Life
oh life
where to start?
Because I love to tell stories, I’ll start with the very basics of how I grew up to become, who I am now.
For those of you who don’t want to read the whole story …
I am a free spirited soul from Austria, who started to travel with 19, because all of my youth, I always felt like I don’t belong there. That’s where I discovered my love for surfing and later also snowboarding. My 20’s where spent working seasonal bar & service jobs, volunteer work and other odd occupations, all in order to surf, snowboard and travel as much as possible. When my health and my life were put upside down in 2021, I reluctantly moved back home, where I’ve been based since and where I’ve reconnected with my roots, my truth, my love for music, creating and serving a greater good. It’s been a truly transformative few years, leading me to where I am now and to this creation of the heart.
Also, I wouldn’t be where I am today, if it wasn’t for the continuous and tremendous support of my family!
My mum, who took me in without hesitation and who has always been there for me in so many uncountable ways.
My grandma, who gives what she has from the heart and without whom I would have really struggled financially over these last few years.
My sister and her partner, who have created an oasis for our little family community home, who bring life and joy into our garden, who share of themselves freely and I just count myself lucky to have had such beautiful inspiring beings as my neighbors.
My dad, who provided a studio for me to live in, when I desperately needed my own space, where I could just be with myself and find some peace and rest.
THANK YOU!!!
♡
Growing up
My full name is Julia Steinbacher, I was born and raised 1991 in Rankweil, a small town in a big, urban and industrial valley at the foothills of the majestic Alpes in western Austria. I grew up spending most of my childhood roaming around in the woods up in the mountains, where we had a holiday house. It was my biggest joy to pack my adventure bag with all the most important tools and research gear and to run off into nature. Not for the purpose of searching or understanding anything specific, just for the pure joy of roaming around outside and exploring. Clearly, I already dreamed about being a Naturalist, but as I later understood, not in the ‘traditional’ way.
I also had some little social and creative projects going on, collecting money for good causes with all kinds of handcrafted things and organizing a family benefit concert. I loved crafting, bringing people together, playing music, sharing my creations, inspiring and helping people in some way or another and the very first basic vision of having a kind of community/coffee/event location place one day, for all these things to come together, took on form within me.
As you can maybe already imagine, I was a cheeky wild and also a sensitive caring child. A social butterfly, thriving in leadership, but also a lone wolf at the same time, with a strong focus and dedication for the project at hand, jumping from one passion to the next and being an Individualist at heart, I was always incapable of following any path but my own.
…pictures coming soon ;)
A wide range of Hobbies marked my childhood. Obviously, I joined the Scouts, collecting badges and learning how to be a group leader, then I spent the winters on skies in the racing team and I started playing the clarinet with 6 years old, joining the brass band and later also learning the keyboard, then piano and saxophone in music high school. Summer camps also thought me some 5 chords bonfire guitar skills. By then, naturally, I dreamed about being a Singer/Songwriter and a Musician, but I never actually believed in myself. I did plan to study Music and Movement Education anyways though, preparing for the piano entrance exam already, before travelling changed everything for me and playing music disappeared completely from my life.
Livin’ the “dream”
With circumstances in my teenage years though, I distanced myself further and further away from my passions of loving to create, express and help. Alcohol became my new best friend, my rock and roll mask my protection and running towards a carefree dream life my only mission.
Even though the feeling of something missing, of feeling empty and lost inside and outside in the world, grew over the years, I am also beyond grateful for the richness of having lived life to the fullest, packed with adventures, crazy times, rock bottoms and sky rockets.
In the end, it was ‘Long-Covid’ - or a very physical spiritual awakening - and a serious case of a horrific Scabies Infection, that completely burned out the last bit of life force energy I’ve been running on and it had me crawling back home defeated on all fours. This is where my journey of healing and reconnecting with my roots and my truth began.
It wasn’t all bad though, don’t get me wrong. My new found love for surfing, travelling and snowboarding saved me on so many levels. I spent most of my 20’s doing seasonal work in Winterresorts as a Barkeeper, sometimes working other occasional odd jobs or volunteer work during the rest of the year. The goal was to work and spend the least and save the most money, in order to live a simple and free live and to have as much time as possible to spend on my Surfboard, Snowboard and Travelling.
