About us
Fallen in love, the world was wonderful. It was a magical attraction, but as the daily grind progressed, our partnership began to grow heavier. We sought harmony and intimacy, but the clouds thickened and spoiled not only one or the other day, but at times questioned everything.
In the meantime we are separated and each goes his own way.
Nevertheless, we continue to work together. As far as our own learning processes allow, we look benevolently at each other. This doesn’t always work, but increasingly new spaces are opening up.
After 18 years of marriage, we embarked on a necessary but doubt-laden journey. When we were a couple, we could experience in every couple session that we are not only therapists, but also learners. The themes of the couples, were in a different coloration in each case also our own.
The separation we describe in our model was therefore the logical step for us: we are learning to grow up and are in the same boat with many of our clients.
Even before, we had few “solutions,” but could only mirror our clients and open doors to their own answers. Through our own process, both inner experience and humility before each other’s relationship stories have grown.
The concept of “pair to pair” arose from our personal experience. A space in which the balance is maintained by itself, since the feminine and the masculine, the rational and the emotional, the worldly and the spiritual are represented in equal parts.
The name for this setting, we have changed due to our personal history, in “Two-to-Two”.
Regardless of the name: after more than 2,500 couples who visited our practice in the last 14 years, our approach is increasingly confirmed.
Where our relationship will take us, we do not know, but it is precisely in this “not knowing” that opportunities and possibilities lie.
The challenge here is to leave everything open, not to force or restrict anything.
Psychoanalyst Ruth Cohn wrote about it in 1975:
I take care of my business, I am me.
You take care of yours, you be you.
The world is our task;
It does not meet our expectations.
But if we take care of it, it will be very beautiful;
If not, it will not be.
Anja Grunert
At some point I stopped feeling me: my aliveness, my overflowing love, all my juice.
It was a creeping process.
The longing for an infinitely deep, wide ocean became a swamp of rules, reason and conventions. I disappeared more and more, hiding the last vestige of aliveness.
The shame of breaking taboos was too great, my inner light no longer visible. I looked for lighthouses outside of myself. Gurus, men, spiritual directions, therapeutic methods and much more. Some of it brought me further; but only when death startled me one night and demanded: “Let go!”, my self-image got cracks.
The best make-up could no longer conceal my “true self.”
I had grown tired of the eternally same roles – especially in my marriage. And yet I wanted to believe in the everlasting, great love.
I had become a stranger to myself, in the many loveless quarrels, my self-lies and the hope: someday it will get better, because after all, we all carry our backpacks.
Mine was overflowing with sadness from childhood, but also an irrepressible longing to shed my old, cramped robes and fly naked. To feel the warm summer wind, to breathe freely, to feel, to experience EVERYTHING – with skin and hair.
Sensually, with wide open wings, one day I flew away from my old life, into a new one completely unknown to me.
The separation helped me, to find my new self and to be a light to myself.
Biography
Training
1996 – 1998
Training as a medical Masseuse (Bad Wörishofen)
1998 – 2000
Training as Dipl. Physiotherapist (Bad Wörishofen)
2011 – 2013
Psychotherapeutic training as a Gestalt Therapist
according Fitz Pearls (Cologne)
2017
Permission to practice medicine professionally
restricted to the field of psychotherapy
Additional education and training (in alphabetical order)
Respiratory therapy
Cranio Sacral Therapy
Systemic Family Therapy
Esalen massage
Therapy according to Rogers
Hawaiian Bodywork
Hypnosis
Integrative Couples Counseling IBP
Kinesiology (Touch for Health)
NLP Practitioner
Integrative counseling and therapy with women
Voice Dialogue
Career path
2000 -2003
Physiotherapist in various practices (Munich)
2003 – 2005
Self-employed in own practice for physiotherapy and massage (Munich)
2006 – 2013
Managing Director “Massage Zurich” / Practice for Massage, Relaxation and Body Awareness
2009 until today
Relationship coaching together with Rainer Grunert
2013 until today
“Touch and Talk” Practice for Psychosomatics and Coaching
Self-awareness (in alphabetical order)
Analysis according to C.G. Jung
Bioenergetics / Core Energetics
Family Constellations
Women’s groups
Making Love Retreat
Primary therapy
Rolfing
Dance and movement therapy
Vipassana Meditation
Rainer Grunert
I am probably a dreamer, because until today I have not given up the belief in love. Already in puberty, I threw myself again and again into the confusing whirlpool of romance and magic and was disappointed accordingly often.
