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Transcending Trauma: One Woman’s Journey to Enlightenment with Alina Panteleev

Alina’s remarkable journey from the constraints of Soviet Ukraine to spiritual enlightenment reveals how profound...

Last updated 27 June 2025
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Alina’s remarkable journey from the constraints of Soviet Ukraine to spiritual enlightenment reveals how profound suffering can transform into extraordinary wisdom. 

Born into poverty under communist rule, her early years were marked by material deprivation and the absence of spiritual frameworks. At just six years old, a traumatic experience at a communist camp effectively silenced her authentic voice for decades. Life took another dramatic turn when her family suddenly uprooted to Israel during wartime, where gas masks and bomb shelters became their new reality.

As a coping mechanism, the young Alina threw herself into tennis, becoming one of Israel’s top players by thirteen – an achievement her perpetually absent mother never witnessed. Her teenage years spiraled into rebellion following the family’s move to Canada, culminating in substance abuse, running away at sixteen, pregnancy, and eventual addiction alongside her older boyfriend.

The turning point came at twenty-seven when her body could no longer sustain the damage from years of substance use. With the same determination she once applied to tennis, Alina committed herself to spiritual seeking. Through yoga, meditation, and disciplined practice, she experienced a Kundalini awakening that led to what she describes as enlightenment by age thirty.

Today, Alina teaches “embodied enlightenment” through her Soul Fire Rising Academy. Her approach uniquely integrates awakening to our true nature beyond ego identity, discovering authentic purpose, and processing repressed emotions through somatic healing practices. Having conquered her greatest dragon – the fear of being herself – she guides others to transcend suffering without bypassing it.

This powerful conversation reveals how even the most challenging beginnings can become the foundation for profound spiritual insight and service. What dragons might you need to slay with compassion to discover your own authentic expression?

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Transcending Trauma: One Woman's Journey to Enlightenment with Alina Panteleev

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Presenter

Malcolm Stern

Malcolm Stern has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 30 years. He was a co-founder of Alternatives at St James’s Church in London and runs groups internationally.

He is the author of Falling in Love / Staying in Love (Piatkus 2004) and Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020). He co-presented Channel 4’s relationship series, ‘Made for Each Other’ in 2003 and 2004 and sailed on the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ with Greenpeace in the 1980s. The book he is currently writing is an exploration of the shadow and its necessity in our evolutionary development.

Slay Your Dragons Podcast

To become equal to the dream sewn within us, our heart must break open and usually must break more than once. That’s why they say that the only heart worth having is a broken heart. For only in breaking can it open fully and reveal what is hidden within.” – Michael Meade

This is a series of podcasts based on the premise explored in Malcolm Stern’s acclaimed book of the same name, that adversity provides us with the capacity to develop previously unexplored depths and is , in effect , a crucible for self reflection and awareness. Malcolm lost his daughter Melissa to suicide in 2014. It slowly dawned on him over the following few years that he was being educated and an opportunity was being presented where new insights helped him forge a path through his grief and despair. As part of that cathartic journey, he wrote “ Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020 ) where he was able to describe some of the practices that had helped him shed light on a way through the darkness.