Claire's Journey
Hi, my name is Claire Poho and I am obsessed with cultures, languages, and communication. I consider it my mission in this lifetime to help the world become more connected, by improving intercultural communication and cooperation.
Setting off
Though the bohemian in me wouldn’t let me live a boring life: I did the smart thing and studied at the world’s leading universities, but to sprinkle it with some adventure, I spread it throughout four different countries. I started law school in Paris, in my last attempt to be a good, studious girl, but soon realized I was living somebody else’s dream, dropped out, fled Paris, and moved to China indefinitely.
I planned to get a degree from the country’s most prestigious institution, learn Mandarin to fluency, and land a cozy job with a fancy international organization.
The universe had a different plan.
In January 2020, after my first semester in Beijing, I packed my little carry-on and set off to trek the jungles of Indonesia for a few weeks. The rest is covid history:
I never made it back to Beijing and didn’t see my belongings for 26 months.
My journey of spiritual awakening coincided perfectly with my Covid journey, which, ironically, had me travel around the world. Unintentionally, I became a nomad and the course of my life was forever altered.
The night before I left Beijing, two things happened. First, I discovered a breathwork and meditation technique. I wasn’t a meditator, but the topic had recently gotten my attention. When I heard about this modality, I was so fascinated that I immediately sought to connect with the community. Someone reached out and invited me to a retreat in Bali.
I was a self-supporting student and going on retreats was not exactly in my budget. However, the retreat’s topic of releasing stuck emotions from the body piqued my interest, so I jumped on a call with the facilitator and shared that my resolution for the year that just started was to learn how to control my emotions – they were too distracting!
She started laughing at me!
“Honey, you can’t control your emotions!“
I was annoyed! And intrigued.
At the retreat, I felt very challenged. I thought I didn’t have emotions! At a sharing circle halfway through, when everyone expressed how they felt, I said: “I think I still don’t know how to feel.”
The second thing that happened before I left Beijing was that I started talking to a guy who, coincidentally, happened to spend his day practicing another type of breathwork and meditation. We continued chatting on my trip and he told me about an expedition he would be undertaking in my home country.
I had a Human Design reading at the retreat and was advised to follow my excitement wherever it led me, even if it made no sense. I was unable to return to covid-struck China, so that’s what I did. I took a chance and flew across the world through 5 countries – only to never meet this guy!
And so, just before covid hit the world, I found myself in Europe, where I was meant to be.
​
The Journey
In lockdown, I dove deep into breathwork, personal development, meditation, yoga, ancient wisdom, trauma healing, the mind-body connection, energetics, vibration, and frequency.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Through podcasts, I found my future mentors who spoke about all these things. I was hooked; I may have listened to some 200 episodes in 4 months.
I wondered who I could become if I joined their coaching programs – which were completely out of my reach financially. I was a student ousted out of my dorm in China, squatting in a friend’s furniture-less flat for free!
Eventually, I understood that if I wanted to drastically change my life for the better, I would need to make choices that would be drastically different from my previous modus operandi. So, I decided that I could afford it, jumped off a massive cliff into the unknown–and never looked back.
In 2020, as I binged on the podcast from my dad’s bed while he slept on the sofa for three months, the wisdom, integrity, and depth of my future mentors blew my mind with every word they spoke.
​
In 2023, as I decided to start my own coaching business, after 3 years of learning how to feel, healing, growing, and finding my own voice, it was I who blew my own mind, as I realized I had become not only being a coach within their organization, but also their friend and equal.
The best part? I knew that was just the very beginning. I decided that I was ready to take the world. Where could I get in three more years?
There are no limits.
For me or for you. Where could you get in three years? Who could you become? What could you experience, feel, and do in the world?
There is only one way to find out – follow your excitement, take some radically different choices than you have until now, and jump off some cliffs into the unknown just like I did back then. I’ll hold your hand – if you let me.
The Feminine
These coaching programs transformed my life from the inside out. I was dedicated to my transformation. I dove into the darkest depths of my psyche. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know.
It was not for long that I realized that this program only, as broad and universal as it was, was not enough for me.
You see, I noticed that all my mentors, coaches, and role models until then were men.
Soon I would understand that this spoke volumes about how I felt about the feminine: i.e., as nothing worth looking up to.
I stumbled upon a summit of female speakers and found myself feeling dismissive, irritated, perhaps even disgusted by these female entrepreneurs and thought leaders leaning into their power and preaching about their womanhood and even sexuality!
