Not therapy.
I’m not a therapist, and the Lab doesn’t replace therapy. It’s a group experience, not a treatment.
The Liberation Lab
Nice.
Helpful.
Quiet.
And exhausted.
You’re not the problem. You just learned your lesson very well: to be loved, it was better not to be a bother. It protected you for a long time. Today, it’s costing you.
The Lab is 2 hours for your body to unlearn holding everything in. By moving, by creating, with others. Not just by talking and intellectualising.
Come as you are.We’ll take care of the rest.
The bodyMovementCreationThe group
If one of these
sounds like you…
… the Lab is for you.
- You say “sorry” even when you’re the one being bumped into.
- You say yes while your whole body is screaming no.
- Your anger spills over, and a second later you’re blaming yourself.
- You sit down for 5 minutes and already feel guilty for doing nothing.
- You reread a message three times before sending it, afraid of being a bother.
- A criticism stays in your head for days.
- You smiled when you wanted to scream.
- You know exactly what other people need. For yourself, no idea.
- At home, rest has to be earned.
- You’ve been told you’re “too much”. Too sensitive, too intense, too everything.
So,
why?
Because as a child, love seemed to come with conditions. A feeling too strong, and you were scolded or ignored. Good, obedient, never complaining, and you were praised. So to be sure of being loved, you adapted to others. Your body did too.
- Anger became dangerous. So you swallow it, and blame yourself as soon as it spills over.
- Rest became laziness. So you’re only worth something when you’re producing.
- Other people’s eyes became a verdict. So you watch yourself, all the time.
- Taking up space became being a bother. So you make yourself small, and apologise for everything.
Knowing where it comes from is a start. It doesn’t undo anything. What the body has learned, the body has to unlearn.
Your head and your body
are one system.
When you’re afraid, your heart speeds up, your stomach knots, your shoulders rise. It’s not “all in your head”. It’s your nervous system switching to alert mode. Normal, that’s its job.
The problem is when the alert never comes down. Swallowed anger, constant “sorry”, rest forbidden: your body stays tense. And a tense body sends the head a single message: danger. The loop keeps turning. You overthink because you’re tense, you’re tense because you overthink.
“Somatic” comes from the Greek soma, the body. A somatic approach is simply that: starting from what the body feels to break the loop. Moving, shaking, breathing out, making noise, creating with your hands. The body releases, the alert comes down, and the head follows.
Talking to a therapist helps. Really. But talking isn’t everything. You can understand your whole story and still have a clenched jaw. Words go through the head. The Lab goes through the body. The two work very well together.
What the Lab
is not.
Not a talking group.
You don’t have to unpack anything. No one will ask for your story.
Not about belief.
You don’t need to buy into anything. We start from what your body feels, right here, right now.
Not a dance class.
You move however you like. No one is checking whether it looks pretty.
So,
what do we do?
In practice, for 90 minutes to 2 hours, we move, create and share as a group. Why? Because what your body has been holding for years doesn’t leave by thinking about it. It needs a way out.
And doing it in front of others changes everything. You take up space, you let your anger out, you stop without producing anything. And you notice that no one leaves.
- 01
We move.
We shake, we stretch, we stamp our feet if we need to. The body releases what it has been holding for months. Sometimes years.
- 02
We create.
Colour, texture, scribbles. You give shape to what has no words. Zero talent required, promise.
- 03
We connect.
The group is the magic part. You realise you’re not the only one carrying things. And that alone already lightens the load.
What people say
afterwards.
I don’t promise miracles. I’d rather let you read the words of those who came.
“Thank you again Grace for this space you offer us to free ourselves and come back into our bodies!”
“Powerful session this morning… Almost no pain during the session… The awakening is surprising… There’s still work to do…”
“Since our session, my back pain has only been decreasing! […] I felt a clear improvement after our letting go. Thank you!”
Testimonials translated from French.
My story
I was a good
little girl too.
Grace Anh Dao
I never lived with my father. But his fragmented presence was enough to make me good, docile, careful not to make waves.
To follow what he told me to do, right down to what I studied.
With my mother, I had to read the mood of the room. I knew when to make myself small, when to be useful. I adapted. From a very young age, I had to take care of others.
I dreamed of journalism, or of being an artist like my mother. I ended up in finance, because no one knew how to listen to me, and because it reassured everyone around me. Ten years close to trading floors, a world where I never felt I belonged, and where I played a character.
At 33, I lost my mother, after four years of illness. The biggest shock of my life. And my first reflex? Hold it together. For days, I organised everything, from the paperwork to the funeral.
I died at that moment. But it was the most transformative of deaths. It led to the most beautiful rebirth: the one where I finally allowed myself to discover who I am.
My father was never really there. At 43, he ghosts me completely. But I’m learning to stop waiting for his approval to exist.
And that rebirth wasn’t the last. Grief, moves, motherhood, radical lifestyle changes: I’ve lived through several deaths, and as many rebirths. Each one brought me a little closer to who I really am. From Paris to Asia, from Lisbon, where I became a doula and a mother, to a village in the Pyrenees.
Since 2020, I’ve been supporting people. Not by telling them what to do, but by helping them listen to what their body already knows. And I understood something ten years of finance had never taught me: the body knows how to let go. You just have to stop asking it to hold on.
Highly sensitive, multipotentialite, neurodivergent. For a long time people found me “too much”. Today, that’s exactly what I bring to my workshops.
The Liberation Lab is the space I wish I had found sooner.
In
practice.
The Lab sets up wherever it’s invited: festival, retreat, group, company, association.
8Labs already led, as workshops in the Pyrenees and at the Bánh Mì Women Festival.
- DURATION
- 90 min to 2 h
- GROUP
- Up to 20 people
- AUDIENCE
- Everyone, or women only
- LANGUAGES
- French · English
For organisers
In a programme full of talks and concerts, the Lab is the moment your audience stops consuming and starts living something.
People don’t leave with notes. They leave with a feeling in their body, and the urge to talk about it. That’s the memory they link to your event.
Does your audience need
to breathe?
You’re organising a festival, a retreat, something collective. Write to me. I bring the Lab, you take care of the venue, and we handle the rest together.
Write to Grace