YINtentions

About YINtentions

Some stories don't get told. Not because they aren't true but because no one made room for them. YINtentions makes room. Women from all walks of life, all ages, all experiences - sharing what their bodies know, remember, and carry. Unresolved. Unpolished. True. We don't fix anything here. We don't prescribe. We simply are with. If that calls to you, welcome. Hosted by Anna Teresa. New episodes every two weeks. Learn about Yin Rhythms : https://www.yinrhythms.com/ (https://www.yinrhythms.com/)

Publisher

Anna Kopacz

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 Mar 2026

Latest episode

2 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

14 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   2 Oct 2026

   Ep.13 with Ruby May - My Nervous System needs Pleasure

   What happens when the practice that taught you to trust your body turns out to be the one thing your body takes away? Before most of her friends had bled, Ruby May was already fascinated by the thing nobody in her house would name. That thread ran for decades. A yoga teacher in her twenties who did not yet know how far she lived from her own body. Then seven years of charting a single cycle, day by day, on paper, until she could read herself the way you read weather. Two and a half years ago it stopped. Not quietly. Three weeks of bleeding, nearly a hospital, and then the map she had spent a decade learning was simply gone. This is a conversation about what a woman does when the territory she was walking disappears, and about the world she is trying to feel her way through - a world with good language for emotion and nowhere to put any of it. Rage with no schedule to appear in. Community that stops being agreeable. And the question she has started asking herself instead, which is harder than the one she began with. Storykeeper: Ruby May is a mentor, facilitator and writer, and a devoted student of the Feminine, having been initiated into embodied feminine spirituality through her own body and menstruality practice. Among those things, she serves as community lead for the alumni of Red School, a global school of embodied feminine spirituality. Connect with Ruby: https://rubymay.co/ | Substack: https://rubymay.substack.com/ | IG: @.ruby.may. Resources mentioned: Red School, and Wild Power - Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer: https://www.redschool.net/ Book: The map of the inner seasons, and the practice of cycle tracking on Amazon Article: Yang is the midwife, Yin is the mother - Ruby's Substack essay, June 2026 Chapters: (0:00) Welcome · (4:20) There's gold in here · (12:41) A threshold you cross · (18:54) Just do it, and you'll activate something · (30:42) What does healthy rage look like · (40:03) I wish it was just a given · (57:11) Yang is midwife and Yin is the mother · (1:04:13) A Sicilian ice cream, ten minutes from the door ~~ Anna Teresa is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. Related Course + Workshops at Yin Rhythms + Womb Shakti - 8 week course on conscious presence in your own body, and the discovery of your inner pleasure. (in Polish & in English) + Fire Festival, Samhain - seasonal celebration of the changing of seasons, online for women-only + Rhythmic Movement - library of practices to deepen the experience with and in your body, just as she is. Coming Soon + YINtentions Field Notes - Cyclical newsletter decoding the tensions and intentions that live in our body.

2. 

   25 Sept 2026

   Ep. 12 - There Is No Going Back

   A voice follows the body onto the dance floor and keeps score. Too slow. Too angry. Too deep. Years of practice do not quiet it. It came along to a 5Rhythms class in Budapest, in a room full of strangers, and it is still there in Kraków three years later, on the other side of a camera. This solo travels from a few lines I wrote by the sea in 2020 to ten days of recording the rhythmic movements, an unfinished map of rhythms for validating our own distinct cycles. It is about the pace that belongs to you, and what it asks for when the world is moving to someone else's. It ends at a threshold, with a question still open. Welcome. Come as you are. Resources mentioned: Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves 5Rhythms, the movement practice of Gabrielle Roth Womb Shakti (EN): https://www.yinrhythms.com/womb-shakti Łono Shakti (PL): https://www.yinrhythms.com/lono-shakti Chapters: (0:00) The rhythm of the waves · (2:49) Too slow, too angry, too deep · (6:04) Someone else's rhythm · (9:01) Its own pace of rigour · (12:12) Turning · (14:42) If I crack open ~~~ Anna Teresa is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. About this work + offers: www.yinrhythms.com

3. 