My Healing Path
I started my first attempts to try and change my life around, to heal and reconnect to my truth and my dreams in 2019. Probably because I just returned from some pretty traumatizing years in California. I felt completely lost in the world and I knew that something needed to change. But as we humans are wired to resist the unknown, so did I. I felt stuck in the mess of a life that I’ve created for myself and I wanted to force change through pure willpower. So I tried to build towards a dream without actually having a solid foundation within me, without having my roots down deep and most of all, without believing and trusting in myself and into life. I was swimming in an ocean of stress, anxiety, overwhelm and frustration. Constantly running from my truth and from truly looking at myself.
Until July 2021, a Corona Infection changed everything for me. The constant stress and misalignment within my body could no longer be overrun by pure will power to continue. All life force energy was burned out and a feeling of not having the strength to go on with life anymore took over. I thank ‘LongCovid’ to this day though, for the forced physical awakening within me. It came hand in hand with a very memorable Full Moon night, that in hindsight, definitely was a spiritual awakening, that opened up the pandora box of everything that I’ve suppressed for so many years. It burst open and could no longer be ignored.
I spent months lying around more or less paralyzed, still refusing to return back home to Austria - I was living in Portugal at the time. When a scabies infection, that had me scratching myself bloody from head to toe all night, joined in on top and I literally felt like I’m becoming a zombie, I finally gave in and booked the next flight home, where my mum took care of me during the very excruciating long recovery from scabies.
As you can imagine, I was pretty broke. Physically, mentally and spiritually.
My completely water damaged 60’ mobile home, with all my belongings in it, was standing in Portugal, I had no job, no insurance, no ‘home’ or ‘live’ to go back to and my health situation turned into Chronic Fatigue/Long-Covid. The path to recovery was asking me to completely let go of everything. My life as it was, my love for surfing, snowboarding and all other sports and passions, my social life, my dreams and everything else I’ve identified myself with over the years. Every time I tried a little attempt to go back, I’d just crash again and go through yet another ego death. Only once I fully accepted my fate and found a solid foundation could I hold my energy and start to sustain myself. Which meant that I was relying on living at my mum’s house without paying rent, being dependent on government support, working only 2 half days a week, living off a minimum wage, pretty much not having a social life and not really doing any sports.
My days were filled with healing routines: Meditation, Gratitude, Breathworks, Visualizations, Somatic Awareness Practices, Color Healing, Chakra Cleansing, Prayers, Affirmations, Rituals, Sound Healing, Cold Showers, Sauna, Detox, Journaling, EFT, Shadow Work, Chi Kung, Qui Gong, SKY Yoga, Yin Yoga, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Fascia Release, Time in Nature, Tree Hugging, Earthing, walking, sunbathing, laughing, humming, singing, dancing ….
You get the picture…
What saved me on many levels, was my rediscovered passion for playing music. And actually, not having been able to constantly move was a blessing in disguise, because it deeply reconnected me with exploring my creative self-expression - the one that I’ve lost in my youth. Having been forced to stop moving, literally was just really what I needed, so that I finally stopped long enough to take a deep, deep look at myself - it’s like life didn’t give me another option anymore.
All together, it was almost 4 years though, until I finally felt the resilience and strength again to really start moving forward, to reconnect to my passion, to break free from all the limitations I’ve put on myself and my life and to tear down the walls that I’ve built to protect myself.
The emotional charges of anger, frustration and despair about the limited life I’ve been living for 4 years, became so big within me, that they needed to be channeled into something and I chose to harness that energy to spark up the flame of passion within me again.
2025 was a crucial year for me to reconnect with my dreams and to truly find deep healing through inspiring connections, groups, events, mandala circles, and a shamanic healing journey in a women's group mentoring. Through this, I started to integrate and deepen some practices, like dancing, tantric breaths, the medicine of the elements and a deepening of my rituals and routines, which was the key for me to fully come alive again.
So what really helped me off my spinning wheel in the end, was the amazing individuals who were a guiding hand to me, consciously or unconsciously. They were the solid ground, unshakable and strong in their connection, where I could come back to, when I lost my own. And through that, I would find back to my strength again too, again and again, until it also became strong and unwavering.
This is the frequency I am holding now.
To give other souls in need for support my hand, so that they don’t need to walk alone anymore
and to help them to reconnect to their own light again.