Nathalie Varlet · About me
About me
Before presenting my professional journey and my training — which you will find further down this page — I above all want to introduce myself as a person.
Because if my training built the foundations of my practice, it is also my experiences, my travels, my encounters, my personal and artistic research, and the sometimes less conventional paths I have taken that have shaped the therapist and teacher I am today.
The foundations of my practice
My journey began with training as a physiotherapist, then as a sports physiotherapist.
There I acquired solid foundations in anatomy, physiology and biomechanics, and I quickly had the opportunity to work with high-level athletes.
I then continued my training in orthopaedic manual therapy, with an approach closer to osteopathy.
Yet, fairly quickly, I felt that this essentially mechanical reading of the body did not fully answer what I was perceiving and what I was looking for.
Something was missing.
Alongside my professional activity, I have always been driven by personal research: a curiosity for the human being, for the living, for wide-open spaces, wild territories…
It is this research that gradually led me to step outside the framework in which I had been trained and to explore other paths.
A research that goes beyond the framework of therapy
My professional journey has always been intimately linked to a personal research.
Travel has been an essential part of it.
Solitary travel on foot, by bike or on horseback was more than a way of discovering the world; these journeys were for me true spaces of inner exploration: stepping out of my reference points, returning to the essential and experiencing another way of being in relationship with oneself, with one's body and with one's environment.
This research also led me to encounter different traditions and visions of health.
In particular, I explored Amazonian medicines, plant work and certain shamanic traditions.
They deeply nourished my understanding of the living and opened my approach to the spiritual dimension of the human being and to our connection with nature.
Art and movement as other paths of research
In parallel, dance and artistic creation took an increasingly important place in my journey.
I explored different forms of dance and movement: Sufi dance, tango, Contact Improvisation, Fusion Dance, but also, over my travels, practices closer to wrestling, as well as capoeira, boxing and various universes from the martial arts.
Painting and writing also accompanied this research, as other ways of giving form and expression to what is experienced inside.
But at the heart of all these explorations, improvisation became central.
Improvisation became a privileged space to develop listening, presence and expression, but also to let a truer expression of one's truth and inner coherence emerge.
Little by little, my therapeutic research, my artistic practice and my personal experience ceased to be separate paths.
They met around a single research: listening to movement rather than provoking it, and letting an expression emerge as close as possible to what is alive.
A decisive encounter
My encounter with Berni Garcia was one of those encounters that change a life.
At the time I was going through a dark night of the soul, accompanied by a strong expansion of my extrasensory perceptions, but also a deep disconnection from my body and a painful dissociation.
The practice of Coherent Movement allowed me to gradually regain a state of unity between the bodily, emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions of my being.
This is what led me, four and a half years ago, to begin my training with the International Institute of Coherent Movement.
Beyond the family constellations it integrates, this approach taught me to recognise the unconscious patterns that influence the way we think, move, enter into relationship and perceive the world.
It deeply nourishes my practice today and also allows me to offer systemic constellation sessions.
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Today, accompanying the body's natural movement
All these experiences have gradually transformed the way I accompany.
Today, my work is no longer to seek to correct the body or impose a direction on it, but to create the conditions for it to regain its own capacity for organisation.
I accompany people to return to their sensations, to recognise the unconscious patterns running through them and to find a more direct relationship with what is alive in them.
Today, my work sits at the meeting point of manual therapy, fascia work, the somatic approach, body expression and family constellations.
From therapy to teaching
Over time, transmission naturally imposed itself in my journey.
I am not only interested in helping a person get through a pain or a difficulty.
I also care about passing on tools so that they can better feel, understand and inhabit their body, and gradually become more autonomous.
Today, my work therefore takes different forms: individual sessions, constellations, workshops, classes, trainings and retreats, with a common thread: allowing each person to find more connection to themselves, coherence, freedom and inner peace.
I also accompany care, body and support professionals to develop their own therapeutic art, by refining their quality of perception, listening and presence, rather than accumulating new techniques.
My journey
Professional experience & training
Professional experience
- 17 years of therapeutic practice
- More than 1,000 people accompanied in individual sessions
- Support for high-level athletes: Rugby Club of Aix-en-Provence – 2nd division, dancers of the Ballet Preljocaj, French downhill mountain-bike champion
- Therapeutic support for paraplegic and tetraplegic people and for autistic people and people with disabilities, in collaboration with various associations
- Creation and facilitation of body exploration and yoga workshops at the Aix-en-Provence prison
- Creator of the Fascia Dance approach
- Creation and facilitation of workshops, classes, trainings and retreats (artistic, shamanic, dance…)
Training
- State Diploma of Masseur-Physiotherapist
- Training in Sports Physiotherapy
- Facilitator in Ancestral Multidimensional Systemic Movements – Foundation 1, International Institute of Coherent Movement – Berni Garcia & Alicia Gonzalez
- Initiated in Amazonian shamanic ancestral practices with master plants
- Hatha Yoga training
- Training in Orthopaedic Manual Therapy
- Training in Wùo tai (osteo dance)
- NonViolent Communication – level 1, Marshall Rosenberg approach