Martina Varini: The Delicate Art of Healing

What has always struck me about Martina in the long time we’ve known each other is her ability to transform pain into possibility and knowledge. 

As I began exploring the body more deeply, I realized that surface-level explanations were no longer enough for me—medical diagnoses that fail to consider the impact of emotional life on health felt insufficient. I don’t believe true wellbeing can be achieved through mainstream wellness culture, despite how often it appears online.

Knowing one’s body is a lifelong journey, and nowadays it’s very difficult to be guided and to find one’s own path. Meeting Martina was like opening the doors to knowledge and exploration on a deeper, feminine, and grounded level.

First of all, I wanted to ask you how you would define your profession, since it’s hybrid and, in my opinion, impossible to fit into a single definition without being too limiting. So, what exactly do you do? What can people come to you for?

You’ve hit the nail on the head: there is no precise definition because what I do doesn’t yet have a name in our society. And perhaps, I don’t even want to give it one. Defining means boxing something in, making it static, while healing by nature is alive, fluid, and constantly evolving. 

Healing, for me, is an art. Just like the balance the body constantly seeks through allostasis: introducing a new food, emotion, or thought can change everything, and the organism reorganizes itself in search of a new homeostasis. Nothing is fixed.

Nothing can be. I feel that new generations have an evolutionary and creative need to bring forth the New, also as a revolutionary act against a culture that has dishonored the feminine principle and the body. My path arises from a search for balance that crosses multiple levels: the body, explored through naturopathy; the soul, through symbolic and occult arts; the spirit, through conscious breathwork and sound.

For this reason, I don’t feel represented by a label. I prefer to define myself as an explorer and seeker of that invisible force that operates in all living beings. I work in alternative medicine and healing as a process of reconnection between body, soul, and spirit. People who come to me often experience physical discomfort or a general sense of being lost that conventional medicine cannot explain or resolve because it treats symptoms without listening to the emotional, personal, and soulful history of the individual. Those who seek me are ready to explore their healing on multiple levels and take responsibility for knowing themselves more deeply. It’s a unique journey, just as authentic expression is unique to every human being.

What motivated you to study these holistic disciplines, and why do you think they should be rediscovered? Do you believe these disciplines are interconnected?

Pain motivated me. The pain of not feeling at home in my body and of having to depend on external factors to feel well. I remember my first menstruations, the pain that forced me to stay home for days, and the following years marked by medications and standardized responses. No one seemed to ask why that pain existed. I quickly understood that pain is the experience that unites all human beings. We cannot avoid it, but we can sit with it and listen. It is a message, a cry of the soul, the despair of someone who has lost contact with Love.

My family history played a central role. Growing up without my mother’s presence forced me to build a sense of security in my female body on my own. I share this because I deeply believe that our roots, even when painful, are the place from which healing is born. Looking at them without rejection means giving ourselves and others a chance to unlock hidden potential.

Holistic disciplines today are not a trend but a return. They are ancient knowledge resurfacing because they meet a real need: to reclaim our inner authority. They offer alternatives, integration, and above all, restore the individual’s ability to actively participate in their own healing. These disciplines are interconnected, just as the human being is. Nutrition, energy cycles, emotional states, symbols: everything is in dialogue. To understand this, we must reactivate our intuitive, symbolic, and creative thinking—that feminine part that the system has long atrophied.

What is your personal approach and vision of healing? Do you believe it can be unique for everyone, or is there a method? If you have a method, what is it?Martina:

Healing is not a destination but an endless process. It is the ability to move through life with greater awareness, trust, and lightness, releasing the burdens we inherit—including those inscribed in generational memory. For me, healing means awakening consciousness, expanding perspective, and recognizing the existence of a subtle intelligence operating beyond our ideas of good and evil. It is an expansion without limits. Often crisis, illness, or discomfort are not enemies but thresholds—necessary contractions that allow access to a new level of experience.

The body thus becomes the faithful messenger of the unconscious, serving evolution. I don’t believe in a replicable method. Every path is unique. The only true method is deep listening, intuition, and the ability to feel what the other person brings. From this arises an integrated approach that draws on various disciplines to meet individual needs.

Do you believe that how we live our feelings and emotional regulation impact our health?

Martina: Absolutely yes. Today, thanks also to modern science, we know that repeated thoughts and emotions actually create neural pathways in the brain. When we constantly live in states of stress, fear, or alertness, the body releases hormones like cortisol, which keep the organism in a “fight or flight” mode. If this state becomes chronic, the immune system weakens, inflammation increases, muscle tension builds, and digestive and cardiovascular disorders arise. This is how stress turns into psychosomatic illness.Conversely, emotions like gratitude, joy, and safety activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for regeneration, rest, and healing processes. In this sense, changing our inner state becomes fundamental to transforming the physical reality of the body as well. Since working directly on the psyche can be complex, the body becomes a privileged gateway: through breath, movement, nutrition, and self-regulation practices, we can profoundly influence our emotional and mental balance.