   14 Aug 2026

   Ep. 11 with Silvija Tomčik - My body will know how to die

   What happens when the part of you the world taught you not to speak of turns out to be the one that was always telling the truth? At a school reunion, someone asked Silvija Tomčik what she does now. She said she teaches a movement practice most of the room had never heard of. Her old schoolmate said: I always knew you would do something that doesn't exist yet. Two things her mother and grandmother taught her, without meaning to, about living in a woman's body. We don't talk about it. And we don't have much choice about it. She has spent thirty years doing the opposite. This is a conversation about what the body carries when the mind is full of everyone else's voices. A no she rehearsed on a dance floor a year before she needed it. Anger that does not need a target. And what a body already knows about a life it has not lived yet. Storykeeper: Silvija Tomčik is a 5Rhythms teacher who found Gabrielle Roth's Maps to Ecstasy at twenty-one, in a country learning to breathe again after war, and carried the practice home to Croatia and the Balkans. She has spent thirty years since teaching movement as a way back to the body. Connect with Silvija : https://plesritmova.net/ (https://plesritmova.net/) IG: @silvija5rhythms (https://www.instagram.com/silvija5rhythms/) | Mixcloud Silvija's playlists (https://www.mixcloud.com/SilvijaTomcik/) Resources mentioned: Gabrielle Roth, Maps to Ecstasy — the book that started it The 5Rhythms — flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, stillness Waves, Voice and Vision — Silvija's own book of notes on life through the body Chapters: (0:00) Welcome · (4:30) Inheritance · (15:32) What is 5Rhythms · (36:50) A rehearsal for something that hadn't happened yet · (41:26) Somewhere to be wild, and nobody to aim it at · (54:09) Remember who I was, and who I will be ~~~ Anna Teresa (https://www.linkedin.com/in/annakopacz/) is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. About this work + offers: www.yinrhythms.com (https://www.yinrhythms.com/)

4. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Ep.10 with Tiffany May Yan Chan - Can We Afford it ?

   What happens when a woman who set out to change the world finds that the world most in need of attention is the one inside her? Tiffany Chan had done everything right, and somewhere along the way she had gone hollow, the colour of her grey sweater. Then a stolen passport in a city far from home, a prayer she had never said before, a white car coming through the air, and nothing was arranged the way it had been. What she carried out of that is a claim is love. Love as the most sophisticated intelligence a leader has, and a question she now brings to the people she works with. Not whether we can afford to bring love into leadership. But what is its absence already costing us, and can we afford not to. Storykeeper: Tiffany May Yan Chan is a writer, speaker and advisor working at the intersection of love, power and leadership. She served as a Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum, and now works with leaders developing embodied consciousness for systems change. Connect with Tiffany: https://tiffanymchan.com/ https://lovepowerleadership.substack.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanymayyanchan/ (0:00) Welcome (4:44) The women who came before (12:39) What that world cost, in the body (23:06) The prayer, and the car (58:42) The only safe room in the building (1:04:21) Whatever is inside gets created outside (1:19:28) Joy as the highest contribution ~~~ Anna Teresa is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. About this work + offers: https://www.yinrhythms.com/

5. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Ep. 09 - There is Not One Intelligence.

   We are handed one intelligence and told that it is the intelligence. The mind. The reasoning. The part that can show its working. And then we spend a life wondering why the answers we are given about our own lives don't fit. There is not one. There are many, and they are already speaking - in the body, in emotion, in timing, in need, in relationship, in the land, in the ones who came before. Each with its own language. Each able to say something the others cannot. This episode is about what happened to those languages, and who we handed them to. It is an invitation to notice which of these languages you have been fluent in, and to stop asking someone out there to translate it for you. Welcome. Come as you are. Resources mentioned: Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves - from the chapter "Marking Territory: Boundaries of Rage and Forgiveness" (0:00) Welcome (1:14) Losing touch with the knowing (4:39) There is not one intelligence, there are many (11:31) Finding your own instruments (15:36) You already speak one ~~~ Anna Teresa (https://www.linkedin.com/in/annakopacz/) is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. About this work + offers: https://www.yinrhythms.com/ (https://www.yinrhythms.com/)

6. 

   1 Jun 2026

   Ep.08 - An Endless Exploration [Season Finale]

   There is an image of the practitioner: the one who has fully arrived in her own body. Who holds what she teaches not as theory but as lived truth, every day, without fail. The woman recording this episode forgets to stretch. Skips meals. Lays down, every once in a while and sobs at having been disengaged from herself. This episode is about that gap and what becomes available when you say it aloud. In this season finale: the joke of putting yin into a frame · a grandmother and the stories she carries in silence · what unlocks in the body when what hasn't been said finally is · the imposter who teaches presence · grief at the threshold of a new year · poetry written This is not a testimony. It is an act of saying the thing out loud and watching what shifts when you do. (0:00) Intro (1:50) No script, no agenda (8:34) Grandmother (23:03) An endless exploration (37:38) Grief at the threshold (45:56) Gratitude (49:51) Until next season ~~~ Anna Teresa is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. Subscribe to the YINtentions newsletter: https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter

7. 

