Sez Kristiansen is a poet, nondual meditation guide and writer. Her work sits where embodied nonduality, deep ecology and recovery meet. She was born and raised in Southern Africa with Nordic roots, and she writes from lived experience of addiction, recovery, trauma and depersonalisation. If you're new, the question is which door to walk through first.
Start with Healing HER. It has reached more than 80,000 readers, so it's the book most people meet her through. It also carries the core of her approach: healing as less about becoming someone new and more about remembering what was never lost. Reading it first gives you her voice and her framing before you encounter the practices built on top of them.
Read it slowly. Don't treat it as a manual to finish. Take a section at a time and let it sit.
Her guided meditations on Insight Timer. They've been listened to over 500,000 times, and they're the most direct way to experience her work in your body rather than just your head. After the book, you'll hear the same ideas as invitations to practise. Pick one that suits your time and mood, and don't hunt for the "right" one.
Her Substack newsletter. This is where her essays live, and it's the best way to see how she thinks now rather than only in finished books. It's low-commitment and good for the in-between days.
***Story Medicine, then Whole In The Body*.** Once Healing HER has landed, Story Medicine is the natural next book. Whole In The Body follows, and by its title it leans toward embodiment, so it pairs well once you've spent some time with the meditations.
Expect a gentle, unhurried register. She writes as a poet, so the prose and the meditations favour image, silence and nature over instruction and step-by-step programmes. Expect the natural world to appear constantly. She calls nature her greatest teacher, and it isn't decoration.
Expect honesty about difficulty, too. Addiction, trauma and depersonalisation are part of her story, not a footnote. There's no promise of a transformed, optimised you. The tone is closer to company than coaching.
Reading it as self-improvement. Her work deliberately moves beyond traditional self-improvement. If you read looking for a fix, a ten-point plan or a better version of yourself, you'll miss the invitation, which is to stop striving.
Treating nonduality as an idea to grasp. "Embodied nonduality" is not a concept to master intellectually. It's meant to be felt in the body, which is why the meditations matter as much as the books.
Assuming it's only for people in recovery. Recovery is central to her story, but the themes of belonging, self-judgment and intimacy with life are broader.
Expecting fast results. This is work of remembering, not acquiring. Skimming for takeaways defeats the purpose.
It tends to land hardest when the striving has stopped working: after burnout, a breakup, a relapse or a long stretch of self-criticism. It also reaches people in recovery or early healing from trauma, people who feel disconnected from their own body, and people who have tried self-improvement for years and sense something else is needed. It can also meet you in a transition, such as a move or a loss, when you're wandering and asking where you belong.
If you're in acute crisis, treat her work as a companion and not a substitute for professional support.
Day 1: Read the opening of Healing HER. Stop when you feel like stopping. Take a short walk outside afterwards without your phone.
Day 2: Continue the book for one sitting. Note one line that stays with you.
Day 3: Open Insight Timer and listen to one of Sez's guided meditations, ideally in the morning. Don't evaluate it. Just notice how your body feels afterwards.
Day 4: Read more of Healing HER, then sit outside for ten minutes with no agenda.
Day 5: Subscribe to her Substack and read one essay. Compare its voice to the book's.
Day 6: Do a second guided meditation, this time in the evening. Notice whether the experience differs from the morning one.
Day 7: Review. Look back at your noted lines and ask what you want more of. If the book called to you, take up Story Medicine. If the meditations did, keep a daily listen going and move toward Whole In The Body.
By the end of the week you'll know whether her way of working suits you, and you'll have a clear next step either way.
