HORÓ Psychotherapy - Aleksandra Staneva, PhD

17/03/2026

As Jung noted our greatest Shadow issue is not that we are evil, but that we tend to live lives too small for our souls’ more capacious horizons.

For it is not only darkness that we banish to the margins of the psyche, but brilliance. Those vast, luminous parts of us that tremble with life and ask more than we feel permitted to give…

We make ourselves smaller in quiet, almost invisible ways, folding our longing into something digestible, trimming desire until it fits the narrow corridors of safety and approval. And so the loss is not dramatic, but aching in its subtlety: a dimming, a quiet refusal of the soul’s wild amplitude. To turn toward the shadow, then, is not merely to face what is feared, but to gather back what is radiant ☀️ to risk the fullness of one’s own aliveness, and to step, at last, into a life that can hold it.

Who are you when not shrunk by trauma? Paradoxically as trauma shrinks us and keeps us living a constricted life, it is often our wounds that open the doors to our gifts too.

We are all in service to a larger life.

a.

04/03/2026

27/02/2026

“…standing at a campsite without water, I realise how little guidance those stories offer for this moment: an older woman, walking alone, in a body altered not by injury or catastrophe but by age and hormonal change, facing a decision where stopping is neither dramatic, nor redemptive – just sensible.

The question my body is asking now is something my reading has not prepared me for: not how far should I push myself, but why is this still important to me?”

Deep reflections on ♥️ positive failure ♥️

Rachael Mead’s body once carried her across Antarctic ice sheets. At 55, she set out to reclaim her resilience – and what she discovered was surprising.
👉 https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-i-thought-a-5-day-solo-hike-would-reclaim-a-lost-self-my-menopausal-body-had-other-plans-275315?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook =1772167566

26/02/2026

19/02/2026

🌙 ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SHADOW 🌙
LOOKING WHERE WE DON’T WANT TO LOOK

This women’s circle is a courageous descent into the wild underworld of the psyche, into the disowned, shamed, instinctual, and powerful aspects of ourselves we learned to exile in order to belong.

Encounters with the Shadow invites an honest turning toward what we would rather not know: the rage beneath compliance, the grief beneath competence, the longing beneath perfection, the fierce life force beneath silence.

In depth, dignity, and containment, we will meet what was banished, and discover that within the shadow lives vitality, authority, creativity, and soul.

This is an intimate and deeply personal experience.
10 women only (6spots left)
27 July 2026
Monday 5.30-7.30pm Annerley

For all details and registration:
Email horoforwomen@gmail.com

Aleksandra 🌖

18/02/2026

🥰🫶🏻♥️😊 IFS

10/02/2026

This! Is. The. Best. Thing I have seen since the beginning of the global war against love, kinship, unity, acceptance, respect, connection, truth, and light. I am soooo glad to see and be reminded that THIS IS WHO WE TRULY ARE AS HUMANS. We care, we support, we include, we repair, we heal, we help, we reach out to one another and at the core of all of us there is kindness.

Thank you Bad Bunny for reminding us of what truly matters and to stay true to our roots is the way to truly belong.

As a triple immigrant I know this is my bones.
🇧🇬 🇺🇸 🇦🇺

08/02/2026

She says, “Nothing is wrong.”

The kids are fine.
The marriage is steady.
Work is good.

And yet, something is off.

Not a crisis.
A whisper.

A thin wind moving through her ribs that says, you have outgrown this skin.

The soul does not only speak through breakdown.
She speaks through restlessness.
Through quiet dissatisfaction.
Through the subtle ache of a life that fits… but no longer expands.

Like a plant pressing against the edges of its pot, life keeps growing. It does not apologise. It does not justify. It reaches.

That “off” feeling is not nothing.
It is initiation.

If you are not in crisis but feel the tremor of more, listen.

The whisper is holy.
It is your wild soul asking for a wider sky.

It’s your soul asking for expression. For meaning.