   15 May 2026

   Ep.07 - The Midlife Paradox

   The world looks at a woman in her forties and sees someone who has arrived. The woman herself is often somewhere else entirely. We have been handed the story of the peak: the good age, the clarity, the knowing who you are. But no one speaks to what lives underneath: the exhaustion that won't stop, the race with no visible finish line, the distance between what is seen and what is felt. This episode is about that gap. In this episode: a letter written from the middle · the path to external arrival and what it required · four women, four shapes of the same distance · what anchoring actually is · an invitation to look in the mirror without apology. This is not a resolution. It is a permission to stop pretending the gap doesn't exist and to say thank you for having lived. This episode moves alongside conversations with Jenny McGrath (Ep. 02), Anca Damerell (Ep. 04), Cynthia Hansen (Ep. 06), and Robyn Davie (Ep. 05). (0:00) Welcome (1:46) A letter from the middle (7:52) Four shapes of the same distance (16:35) Not from a distance (20:15) Look in the mirror ~~~ Anna Teresa (https://www.linkedin.com/in/annakopacz/) is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held.* Subscribe to the YINtentions newsletter: https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter (https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter)

8. 

   1 May 2026

   Ep.06 with Cynthia Hansen - She Built Belonging from Scratch

   What does it mean to be the first person in your genetic line - in both directions - to do something? Anything at all? Cynthia Hansen carries her home in her body. A Korean woman adopted by white American parents, she has lived everywhere and belonged to no fixed geography and she has spent her career building systems that leave no human being at the edges. In this conversation, we move through three generations of women - a grandmother whose unlived potential still travels forward, a daughter of 16 saying things in a school speech her mother didn't know she was carrying, a woman navigating menopause without anyone in her bloodline who has been there before. Through the body as the only geography that never moved. Through what it costs to hold teenagers, aging parents, and yourself: all at once, all from a distance. Through what it means to think of an ending as a beginning. Storykeeper: Cynthia Hansen is the Director of the Adecco Group Innovation Foundation, a global foundation working on workforce transformation and what it means to build economic systems that do not leave human beings at the edges. Connect with Cynthia: linkedin.com/in/cynthiahansen https://www.adeccogroup.com/innovationfoundation Resources mentioned Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Book Collective 5Rhythms movement practice All Fours (among others) by Miranda July (0:00) Welcome (5:25) The Women that Came Before - What was Given and What had to be Invented (19:09) The Only Geography that Never Moved (27:22) What it Costs to Hold Everyone (39:55) When the Living System is also the Body (52:03) Who Do I Get to Be ~~~ Hosted by Anna Teresa: an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch, supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. Subscribe to YINtentions newsletter: https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter

9. 

   17 Apr 2026

   Ep. 05 with Robyn Davie - She Chose More

   What happens when a woman refuses to dim her light even when she doesn't yet know who she's becoming? Robyn Davie wears color in a grayscale world. Not as aesthetics. As practice. After years of making herself smaller, of being told to be less, she chose more. We move through the women who came before her: a grandmother who had a hysterectomy at 32, complete hormone shutdown, devastating silence. Through 20 years on the pill and the paradox of exploring cyclical wisdom while suppressing your cycle. Through the collapse that comes when your identity dissolves, when the CEO title is gone and you're left with an empty page. Through rock bottom, empty bank accounts, and the absurdity of tapping plastic on plastic for food. Through placing hands on your body with love instead of hate. Through being told to be less to find a partner and refusing. Through what lingering teaches us when the culture demands we move fast and conclude quickly. Storykeeper: Robyn Davie is a regenerative brand strategist and former CEO who ran a 15-person creative studio in South Africa for 12 years before walking away and moving to Hamburg, Germany. She is turning 40, learning about her body in ways she was never taught, and teaching from the middle of the mess. Connect with Robyn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robyn-davie/ https://robyndavie.com/ https://www.instagram.com/robyndavie Resources mentioned: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass Wild Power (Alexandra Pope & Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer) Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology Diary of a CEO podcast (Steven Bartlett) (0:00) Welcome (5:25) The Women Who Came Before - the Silence that Shaped Us (11:55) Twenty Years on the Pill - A Paradox We're Not Talking About (20:02) Reclaiming What You've Been Taught to Hate (27:28) When Identity Collapsed (42:13) Women Teaching Women - Feminine Wisdom Over Hustle Culture (53:11) Being Told to Be Less & Choosing to Be More (1:00:09) What Lingering Teaches Us - Closing ~~~ Hosted by Anna Teresa Subscribe to Yin Rhythms newsletter: https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter

10. 

