Niki & Eva – More Than Science

Two medical doctors, a different way of living. I meet Niki and Eva in their guest house on the Atlantic coast. We talk about why they run a psychosomatic clinic in Lisbon, and what happens at their retreats.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Beyond the noise.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

It's not always from the science book, no.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Ask you about an example.

SPEAKER_04 0:20

Western medicine approach is science-based, like you said. You have to prove everything, it has to be measurable. But how do you measure happiness?

SPEAKER_05 0:33

I think that's quite incredible to see how a person in front of you changes when they share something about themselves.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Why are we not happier in modern life? It is a paradox. We live under better conditions than ever before in human history, and still many of us struggle. I am searching for new ways to break this paradox. This journey begins on the Atlantic coast of Portugal in Erizaira.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I'm sitting here in a guest house in a coastal village one hour north of Irizaira at the Atlantic coast. I'm searching for happiness in this crazy world. So welcome to you, Niki and Eva.

SPEAKER_05 1:22

Welcome to you as well in our guest house.

SPEAKER_04 1:26

It's a real pleasure to have you here today.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

And you run this guest house?

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Yes, we do for the fifth year now. Yeah. We are originally from Slovenia, but we moved to Portugal, also kinda in a search of happiness. And we uh we worked in Slovenia as a medical doctor, but when we moved here we changed our the course of our career and we are now working as somatic psychotherapists.

SPEAKER_05 1:57

Yeah, and based on a common connection that we have with a yoga instructor that now does uh retreats with us, we started working in group settings as well. So we bring a little bit of our knowledge of physiology and anatomy and combine it with what we've learned here in Portugal and prepare retreats that are focused on personal growth and movement.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

So two Slovenian doctors go to Portugal and you can have a job anywhere. So now you are making retreats, running a guest house, and making psychosomatic therapy. You're not quite a normal liar.

SPEAKER_05 2:54

Um we've heard this before. Um in a way I don't like the word normal because it means that there is uh a way to live that is the right one, and there are other ways to live that are the wrong ones. Um so, yes, in a way you can say that we are not normal doctors, but in a way, what we do for me is very normal.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

You know, when I when I I have I have been at two of your retreats now in October and here from a few days ago, and when I come home and explain to my friends and friends and family what I'm doing here, and it's such a big comfort for me to say, yes, and uh I'm going to this yoga and psychosomatic therapy with two Slovenian doctors. As soon as I said that, everyone thinks, okay, it's okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:48

It's okay. Yeah, isn't that interesting how some parts of our story bring comfort, and some parts of our story are maybe more mainstream and bring uh certainty, while other parts of our story bring out other things like question marks and where do we go from here? What does it even mean? But I think it's always great that we have a balance, that we have a certain um background that is um, you know, it's important to have a good background if you want to work the way we work, to bring teachings to people, to explore with them. But I always say that it's also important to have a certain sense of curiosity, fun, um, creativity.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

So it's those are important. It's not always from the science books, right?

SPEAKER_03 4:52

It's not always from the science book, no.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

I was at your retreat in October. In October. We you sent us to uh a very beautiful green park, a Buddha Park, I think it was, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

And uh and you you are and I had a lot of trouble with my knee. Uh and you asked us to that now we should play this game with ourselves actually. Just me. Uh and I should go in this park and visit it with a boy, uh a young small boy in there and it was actually me as a child. You know, at first when you gave me this mission, I I thought, this is crazy, but what am I going to do here? And then suddenly, you know, it appeared to me that all you other people, and all the other participants, they they made walk and did a lot of things, but my knee hurt a lot. And then, you know, I looked to, I almost said my son, I looked to me as a as a boy and said, what are we going to do? And I said, Okay, we're gonna have an ice cream, you know. Beautiful. And then there was this train, these terrible trains everywhere. You could put it, and then you drive around and see things. And my knee was not for walking, but and we actually joked about it before we knew that uh I didn't want to take that train. And then suddenly I looked at me as a boy and said, okay, what are we going to do? Should we take that train, you know? And then I took the train, and actually I ended up having a really pleasant hour with this boy.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

And now you have to explain to me why I should do these things? What was the idea about it?

SPEAKER_05 7:02

I will ask you first. How do you think was the experience compared to if you would explore this park as an adult, like just going around with your adult mind? And how would it be, or how was it to explore it with your inner child?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

It was two different worlds. Yeah, I admit it. I would never have taken that train. I wouldn't actually even have eaten that ice cream. I actually took two. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:34

For the boy and for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, I felt a little pretty for my boy, you know. I I couldn't walk around, so I had to comfort him. No, so I I actually ended up, you know, from from having this feeling this is very weird. And so I had a really pleasant hour.

SPEAKER_05 8:09

See, for this, I know that a lot of personal work can be very hard. We uncover old patterns, we talk about old traumas, we visit some very hard places, especially when we work with our inner child. But also we do we can do so much more work when we decide to honor that part of ourselves. We honor the child that we've been, and we give it a very fun, nice experience, and in that we not only have fun as adults, but we heal this part of ourselves a little bit. We bring a little bit more light. Because I think personal work is a lot of time looking at the dark, but we cannot look at the dark without light.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

And we have we as adults we have forgot the playful part of life. Yeah sometimes, don't we?

SPEAKER_04 9:13

And also, if I may add, as a child, you may have not had the option to eat two ice creams or to go on that train. Your childhood may have been completely different, but as an adult, you can choose for yourself what you're going to do. And you chose to ride a train and you chose to have fun and see that side of the park. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yeah, yeah, because it was a beautiful park, but you know it could also be it had been some kind of experience like going to a museum, just watching, watching I saw the park with completely different.

