My Mission
To guide individuals toward self-acceptance, unconditional self-love and personal transformation, by helping them garner the resilience to uncover their inner truth and master the courage to stand unapologetically in their authenticity.
Your path to Self Acceptance
About my Work
Hi, my name is Layla.
In 2023, I started Arla Care, a business to support people through Eating Disorder recovery and post-Eating Disorder recovery and I now work as a coach to men and women struggling with Body Dysmorphia, Eating Disorders, Coping Mechanisms and Sleep Issues.
My method draws upon the physical, emotional and spiritual practices I leveraged in my own recovery from 10-years of Eating Disorders alongside my skills & expertise as a meditation author & guide, certified Jivamukti Yoga teacher, chakra balancing facilitator focused on childhood trauma, and self-esteem & authenticity coach.
All of my knowledge and experience are streamlined into self-led programs, individualised 1:1 paths and group sessions.
When working with me, you will learn to nourish the body physically, emotionally and energetically to support organ health and hormonal balance, healthy emotional processing and to release stagnant blockages, pain and shame. We will focus on deep subconscious exploration for neural reprogramming, shadow work to unearth and bring light to the hidden aspects of Self, yoga practices to reconnect with the body and the subtle energy systems within, alongside meditation, journaling, breathing techniques, mantras, and more practices for nervous system regulation, Self-exploration, Self-acceptance and unconditional Self-love.
My Philosophy
The answers you seek are already within you.
They lie in your joy, in your pain, in your fear, in your shame.
The only thing standing in your way is your openness to see and accept the Truth.
If you are ready, I am here to guide you.
My path to Self Acceptance
About me
At the start of 2021, I was on my knees, looking at myself in the mirror in my Tribeca apartment in New York City.
I looked into my eyes. I had heard of tapping, so I took my finger and tapped between my eyebrows. "This is it", I said to myself as I stared at my reflection. "5 years from now, things will be different". Nothing happened…
I was 27. I had been struggling with an eating disorder since I was 17 and was stuck in the loop of anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating and over-exercising. Except, it didn't look like it from the outside. I had a completed an Ivy League education with 3.9 GPA from Barnard College, Columbia University, I worked at Estée Lauder Companies in Product Marketing, I had friends, men were interested in me... everything looked great.
But truly, I was unhappy, I felt alone in the world and I hated myself. Professionally, I felt bored, stuck and had no goals. Financially, I was trying to keep up with my New York lifestyle. Romantically, my relationships were dysfunctional, unhealthy and characterised by an inability to express emotions and to access vulnerability. Overall, I was lost, unable to feel or process my emotions, seeking to hide from it all through food obsession, over-exercising, shopping, partying, drinking, socialising and dysfunctional relationships.
NYC, 2021.
Little did I know, I had started to shift my life 1 year prior (with the start of Covid19) when I began to meditate. Little did I know, adding 1 minute every few days, journaling my thoughts, overcoming a heartbreak, spending time alone for the first time in forever, had initiated a radical neural change that was gradually intensifying to a snowball effect.
But on that day, sitting in front of the mirror, that's when things really accelerated. I had accepted where I was, accepted that I didn’t want to be there and decided to take my life back. Within 6 months I left New York to go home (Rome) and focused all my efforts on healing myself from my Eating Disorder day-by-day, on my own, as I continued working remotely for the U.S.
It was challenging, very challenging. I had tried therapists with no success for years and had now realised, it is only I who can really heal myself. Because it had been so easy for me to pull therapists into the deceitful story I had been telling myself. “My life is fine, albeit some drama here and there… let’s talk about that”. I had a hard time finding someone who shared my experience, and I didn’t like being looked at from the outside, from above. I felt judged. I judged myself. I was afraid.
Plus, I didn’t “look” sick. I smiled, was energetic, very social and had a strong value system that made me opinionated, determined and confident.
I had been lying to myself for so long, convincing myself that the surface of my life was the truth of who I am, that it made it so easy to present this picture to others. And they believed it.
