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Intuition training | Embodied Alchemy |  Business and Dream Actualization

I help creative entrepreneurs remember that business can be sacred: because the sky is your only limit here 🌞

I’m Ella, though I answer to Maya too. She/her or they/them.

I am the author of Journal to JOY. I am a coach, a movement specialist, an accredited Structural Integration practitioner, and someone who spent 20 years learning the hard way that you can’t separate your soul from your strategy without paying a price.

For over two decades, I danced across continents, from the Olympics Opening Ceremony to Sadler’s Wells and The Joyce Theater in New York.

I have choreographed large-scale commissions and directed Ella Mesma Company, trained in everything from Afro-Brazilian dance forms to breaking to aerial silks.

How about you?

By bridging the false divide between intuition and financial success, I guide creators to build businesses and live lives that are both wildly profitable and deeply authentic, proving that the path of joy is not just the most fulfilling route, but also the most practical one because it aligns us energetically to who we are and our true potential.

From Imposter to Centre Stage: My Journey to Joy

At rock bottom, going through a break-up and having lost my home in London, I felt like a complete failure at life. That’s when I found alchemy.

After learning to use intuition, I saw a completely different world open up. I retrained in kundalini yoga, studied trauma release, and followed embodiment practices. Slowly, my whole energy field shifted.

But the real turning point? I stopped separating different areas of my life from one another.

I realised the spirituality in my business leadership. I released the identity tied to my relationships and truly aligned with the vibration of what I wanted to create. And from there, everything transformed.

I learned that business can be a ritual. That setting boundaries is sacred work. That difficult conversations become beautiful when you stop avoiding them.

That’s the work I now do with others.

Stage your creative comeback:

This is for you if:

  • Procrastination is silencing your best ideas
  • Self-doubt is blocking your brilliance
  • Self-sabotage is strangling your potential
  • You’re navigating a relationship, career shift, or traumatic experience
  • You’re struggling to trust your vision
  • You’re feeling disconnected from your creative fire

I work with creative entrepreneurs and directors to unblock what’s holding you back, reconnect with your intuition, and turn creative frustration into creative freedom.

How I work?

Everything I do is somatic-first. Because your body knows before your mind catches up. Your body holds the blueprint for your wholeness

I don’t do hierarchical structures. I won’t tell you I have all the answers. I won’t make you dependent on me.

I do trauma-informed, collaborative coaching that treats you as the expert on your own life. My job is to hold space, ask great questions, provide tools and frameworks, and walk alongside you as you find your own way home to yourself.

You’ll get practical tools: for conflicts, to establish boundaries, planning templates… You’ll also get deep embodiment work: somatic practices, intuition training, shadow work, and nervous system regulation.

Because you need both.

My coaching combines the discipline of dance (structure, practice, showing up even when it’s hard) with the ancient wisdom of alchemy (transformation, turning lead into gold, the journey of becoming) and the healing power of embodiment (returning to the body, listening to what it knows, trusting your intuition).

Everything I deliver is in service of creative entrepreneurs and directors who’ve been told they need to choose between success and soul. Who’ve been running their businesses well but are feeling hollow. Who are ready for their next chapter but don’t yet know what it looks like.

My calling is creating electric moments where your purpose ignites, and in our spaces together, your creativity knows no bounds.↓

Check out my credentials

  • Published Author of Journal To JOY
  • Director of Ella Mesma Company (66 artists employed, £360k turnover)Certified TRE (Trauma Release Exercise)
  • Facilitator and bodyworker (Myofascial release & Rolfing)
  • 550hr Certified Yoga Teacher
  • MA in Dance (LCDS/Kent University)
  • Certified Wheel of Consent practitioner in training (Betty Martin)
  • 5 times Accredited Coach
  • Holistic Pelvic Care practitioner (Tami Kent)
  • Sekhem Level 1, Usui Reiki Master
  • Mental Health Awareness Training,
  • LGBTQIA+ Awareness Training,
  • Trauma Informed Training

 

A transformation that lasts a lifetime

A transformation that lasts a lifetime One of my most recent clients has created a 4-day work week, moved to Egypt, then India, and now spends her days off travelling and enjoying life while being paid the same salary as before. And this is just 1 example of our transformative work together in action.

