Eleonora Ricci, What Does This Moment Need?
Episode Overview
In this episode, Eleonora Ricci, an embodied coach based in Amsterdam and founder of Peace by Piece Coaching, talks about leaving six years at Nike. She left not because something broke, but because she wasn’t sure she had ever belonged there, and she describes what she found when she turned towards her body. We talk about what it is to be the calm, easy-going one who gets taken for granted, how a movement practice became the way she finds her people, and what the fear of loneliness does in the body. Running through it is a quiet push and pull: the pace that pushed her out of a corporate path, the pull towards teachers and movers who share her intention, and the pull inward when “I’m not enough” takes over. The conversation ends in the Arctic dark, on a polar-winter hike in Norway, with the question that stayed with her: what does this moment need?
What We Cover
Growing up in a small village, dreaming of the city, and why a stable, supported, “ordinary” story turned out to be the ground she could change from, even as she wondered whether she had ever belonged in the corporate path she followed for six years
Being the calm one: how a naturally slow, easy-going way of being (always the last one out of the volleyball changing room) left her feeling taken for granted at work, and what shifted when the people around her acknowledged it.
Why yoga, and then a movement practice, was the biggest turn in her life, and how it became the way she finds her people, in workshops where nobody is defined by age, job title or where they come from.
Learning through other people’s lives: what generous teaching looks like compared with teaching that feels robotic or defensive, and how “I don’t know” can be said with excitement rather than shame.
Bridging what the body says and what the mind says, and how that quiet intuition tells her who she wants to learn from and be around
Not knowing alone versus not knowing in company, the difference between being alone and being lonely, and how time alone can show you what you need and what you can let go of.
The days when the calm doesn’t win: the “battery empty” feeling that creeps in when other people’s priorities take over, and the weekend in nature with her dog that brought her back.
How grief and gratitude arrived together after she walked away from something dear to her, and why gratitude is harder to feel than its reputation suggests.
What the fear of loneliness does in the body: the “I’m not enough” spiral, and the way it pulls her away from the people and the movement that feed her.
A day in Tromsø during polar winter: eleven people in white, total silence where a deep breath felt loud, hot and cold used to find a tolerance threshold, and a hike with no competition, where the group is the resource and asking for help is part of the route.
A slow, wide-armed movement she now practises each morning, and the invitation to ask your body what it wants to do with you today.
Resources & Links
Peace by Piece Coaching: Eleonora’s coaching practice and blog
“Leaving the Shelter”: her blog post on the winter movement immersion in Tromsø, Norway
“Trust the Pull”: her blog post on grief, gratitude and the invisible threads that lead us to the right people
Ferus Animi // Terra Nova: the movement research collective behind the winter immersion
About the Guest
Eleonora Ricci is an embodied coach based in Amsterdam and the founder of Peace by Piece Coaching. After six years in a corporate role at Nike, she left a stable, recognisable path and turned towards the body, first through yoga and a teacher training, then through a movement practice and ongoing study with teachers and movement researchers. She now works with people through embodiment, curiosity and slowing down, and is still very much a student herself. She writes about grief, gratitude, belonging and the places that shaped her, including a polar-winter movement immersion in northern Norway.
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