SPEAKER_05 9:51

Yeah, and I remember when we came back into the circle that you mentioned, you had a completely different expression on your face. And there was this kind of calmness around you, and it was really nice to see you there.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Uh somehow, and then it's I guess for someone sounds must be a little bit mysterious this still, right? So uh because you're doctors. When I go to the doctor, I don't suppose he would tell me tell me stories like this. Yeah. So so why did you go this way? You know, this is not a normal doctor way, we can agree about that, okay? For sure, yeah. So, what you you were doctors, you were trained, you worked at a hospital, and then you do something completely else. What happened? What went wrong, if I may joke?

SPEAKER_04 11:08

I think in our work, when we started working as doctors, we felt that not everything that life is, it's written in the science books you mentioned before. Western medicine approach is science-based, like you said. We have to prove everything, it has to be measurable. But how do you measure happiness? How do you measure the feeling of sadness? Because this is also what we have, right? It's not we are not just our blood pressure and our heart rate and our minerals in our blood, we are also living creatures, feeling creatures, and we noticed that when we worked in the hospital. I noticed that. I noticed how I talked with a patient and his vitals changed during our conversation. And yes, like one thing is maybe the stress lowered, but also sometimes I saw the relief that happened in a person when they got to share a part of their personal story, a part of the sadness they were carrying with me, and they found some comfort. And the pain lowered.

SPEAKER_05 12:23

I think that's um quite incredible to see how a person in front of you changes when they share something about themselves. Um, and just more from my point of view, when I heard these stories, there was a question inside me that I wanted to be able to answer, but I couldn't find an answer. And my question was always, why is this happening to this person at this time? For some people, it's you know, sometimes I feel like we get sick in the most unconvenient times of all. And I was like, How is this even possible? What is the reason behind there? And I was looking at myself as well because at the same time I also had some health issues, and I was observing myself and saying, but what is my body trying to tell me? What am I missing here? And when we sat down one day and said, Okay, how to share this with each other and say, how can we find these answers? We found this course of psychotherapy, somatic psychotherapy in Lisbon, and looked at the topics that they are um they have in their curriculum, and in a way it made all sense.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

So if I if I understand you right, you know, I I have had some serious health problems, as you know. And I've been sent to you know, heart and brain specialist, and and you know, I can't re I can really really not complain about any treatment. Everybody's so nice, so professional, but no one actually talks about how do I feel about this.

SPEAKER_04 14:29

Yeah, I just wanted to say that medicine advanced so much, it's amazing what doctors can do, it's amazing what we can fix. I worked for some time on the surgical, um I did surgical internship in a in a in a world where mostly I worked with a doctor who was um specialist in heart attacks, and it's amazing, like a person has a heart attack, they operate, and the next day they can already send the person home. But my question was what happens with them at home? Not physiologically, like their heart works great, better than before when they came, of course, much better, but psychologically, because there is a big tool on that person that had a heart attack, I imagine. That was my feeling. Like, what happens later? Why did this happen at this moment, and what is going to happen now?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Yeah, of course, of course, you you hit me somewhere because that's why I'm sitting here somehow. Uh and you know, I I would probably not sit here if not I have done the things I've done, going to your personal development, and even deeper and going to your retreat to restart my life. So if I hear you right, then this is not just a question of Western medicine. And you know, now I took this a little funny example with me as a child. So if people listen, they can think, what is this? But but you also talk about stress, you talk about a lot of health issues also in your retreat. But if I get it right, you know, you really believe in bridging the Western psychology and medicine with Eastern, more Eastern traditions and and philosophies.

SPEAKER_05 16:23

Yeah, definitely. I don't want to say that we are taking away the importance of Western medicine because I think it has a really big role and it's very important. But there should be a way to connect the two a bit more. There should be a way to look at a person more in a more holistic way, to look at not just the heart, but the person that it that it's beating inside. I think this is what we are trying to do in our approach, that we look at the whole person and not just the person, their environment, their families, where they come from, the generations before. This is all what affects us. And I think when we look at a person like this, we cannot say that it's just the heart.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

And I think it's big topics. Maybe we should talk a little more another day.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

Of course. I just wanted to kinda give you a little challenge here. Because you mentioned now several times that these things may be out of normal and even a little bit crazy, and they might sound crazy to whoever we're listening to this. So I want to point out here that talking about it and thinking about it are one thing, but experiencing this, experiencing our approach is even is different, right? And you experienced it. So if you heard talking um me talking about these things, they may have not made any sense to you, but then you felt them, then you did the exercises we we we did together, and how was it? Yeah, how was it? Did it make sense?

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Yeah, when I say the words crazy and so on, yeah. It made so much sense. And and it's movement in me for a longer while and I'm not sure I can explain it briefly actually, because it is still strange for me. I've been living up in this mind all the time, and I feel my body much more, but but I I can't find words right now. Should we be another day?

SPEAKER_04 19:13

Should I bring a drawing paper and some colors so you can draw what you feel?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Oh my god, oh my gosh. We take that next time, okay?

SPEAKER_05 19:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

So great talking to you.

SPEAKER_05 19:25

You too, thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

When I left Nikki and Eva's guests house, I couldn't stop smiling. There was something about the atmosphere around them. Was this what modern happiness could look like? It was deeply inspiring. I know I will speak with them again. If you're curious about this project, you can read more at powerofsmile.dk. You can also subscribe to my free newsletter. No spam, no marketing, only invitations and like in this podcast, conversations that matter. Quietly against the pace of our time.