I had to learn that the world outside of me ticks differently than my desire. It is characterized by cultural guidelines, dating expectations, a lot of no-go’s and seemingly clear rules about what a partnership is and how it has to work.
I didn’t want to stay alone with my “spun longings”, so I adapted and lived most different forms of partnership. Open relationships, but also partnerships that would have fit into the format of a home story of a glossy magazine. Most recently, I was married to Anja for 19 years.
To say it right away, all partnerships failed because of my biography and my romantic longings. The biography was marked by a cold marriage between my parents and domestic violence, my longings for “real” love and romance found no match in a capitalist world built on possession and grasping.
My greatest difficulty in all these years, however, was that after every perceived disappointment, I closed my heart far too quickly and followed in the footsteps of my parents’ cold and calculating love.
With a lot of pain and allowing feelings, at the age of 62 I managed to free myself from the demons of my biography.
I have learned, albeit late, to love and live with an open yet aching heart.
I am ready to surrender to the romance and magic I dreamed of in adolescence and to follow the path of love despite all doubts.
Biography
Graduate psychologist and graduate business economist
Behavioral Therapist
Systemic Family Therapist
Hypnotherapist
Training
1976
Highschool (Frankfurt)
1976 – 1983
Apprenticeship as typesetter (Frankfurt)
1983 – 1986
Studies in business administration (Frankfurt)
1986 – 1991
Study of psychology (Berlin)
Additional education and training (in alphabetical order)
Bioenergetics according to Lowen (Berlin)
Change Management (Frankfurt)
Coaching (Cologne)
De-Hypnosis according to Wolinsky (Freiburg)
Essence work according to Almaas and Faisal (Pettenasco, Cologne)
Bodywork according to Goralewski (Berlin)
Body-oriented Psychotherapy (Cologne)
Leadership Coaching (Berlin)
Men’s and couples work according to Deida (Boulder CO)
NLP Master (Cologne)
Couples Therapy according to Bader and Pearson (San Francisco CA)
Sexual Counseling according to the Approche Sexocorporelle (Zurich)
Systemic Family Therapy according to Satir (Weinheim)
Tantra (Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich)
Behavioral Therapy (Berlin)
Career path
1991 – 1993
Technical manager of a print shop (Hamburg)
1993 – 1997
Managing director and development manager of a startup for
Software Development (Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt)
1997 – 2002
Management Consultant in an international
Management Consulting (Frankfurt)
2002 – 2006
Temporary Manager in international companies
(Frankfurt, Munich, Basel, Zurich)
Since 2007
Self-employed as Coach and Consultant
(Zurich)
Publications
2008 Suffering or Passion (Innenwelt Verlag)
2009 Guide to Unforeseen Happiness (Windpferd Verlag)
2009 Vision of a fair economic order (Windpferd Verlag)
Conception and management of trainings (in alphabetical order)
Anti-bullying training for victims
Change Management
De-Escalation techniques for police operations
Introduction to process management
Introduction to NLP
Traps and stumbling blocks of intimacy – couple training
Coming into your own power
Communication and ability to work in a team
Creativity techniques – Train the Trainer
Suffering or Passion – Couples Training
Organizational Development – Train the Trainer
Project Management – Train the Trainer
Requirement Engineering
Therapeutic techniques for healing professions
Think Tanks
Training in Leadership Coaching
Dealing with conflicts – Train the Trainer
Time management