    3 Apr 2026

    Ep.04 with Anca Damerell - My Body Tells Me a Different Story

    What happens when a woman who has spent her career mapping the most complex systems in the world realizes she is now learning to read her own ? Anca Damerell opens a conversation about what gets lost when women move from the farm to the institution, from the freedom of climbing trees and reaching for fruit to a life organized around productivity, caregiving, and the quiet suppression of what the body knows. We move through the women who came before her and the wings and constraints they carried. Through a body dismissed twice by specialists, still telling its own story. Through the moment care met the machine, when a human request for menopause support returned as administrative language. Through the question that stayed with her: what would it mean if love were not decorative in our institutions, but foundational. Guest: Anca Damerell is a Director at Unearthodox, an organization navigating complex nature-society challenges by examining root problems. She is a published researcher, systems thinker, and a woman at the beginning of her own embodied journey. Connect with Anca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anca-damerell https://unearthodox.org/ Resources mentioned: Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass Bayo Akomolafe, The Emergence Network Anca Damerell, projects led and written forwards: Voices of Regeneration: Cycles of Hope Nurturing innovation The Anthology on regenerative futures (0:00) Welcome (5:25) The women who came before — wings and constraints (22:37) From the farm to the institution — how the body got lost (32:40) What if these experiences are signals, not disruptions (41:45) When care meets the machine (54:53) The ingredients are already here ~~~ Hosted by Anna Teresa Subscribe to Yin Rhythms newsletter: https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter

11. 

    3 Apr 2026

    Ep.03 The Landscape Between

    We were handed one word = menopause = and asked to make sense of a decade or more with it. That word arrives wrapped in very limited stories. That we should be celebrating. That something has gone wrong. That we are no longer useful or seen. Most women I know are living somewhere between those scripts, without a name for where they actually are. This episode names the terrain. In this episode: the three distinct stages collapsed into one word and why it matters · the nine-stage framework Christine Marie Mason draws in The Nine Lives of Woman · the two cultural stories that abandon women in different ways · and the frontier no one is mapping yet > late motherhood and perimenopause, simultaneously. Welcome. Come as you are. (0:00) Welcome (1:47) The story and the map (6:44) The long runway : perimenopause (10:12) Metamorphosis: menopause (11:25) The rest of our life: postmenopause (13:25) The stories that abandon women (18:15) What's emerging (23:36) Closing Resource mentioned: Christine Marie Mason's book : The Nine Lives of Woman: Sensual, Sexual and Reproductive Stages from Birth to 100 ~~~ Anna Teresa is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch — supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. Subscribe to the YINtentions newsletter: https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter

12. 

    20 Mar 2026

    Ep.02 with Jenny McGrath - She Learned to Leave Her Body. And She Learned to Return

    What happens when a thirteen-year-old girl receives a purity ring from her father and learns that her body belongs to everyone except herself? Jenny McGrath opens doors into the places where purity culture, sexual trauma, and religious shame live in women's bodies. In this conversation, we move through modesty checks and closets of shame. Through sexual assault and the confusion of pleasure and pain. Through years as a missionary in Uganda, treating her body like a machine until Acholi dancing gave her body back. Through the psoas muscle as an archive of intergenerational fear. Content Note: This episode includes discussion of childhood corporal punishment, sexual assault, and religious trauma. Listen when your body is ready. Storykeeper: Jenny McGrath is a mental health counselor, Somatic Experiencing® practitioner, and researcher. Her work reveals how missionary work became a way for white women to feel their own pain through the pain of others. Connect with Jenny: https://www.indwellmovement.com/ (https://www.indwellmovement.com/) https://www.instagram.com/indwell_movement/ (https://www.instagram.com/indwell_movement/) Resources mentioned: adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism Liz Koch, The Psoas Book Angela Chen on consent Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score ~~~ Anna Teresa (https://www.linkedin.com/in/annakopacz/) is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch - supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. Subscribe to YINtentions newsletter: https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter (https://bit.ly/yintentionsnewsletter)

13. 

    20 Mar 2026

    Ep.01 Invitation to Undiscovered Landscapes

    We travel the world fascinated by landscapes and terrains covered by sand, by forests, by history and stories that came before us. But there is a landscape we rarely discover. Not because it isn't remarkable, precious and filled with gifts. Quite the opposite. We don't discover it because we've been told to stay away from it. No one said - this territory exists, and it belongs to you, and you are allowed to go there. This is an invitation to that landscape. Your body. In this first episode, I share what YINtentions is about the facets of the landscape that is our body's intelligence, and the invitation to traverse the stories women carry within them. We tell the stories we were told not to tell. We explore what becomes possible when a woman finally says the thing she was never supposed to say and trusts her body. Welcome. Come as you are. ~~~ Anna Teresa is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch - supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held. Subscribe to Yin Rhythms newsletter:

14. 

    14 Mar 2026

    Trailer - YINtentions

    Stories women were told not to tell. Unresolved. Unpolished. True. We don't fix anything here. We simply are with. Hosted by Anna Teresa. New episodes biweekly from Spring Equinox 2026.

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