Who is Melissa Karagöz

I am a loving, caring, intelligent, fearless and adventurous woman. This also beautifully reflects the traits of how I was in my early years of life. After years of living in the suburbs and other busy city areas, I now rest in the nature-rich Ankeveen where my practice is also located.

I really feel at one with mother earth so I can be found in nature a lot. Meditations & barefoot walks are my favorite activities when I am in nature. In addition, I am in love with moving my body. Expressing my soul through yoga and dance are also af ew of my  favorite things to do. Every morning I start with yoga & I dance throughout the  whole day. I can often be found at (ecstatic) dance events because of this.

I also enjoy reading books, mostly non-fiction books that are about the exploration of the soul and energy. The fascinating thing about spirituality is that you never stop learning. Every time you think you know something, another hatch opens and you start at the bottom again.

I'm also a big fan of writing. Not only to reflect, but I've been writing poetry since I was young. It's an expression of my true self, but also really a form of trauma processing.

I am constantly working on my own development and cultivating a deeper connection with myself. I find it important to live my truth and in as free a way as possible. I would like to support others in this and therefore, at the age of twenty-two, I started my own company with the main goal of consciousness expansion.

The past and eductional background

My life has been quite the journey. Throughout this journey I have learned how to cultivate my self worth from the inside, because my external environment wasn't supplying it. I was a very bright, enthousiastic and happy kid. This kind of dimmed down when the bullying started at the age of 6 and the abuse at home started at the age of 9. I would like to say that the period from the age of 9 to 17 has been a very rough period in my life. With a unstable home environment and no social life I have not really been able to cultivate my self worth at that time. I did learn how to fake it until you make it, which if it takes 8 years to make it can break you more from the inside.

I started my nursing education in 2015 at MBO. When I got stuck in the second year, the study began to interest me less. Guiding and supporting someone's personal processes attracted me more. I then completed my Personal Counselor training in the following 2 years. Due to my early start in mental healthcare, I have over 8 years of experience in counseling & caring for vulnerable people. From this I have learned a lot and have grown a long way. However, I do feel more and more that the vision of the symptom treatment of mainstream health care clashes with my values.

In 2017 I left my parental home in search of my own freedom, I met new people who contributed greatly to my self-development, and shortly thereafter my craving for spiritual development arose.
At first I had started doing things like meditation, learning about chakras, reading many books and embarked on the brave mission of trauma processing. Which in the New Age spiritual movement is also called "Shadow Work." Looking at the deeper facets of yourself that have been pushed deep into your subconscious by trauma and ego is an intensive journey that I am still working on today.

In 2022 I also completed my Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and my Holistic Massage training. I did notice that I still learn better when I am allowed to determine the course material myself so that I get the most out of the time I spend on my studies. In the past 7 years I have spent more than 1200 hours in self-study, not counting all the hours of energetic healing work.

I am still working on my self-development and learning more and more about myself. I think it is always important to keep growing in life and to keep challenging yourself in this on all levels. That is the wonderful thing about consciousness of being a multidimensional being.

You are infinite so you can develop infinitely.

That's why I started The Mayan. To help people in their journey to remember who they really are. At first I only did this through holistic massages and energetic therapy. Now I have expanded to giving plant medicine ceremonies, day retreats, guided group meditations at events, multidimensional coaching programs, conscious workshops at events & conscious dance events with Liberta.

My expierences with psychedelic and plantmedicine

Like many, I was secretly quite afraid of psychedelics. Even though I was slightly scared, I was also very intrested to the effets, because alcohol wasn't really doing it for me. When I was first introduced to LSD in 2016, I also just found it quite exciting. I had read up on it reasonably well, but knew that surrender was the most important thing. I distinctly remember how nice the experience was. Time passed tremendously slow, but I could find a kind of peace in it. Finally the rush in my head seemed to subside and I could see a broader perspective of my reality. My consciousness was expanded and my view of my reality was changed. In the years that followed, I experimented broadly with different types of psychedelics & plantmedicines. Different locations, different strains and different dosages.