Paris, Summer 2020.
One of my first drawings, objectively studying my body.
As I started to look, now with the primary goal of relieving my pain, for the first time I began to see. Through Shadow Work, Inner Child work, deep subconscious exploration, I unearthed everything and put it on the table, reviewed it, dissected it, pulled it apart and analyzed it further. As I saw the truth, I realized I could hide from therapists, but I couldn’t hide from myself. I realized I had never actually successfully lied to myself, I had just ignored myself.
I was afraid of what it would take, of what would change, of what would fall apart. But I was falling apart anyway in the meantime. So I decided to change, I decided to tell the truth. And I did.
I began to draw parts of my body and to free-writing all my thoughts, all for the purpose of putting face-to-face the truth of who I was inside and out.
As I allowed my truth to make its way to me, I began to understand where I wanted to go, and began to realize that the answers that I was looking for outside of myself were actually within.
The truth is that, no matter how convincing the lies I told myself and others were, there was one thing I couldn’t conceal: my emotional and physical pain. Deep down, I knew about the lies, and when I started scratching away the surface, I finally saw them. “I am confident”, that was a lie – my confidence rested upon my achievements. “I am smart”, I didn’t believe that – I needed to show I knew everything. “I am pretty”, I hated how I looked – I used men, clothes, keratin to find validation. “I am healthy”, I wasn’t – I was scared of bread and binged on apples. “I am balanced”, I was the opposite – I injured myself badly from over-running and couldn’t walk for weeks. “I am free, I don’t want to be tied down”, this wasn’t true – I wanted love but was afraid of being stuck, afraid of someone finding out my secrets, of finding out I was living a lie, resented my parents and that I didn’t actually have the perfect life I tried to show.
One of the many selfies looking not happy.
Hosting my first yoga retreat with my best friend. Dec 2022.
With these new thoughts in my heart, I moved to Paris in 2022. The theme of this chapter was “rebuilding”. I was scared, but I no longer felt lost. I felt free. I was like a toddler making its way across a marble floor, wobbling and falling every few steps. I was learning to feed myself again, learning to balance my hormones after not having a menstrual cycle for 7 years and removing my IUD, learning to regulate my nervous system after years of chronic stress and fatigue and learning to respect myself, have compassion for myself, love myself. No, this wasn’t easy either. I stumbled a lot, fell back on different coping mechanisms, struggled to manage my newly awakened taste buds and continued to navigate shame, guilt and the temptation to give up.
In Paris, though, I found what I didn’t have in New York. I found a way to nurture myself through practices that brought awareness to my mind and body. I found beautiful friends with whom I could share vulnerability. I found a community of likeminded people who shared my beliefs on how to respect the body, the mind and the soul, who aimed to continuously expand their relationship with themselves and who faced the challenges of inner growth with grace. I found people who responded with openness and understanding when I shared my story. But, more than anything, I found people who shared my story. Here, in Paris, I realised that I was not alone. I had never been alone. And I realised I wanted everyone who was struggling like I did, like I still was, to know that. I planted the seed.
Today, three years after the mirror scene, I have not only eradicated any trace of my Eating Disorder, but that I eradicated and continue to work on managing the subconscious belief systems and patterns that were at the root : perfectionism, people pleasing, emphasis on being high achieving, fear of not being good enough, difficulty maintaining boundaries, desire to be someone I am not and so on.
Today, I am 30. I have traveled for the last 2 years and now live between a small tropical island in Thailand and Rome. I have healed my relationship with myself, with my parents and with the world around me. My life feels expansive, free and directed towards my authentic goals.
I am completely sober and free of all substances that before I depended on in order to feel. Within myself, I find empathy, compassion, love and respect as I guide my life in the direction of highest authenticity and purpose. My relationships are healthy, deep, based on vulnerability and a desire to work through difficult conversations. Financially, I have deep-cleaned my value system and understood my relationship to status, money and validation. Professionally, I am embracing my story to serve others.
I did it alone, you don’t have to.
In Rome. Home. 2023.