Luckily, at that point, I had learned enough to know that if I was feeling so triggered by someone or something, it meant it was an area of life that most needed my attention!
I realized how much I had rejected my femininity, sensuality, sexuality, emotionality, and my body. I had rejected womanhood, and because a woman I was, I had rejected myself.
I didn’t just lean into the discomfort; I dove in headfirst! I swam through intense feelings of discomfort and inappropriateness, pushed through, and signed up for coaching programs about female embodiment, pleasure, and eroticism. The fear and discomfort made me sick for days and had me shrink with a sense of shame and wrongness when I thought about what I was getting myself into.
Rupture to Rapture
The reclamation of the feminine is a process of rupture and rapture: you’ll burst out of your shell and as you allow yourself to step into your fullness, claim your space and your expression, and lean into softness and receptivity, you’ll discover that you are able to experience immense and intense pleasure.
For me, it’s been a long, gradual, and uncomfortable process of learning about emotions, the physical and psychological symptoms of emotions and old energy being stuck in the body, healthy ways of emotional expression, my body, the natural cycles, emotional alchemy, practices which move energy and reintroduce vitality throughout the body, tantra, the power of erotic energy, i.e. our life force and creativity, and so much more.
It is a painful process to lean into the depths of what has been forsaken by the patriarchy, the male-dominated church, and political and justice systems.
It is hard to reclaim that which has been rejected by the entire society, including its women, who had forgotten and simply did not know any better.
The reclamation process involves deep grief, rage, sadness, empathy, love, ecstasy, and everything else in between.
It is not a journey for the faint of heart. But it yields delicious fruits. Will you dare embark on it?
Yin and Yang
The masculine and the feminine are two opposing principles, synonymous with yang and yin, respectively. In a patriarchal world, we know all about the masculine: we are all too familiar with the hustle culture which tells us to do, do, do and be more productive, structured, rational, and strong. It tells us that giving is more valuable than receiving. Masculine spirituality, reflected in the main religions we know, looks above towards the sky and the petty man that sits in the sky and judges us all. It worships the immaterial and formless and promotes emptiness and stillness.
Except for the idea of a judgmental god, there is nothing wrong with any of the above. There is nothing wrong with the opposites of these things either. We have lived in a yang-dominated world for too long, lost balance, and run ourselves to overdrive. It’s time we learn to worship the feminine as well: it’s time to learn how to just be. It’s time to learn again how to rest and restore our energy, how to be more spontaneous and flexible, how to be soft, emotional, intuitive, and loving – rather than hostile and competitive – to everyone around us, including strangers! It’s time we stop thinking that being on the receiving end is wrong or weak.
It’s time that we, especially as women, stop worshiping only what’s up above and direct our gaze back down: back to ourselves and our bodies and down to the earth, which is just as sacred as the mysterious immaterial emptiness above. As women especially, we are so intrinsically connected to the earth and mother nature. Natural cycles influence us on the daily, as we are an inseparable part of these systems.
Tapping into the feminine wisdoms is beneficial for male-bodied people as well. Just like us women have been benefiting from embodying yang energy, which helps us take action and stand strong, so can men benefit from learning how to embody more yin energy, which is essential for us to be able to relax and heal, receive blessings, and connect with others on a deep level. If you are a male being interested in working with me but unsure how that might look, please do get in touch.
Feminine Embodiment
While the masculine tends towards stillness and emptiness, the feminine is all about fullness and dynamism. The feminine path is one of embodiment, which can take different forms.
I have tried sitting still and patiently waiting for energy to process through and leave my body. It didn’t work for me so well. My body is very dynamic and more often than not, releasing stuck emotions and energies from my body requires shaking or trembling, moving in various ways, sighing, crying, stretching my muscles or making sounds.
It is so healthy to express ourselves and allow our body’s innate wisdom to take over and move energy in intuitive ways, which our rational brains could not think of! In this way, we are able to liberate ourselves of unpleasant feelings or old energies so much faster!
For these reasons, the dynamic parts of my workshops focus on moving energy through and out of the body via breath, sound, and movement — which can include yoga, qi gong, dance, exercise, rolling on the ground, shaking or screaming into pillows!
I have various tools up my sleeve and will likely use my intuition to guide you through your experience. I mix up movement with energetic practices, quiet space holding, emotional alchemy, working with archetypal energies, frequency therapy, mindset work and traditional coaching, breathwork, tantric practices, various meditation styles, and guided visualizations to help my clients break away from what’s keeping them stuck and unwell.
I believe you too are meant for more:
Feel more. Love more! Live more!
Do you?
