

When she is still a young adolescent, Sylviane and her family leave France for the ex-French colony of Madagascar off the coast of Africa. She faces a radical culture shock that changes her view of the world forever: extreme poverty, leprosy in the street, corruption, two military coups in the first year, curfew, and rice on the black market!

But also the magnificent islands, the adventure in the jungle, the wonderful people and friends, the vibrant soirees in the luxury of the upper class, the royal blood!  The contrast is mind-boggling! 

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However, her father shows her that we can help, build factories, give entire villages work, repair homes, pay for medical expenses and care for the local people who share our life, and for their families. He teaches her other ways to live. Adventurous and meaningful ways. He gives her the taste for a freer life, a life of travel and discovery but when it comes to work, his dreams are far from being hers.

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Back in Paris in 1984,  she decides to leave her unfulfilling corporate life.

She buys a one-way ticket to Malaysia

She wants the unknown. She thrives in it. Freedom is the nucleus around which her life revolves and much will happen during these years of

self-discovery

"the good the bad and the ugly"!

Life threatening situations, brutal awakenings...

She now has a profound need to settle. She chooses Australia, Sydney. She marries and have two beautiful children.

Yoga steals her heart

She enters the Australian Iyengar Yoga Institute  and with many other students, she hopes that her teacher and mentor, K.Parry - a direct disciple of BKS Iyengar - will pick her as one of the four apprentices she is going to train for the next four years. The selection is severe and many months later she is chosen!

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Iyengar Yoga daily training is a tough Journey

but The privileged Teacher/apprentice

relationship is unmatched in her life

She dives into the next four years of intensive training with complete dedication and passion. The by-product of Asanas, Therapy and most importantly Presence will build the foundation for a  profound and intimate relationship with her body. She not only controls more and more the subtle tissues, energies and thoughts in herself, she intuits other's. She Teaches and trains the young teachers that have started to flood the many yoga schools flourishing all over Sydney. and her therapeutic sessions, skyrocket.

Students are queuing for consults and mentoring, it's a revelation.!  Her reputation precedes her but she flies under the radar, she is still learning, growing.

When asked about her spiritual practice

"I am not aligned with any religion, I don't like the dogmas of faith... I trust only Life.

"Accepting someone else's truth without putting it to the test would rob me of my power of thinking and this feels to me far too constricting. Plus, It's not my experience, it is theirs. My father used to give me mind-twisters to solve and I would spend days trying to find the answer.

That being said, if I inquire into an experience that matters to my life, I will try and find if someone has had a similar experience and have advanced in its understanding. I read a lot and I do listen to some wonderful spiritual teachings from Eckart Tolle, Krishnamurti or it can be a person I meet at the supermarket! But I am highly critical of what people say is THE truth!  There are as many truths as they are minds.

My Life experiences have revealed that there is much strength in listening and respond from a space of awareness rather than react from my past conditioning.  Iyengar Yoga taught me so much. Feeling the body with such alertness and presence, in such subtle ways, observing, listening to what is, finding peace in the midst of pain and hard work was invaluable practice. I am a great fan of Life - the Life that I am and that I am part of. Nature is my mentor! My house opens onto the jungle and I can spend hours just marvel. This is where I find exaltation, peace, gratitude, beauty, bliss and profound insights...I guess this is my spiritual practice.

everything breaks loose

In 2007, at 50

She falls!

The damage to her spine, the pain, the

  Paralysis from the waist down to the pelvic floor is going to be the catalyst for Sylviane's deepest transformation and the birth of

"C'est La Vie" Institute for a New Health

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The diagnostic is bleak, severe spondylolisthesis with Cauda Equina Syndrome, loss of bladder and bowel control, as well as low back pain, lower body sensory deficits and left leg  weakness,. It is a surgical emergency! She knows it, but she refuses to go under the knife.

Her decision might have far reaching implications but as a Life-long yoga teacher, mentor and physical therapist, trained in the rigorous art and science of Iyengar Yoga,  she knows the possible side effects. She has seen it in her students and in her patients over the years. She trusts in herself, her body and in her unwavering determination. She has a certain disdain towards pain which will help carry her through years of research, training, trials and errors

She trains with the Best in the world, study her own body and mind without respite, but most of all she learns from Life. It is Nature , inside and outside, that is her best teacher and shows her the way to healing. She discovers the uncontrolable rules of Life. The ones that noone can escape if one wants to end suffering and live a fulfilling, purposeful Life.

IT DEMANDS YEARS OF UNWAVERING WORK AND SOLITUDE

And at 60, she has created a NEW LIFE and NEW HEALTH

It will take years of research, learning from the best, applying it, listening to the response of her body, to her true self.

Awareness and the power to look at her body and at herself as a Life process, always asking to shade old conditionings and align with the demand of higher consciousness is at the heart of her healing. 

She does not disconnect this process from the physical, On the contrary, through gentle and powerful alchemy, she can put the puzzle together. An injury cannot be separated from the larger context of the human posture and The biomechanics of the human posture is inevitably linked to our mindset and belief systems. A methodology slowly emerges. She calls it ACT. Advanced Change Therapy. A hybrid psychosomatic therapy that merges postural biomechanics rehabilitation and Psychotherapy.   She opens a clinic in the northern Peninsula of Sydney, dedicated to chronic pain. The results are remarkable. She helps many including high performance athletes and yoga practitioners. Later she integrates hypnotherapy for even better results.

Today she lives between Bali, Sydney and France and works with people from all over the world.

"If you listen deep enough into nature

You learn that anything is possible" SGJ