A very concrete example concerns digestion: if we eat in a sympathetic state—under stress, hurried, tense—the body is not physiologically able to digest properly, even if the food is high quality. Digestion, nutrient assimilation, and regeneration only happen when we are in a parasympathetic state. This applies to every care practice: it’s not just what we do, but in what internal state we do it.Learning to consciously enter a state of relaxation and presence becomes an essential skill for health. And this is where, in my opinion, an integrated practitioner can offer fundamental support: guiding the person to recognize their internal state, to reactivate the parasympathetic system through body, breath, nutrition, and energy tools, creating the conditions for the body to do what it does best: self-regulate and heal.This deeply concerns the female body, which is naturally cyclical. For centuries, we have been taught to live as if our bodies were not cyclical, forcing them into constant, linear, productive rhythms. The nervous system pays the price.

Many states of tension, irritability, or collapse are nothing but the result of failed self-regulation, but also of a denied permission to slow down, to withdraw, to enter the contraction phase that each cycle naturally requires. Learning to enter the parasympathetic state also means reclaiming an ancient feminine wisdom that the body has never forgotten.

What is your vision of the body? Do you believe it has a spiritual dimension?

For me, the body is the sanctuary of the soul. It is the sacred space through which the spirit can experience life. Taking care of it is not just an act of wellbeing but a true spiritual practice. The body is our home. It is the vessel that makes human experience possible, and the quality of care we offer to it directly reflects in our inner state.Learning to love our bodies means learning to love who we are, our story, and our roots—the being that inhabits us.

There is no separation between physical wellbeing and inner balance. How we treat our body every day—in rhythms, nutrition, rest —tells the story of our relationship with life.I believe that caring for the body, especially the female body, is a profoundly revolutionary act in a culture that imposes unnatural rhythms disconnected from biological cycles. Choosing alternative paths requires courage, but often it is from that refusal of what is harmful that new existential creativity is born.The female body holds a memory that has been repressed for centuries. The menstrual cycle, and especially the blood, have been portrayed as something impure to hide or eliminate, when in fact they represent one of the highest expressions of vital force.

This repression is not neutral: when a part of the body is demonized, the psyche also fragments. Recognizing the body as a sanctuary also means reconciling what has been exiled, restoring dignity to what has been called the “shadow.”In this vision, illness is not an enemy but a messenger: the organism’s most intelligent attempt to regain balance in a situation of disharmony. Changing our view of illness opens the possibility of a deeper understanding of ourselves.

What impact does nutrition have on our mental and energetic health?

Nutrition has a central impact on our mental, emotional, and energetic health.Psychoneuroendocrinoimmunology (PNEI) is a scientific model studying the interconnection between psyche, nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system, definitively overcoming the mind-body split.

This approach confirms the crucial role of the gut microbiota and food as main regulators of internal balance. Stress alters the bacterial flora, as does industrial and standardized nutrition, while more conscious nutrition can deeply support mental health.In my personal journey, I have experienced how gut wellbeing influences mental clarity, energy, and emotional stability. When the body is nourished with living, vital foods suited to one’s constitution, the mind also becomes clearer and more present.

A healthy gut strengthens the whole organism and makes it easier to navigate difficult emotional states. Body and mind are not separate: they support each other in a continuous dialogue.

What role does creativity play in healing?

We are born from an act of creation, and throughout our lives, we unconsciously seek to reconnect with that origin. Creativity is the language through which life continuously renews itself. Healing is a creative act. Every healing journey is unique, just as the expression of every human being is unique. No two irises are alike: diversity is the signature of creation.

Creativity allows us to transform the meaning of painful experiences, to turn what appears as a limit into possibility. It is the alchemical process of turning lead into gold: the ability to generate meaning, vision, and transformation.In my personal experience, using creativity is an attempt to reunite, to draw closer to the creative source that brought us into being. Pain, perhaps, is nothing other than the sensation of distance and separation from that source that created Life.

Through creativity, we enter a dimension similar to play, where time suspends and the rigidity of ordinary life softens. It is in that space that insights, profound changes, and new inner realities become possible. It is in that creative space that we can be reborn.

What is your relationship with intuition? Do you believe it is important to help develop this ability in the people you work with?

Intuition is the core of all my work. I rediscovered it first through the body, thanks to naturopathic purification practices, bioenergetic nutrition, and deep listening to my needs.By purifying the body from physical toxins, I experienced an emotional and mental cleansing as well. My senses became more receptive, my palate more refined, my perception more subtle. I began to feel the body guiding me, showing me what it needed beyond rational thought. From there, my path opened to subtler dimensions: meditation, conscious breathing, and sacred sound. These tools, integrated with naturopathy, awaken an ancient and ever-present inner knowledge.

Supporting the awakening of intuition in the people I work with has become my mission. It means guiding them to know themselves from within, to reconnect with their inner voice. It is an act of deep liberation because it restores to the human being the trust to navigate from their own Self, rather than from external conditioning. 

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Photography by Catia Simoes