⭕️

29/01/2026

This might be my favorite of them all, certainly the one I return to most often when I lose perspective in the quagmire of complaint. As always, find it as a solo print and part of the deck of 100, along with the story and process behind them, at https://almanacofirds.org

28/01/2026

HORÓ - a favorite Bulgarian word of mine, holding me close to my roots, vertically and horizontally across oceans and lands, is a metaphor for the space I have created for my psychotherapeutic practice.

HORÓ means a dance, usually performed in a circle or spiral, where people hold hands, what I energetically feel as the core of my offerings-a coming together. A coming home to oneself while being held, by hands both visible and invisible, known and far unknown.

The work of my practice lives where three deep rivers meet: IFS, Jungian Depth Psychology, and Feminism.

I sit with the psyche as a living landscape, full of inner voices, protectors, young ones, fierce ones, tired ones, all carrying stories that began long before words. Through the deep compassion that comes when we ground the work in the IFS process, I meet these parts with reverence, not to banish them, but to soften what has hardened in survival, and to restore the natural leadership of the Self.

What Jungian depth work has offered is that it allows me to listen for what moves underneath: the dream-image, the symbol, the archetypal force, the old myth stirring in the bones. I trust the unconscious the way one trusts the forest, not always clear, but always truthful.

And through feminism, I keep sight of the wider net: the oppressive structures that have shaped the ways women have been silenced, perfected, made small, and how liberation is not only personal, but ancestral, societal and cultural.

This work is not about fixing what is broken. It is about remembering what is intact. HORÓ is about coming home to the wild, wise centre that has been there all along, being both held and contained, while freed and connected to the infinite.

With heart 🌹
Aleksandra

27/01/2026

One morning in 1997, when he was 35, Nick Watkins read an article by a columnist he admired, in which the writer described particular memories of his own, not only the sight but the sound and feel of them. For some reason, these sentences revealed all at once to Nick what in the whole course of his life he had not realized: that it was possible to see pictures in your mind and use those pictures to reëxperience your past.

This was startling information. He knew, of course, that people talked about “picturing” or “visualizing,” but he had always taken this to be just a metaphorical way of saying “thinking.” Now it appeared that, in some incomprehensible sense, people meant these words literally. And then there was the notion of using those mental images to revisit a memory. It was an astonishing idea. Was it possible that this was a thing that other people could do?

In 2015, his condition was given a scientific name, aphantasia, and tens of thousands of people experienced the same shocked realization that he had. A flurry of research in the following decade would uncover associations between mental imagery and a bewildering variety of human traits and capacities: a propensity to hold grudges; autism; a vulnerability to trauma; emotional awareness; ways of making art and hearing music; memory of one’s life. Read about the people who can’t form mental images—and those whose imagery is too vivid: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/rT56lu

27/01/2026

I once had a client who prepaid for five sessions and said, “These cover me until Christmas. I need to be fixed by then.”

It’s a sentiment many of us can relate to, the desire for fast answers, instant clarity, or a timeline for healing. Especially in our fast-paced society, where services and even people can feel disposable, many of us have lost the ability to stay with discomfort. We swipe left, move on, or give up when something feels difficult. But that discomfort is actually the only way in.

Therapy doesn’t work like a quick fix. Real change, insight, and healing happen through presence, patience, and gradual exploration. Attachment wounds, patterns of the past, and deeply held fears don’t resolve on a schedule. They unfold over time as you allow yourself to be fully seen, understood, and gently guided through the process. Each session is a step, not a sprint.

Depth work is at the heart of this process. It means looking beneath the surface of your thoughts and behaviors, exploring the parts of yourself that you might usually avoid, and sitting with emotions that are uncomfortable or even painful. This is where the most profound insight, transformation, and integration happen; in the places we usually resist, hide, or rush past.

Therapy in general, and my work in particular, is not for those looking for instant answers or quick fixes. It is for people willing to stay with themselves, even when it feels uncomfortable, and to explore deeply, with curiosity, honesty, and patience. Healing requires showing up fully, leaning into the discomfort, and letting the process unfold, not rushing it.

If you are ready to do that, the journey can be transformative in ways you might never have imagined 🦋

a.