Other clients have launched businesses, rebuilt relationships, and found the courage to pursue lives aligned with their deepest desires. The impact of what we do rarely stays neatly within our alchemy and embodiment coaching sessions. Instead, it spills out into every part of your life, giving you clarity and confidence to navigate life joyfully and purposefully.

Joy is calling, are you ready to take your first step towards it?

Let's Talk

“Ella is a wonderful, true and helpful soul who helps you connect with your heart and all your chakras.

She has many tools in her box and can gently help you find kindness and balance for yourself, nature, the universe and relationships along with anything other issues that are troubling you.”


DIANA PINEIRO, GODDXX PATH STUDENT

Bold values, big dreams and a whole lot of soul go into this work…

🌈Imagination as liberation

Creativity isn’t just about making. It’s about unlearning limits and dreaming bigger. I create spaces where you can push beyond who you’ve been told you should be and reconnect with your wildest visions.

✨Intuition in motion

Your body knows before your mind catches up. Coaching with me is about listening deeply to your body, intuition, and truth. Through reflection and intuitive guidance, we’ll rewrite old patterns so you can fully trust yourself and open your life to joy.

🦋Transformation through action

Change doesn’t come from waiting, it comes from choosing. Together, we turn insights into action, dreams into steps, and blocks into breakthroughs.

𖣂Honouring roots & legacy

The work we do isn’t just personal, it’s collective. Guided by the wisdom of those who came before us, we honour the cultural, spiritual, and creative lineages that shape our journey.

“I am so grateful for your energy & wisdom & I am so grateful for following my intuition to join your course in the first place

—it is just so beautiful.”

STELLA MCGOWAN

Honouring roots and acknowledging stories

I honour the courage of those who came before me. Their strength has shaped my being and life choices and given me wings to fly high and live out big dreams.

We can be sold a story of Love & Light that ignores the unequal world we live in so this is why I offer a tiered payment scheme to try to address the distribution of this work.

I believe true spiritual work is about looking at our own bias and the discomfort that colonialism and patriarchy create and considering how we work with awareness of our impact  so we can also create long term change (not only for ourselves but for future generations: this work is not just for our comfort, but for collective liberation).

I am deeply grateful for the practices and traditions that inform my work, from the dance forms rooted in the Afrikan diaspora to the ancient wisdom that guides my coaching. I acknowledge the painful history of colonialism and enslaved peoples that contributed to the creation of these diasporic dances and the resilience embedded in these cultural legacies.

I believe these teachings are the change because the people learning it then go out and create as conscious creatives… I strive to celebrate these legacies, create spaces for transformation, and invite others to reconnect with their own truths, striving for authenticity in everything I do, and ensuring that the power of these practices is honoured and upheld with care, reverence, and integrity. (Connect to my lineage here)

I also donate 10% of all Maya Gandaia Ltd earnings to 4 chosen charities: 

CARE: Poverty-fighting work around the globe. CARE place special focus on working alongside women because equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.

The Runnymede Trust: For over half a century, the Runnymede Trust has spoken truth to power on race and racism. Their work is rooted in building a more equitable and just future for our communities, one in which we all have the potential to thrive.

Mayekoo: A trusted crowdfunding platform connecting donors with registered and vetted social impact organizations across Africa. I currently donate to projects cleaning up the oceans that are being polluted by Western fast fashion

The Billion Trees Project: Supports the reduction of extreme poverty and restoration of healthy forests by employing local villagers to plant millions of trees every year.

Lineage

Of mixed Nigerian and white British heritage, with 20+ years in movement, 10+ years as a coach, I draw from ancestral and land traditions,  embodied movement and bodywork practices.

(Check out my training and lineage above)

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge my privileges, honour the cultures these practices come from, and share with you not as an authority, but someone transformed by these teachings. 

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  • © Maya Gandaia, 2025