The most beautiful experiences are at the psychedelic festivals abroad where I go every year. The set and setting is then the very best as the festival, nature and people are set up to support a consciousness-expanding experience. The conversations with total strangers, magical adventures across the festival grounds, intense dance parties & the big life decisions I have made at these festivals have made & brought me to where I am today.
Because of these experiences, I also started counseling at these festivals with an organization called Psycare. For several years I spent 8 days at Modem Momento festival in Croatia ensuring mental well-being with my 30 teammates for a festival of over 10,000 visitors. These were intense but wonderful experiences. As a result, despite never having had a bad trip myself, I was able to support others when they did. I learned from their experiences and was able to take better care of others and myself.

The time I really went into the dephts of my own psyche and my first bad trip was alone at home with a high dose of mushrooms. I had had only positive experiences with psychedelics for years and often ha trips alone. Even with very high doses in less pleasant settings I never had the experience of a bad trip. I am eternally grateful that it happened, though, as the lessons I learned from it contributed enormously to my personal development. During the bad trip I experienced an ego death and no longer understood reality. Time splashed apart and everything became too much. I felt like I didn't want to live anymore, as a sense of low self-worth engulfed me. In great panic, I had called a good friend and he came to help me right away. The 20 minutes it took for him to arrive seemed like 2 hours. Meanwhile I was sitting under a hot shower singing along with: " I Will Survive". When I hear this song now I burst out laughing. The reason for the bad trip soon came to me. If I want to guide others in their process, I should have experienced it myself once. It became more and more clear during the trip why what had happened had happened. Parts of myself that I had pushed away for a long time came to the surface, and when this all happens at the same time, the experience can be very overwhelming.
This also allows me to say that traveling alone with psychedelics is not for everyone. I have done many trips alone, but cannot always recommend this to people who are just starting out or have mental health issues.

Expert in addicitions

There is often something of a taboo when it comes to talking about addictions. While often everyone is addicted to something and it has become such a part of our identity that we consider it normal. It is just not normal or necessary to be dependent on certain substances and/or behavorial patterns.  To be able to see this and want to change it requires a kind of self-reflection which not everyone possesses yet.
I myself have been addicted to using marijuana, nicotine and caffeine for 7 years. I also had a fluctuating weekend addiction with using hard drugs and going to dance events. In the past year, I quit these addictions and other types of addictive behaviors without any problems and during one of the most difficult periods of my life. I did this because I really wanted to live differently. I wanted to be healthier, get more out of my life and be more in my own power. By applying my own formula that I coach in my From Dependence To Independence journey, I succeeded almost effortlessly.
I tell this story so that there is an authentic reflection of who I really am & have been. I personally always find it important that a teacher or coach can provide some form of perspective through their own experience in what they coach. What I have learned in school does not compare to what I have learned from my own expierence.

Why did I started with The Mayan?

I have always felt since I was little that I was put on earth to help people. I wanted the best for everyone, I have a lot of empathy towards others and just have a lot of love to share.
This is also why I have been working in healthcare for more than 8 years and did so with great love.
But my ideals, clash with those of mainstream healthcare. I want to get to the root cause of people's suffering and make sure they regain their full power. Remembering their true existence as a multidimensional being with a human experience takes the heaviness off many of your problems. Often it also offers the insight that many problems did not actually exist.

Through my experiences with plant medicine, psychedelics, mental health counseling and trip counseling, I want to offer people ceremonies, coaching and retreats where healing goes beyond this three dimensional level. I want to empower people and remind them of their self-healing abilities. So that we are not going to treat your symptoms, but the cause of all your problems.

I have also been lovingly going to dance events for more than 7 years. It attracts me tremendously to dance and I already did this as a little girl. Yet often at an event I felt I was doing more than just "moving." I was really working in my inner world and processing not only my own trauma, but also that of my ancestors. I always wanted to give this to others and therefore started the Conscious Movement workshop. I also organize dance events aimed at the experience of the holistic plane so that you leave the event healed and restored with more love for yourself.