Currently I serve as a professor at Umeå University, where I lead a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (CAP) research group. I also work as a senior specialist clinician at CAP in Northern Swedish Region of Västerbotten. I combine teaching medical students with research and clinical work. Over the past 15 years, I have also developed and taught advanced-level courses at Karolinska Institutet, such as Autonomic and Emotion Regulation and Trauma – an Embodied Perspective.

With 25 years of experience as a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry, I have worked across a wide range of settings, age groups, and subspecialties. My work during the last 15 years has focused on depression and the impact of trauma and stress on mental health in young people. I hold level 1 certifications in psychodynamic psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). My training also includes several trauma treatment modalities, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR levels 1 & 2), Internal Family Systems (IFS, certified level 1), Somatic Experiencing (levels 1 & 2), and Trauma-Focused CBT. In addition, I am certified in Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP), a psycholytic approach using low doses of ketamine and/or cannabis, and in MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD through MAPS. Between 2022 and 2023, I was a mentor for the Synthesis Institute’s psychedelic practitioner training and occasionally co-facilitated their retreats in the Netherlands.

My work is also shaped by broader influences from integrative, indigenous, and contemplative approaches to mental, existential, and spiritual health. Since my first journey to India in 1986, I have been a practitioner of yoga, pranayama and meditation. I trained with Pattabhi Jois in Mysore and with several of his senior students. In 2003, I met Manu Manmoyanand, who introduced me to deeper layers of yoga. I have also been curious to learn more about the roots systems of modern Hatha Yoga, such as the original teachings of the early Tantric traditions. To find out how these traditions have been translated and adapted to Western therapeutic contexts, I completed teacher trainings in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) with Mark Williams. I later taught these programs at yogayama, which I co-founded in 2004, as well as in various retreat, educational, and clinical settings in Sweden, the U.S., India, and Italy. While living in the U.S., I had the opportunity to study healing practices and the medicine wheel with the Q’ero people of Peru and the Lakota of North America. These experiences deeply impacted my understanding of what healing can be in relation to the land, community, ancestors, and the more-than-human world.

My perspectives and positioning have of course been shaped by my upbringing and social conditioning. I grew up in Sweden, within a democratic society and a well-functioning welfare system. In this part of the world, during this time period, we have lived in peace and with a high degree of personal freedom. These incredible privileges, are and have of course been possible by a dominant culture of colonial, capitalist, extractive and violent politics and practices carried out in other parts of the world. This dominant culture has contributed to our wars, our genocides and our current meta-crises of widespread suffering and ecological collapse.  It has also contributed to the growing mental health crisis among young people in the Global North. How to make use of these privileges in support of future generations is a guiding question for me.

I believe as adults and elders, we are being asked to connect with, and deeply listen to young people, who will inherit a world in crisis. Across the world many of them struggle with severe mental health challenges. A growing number of individuals and communities are seeking more intelligent, just, localized, sustainable, and sacred ways of living. They are working to rebuild communities and protect life for those who come after us. I can´t think of any work that resonates more deeply. This website — and the courses and webinars I offer — are my contribution to that work. They are invitations to challenge modern myths about mental health and to explore new perspectives on what it means to heal, to be well, and to care for each other in these times.