On this episode of The Lisa Burke Show, dancers Veronique Scheer and Gabrielle Staiger talk about how the body stores emotions. Mentor Rick Serrano walks through a simple checklist to define a partner that matches your life goals and one deserving of you.
Veronique Scheer, founder of Very Unique Yoga, was a professional musical theatre performer living her dream life in Barcelona as a young adult. This dream was abruptly halted by a devastating motorbike accident at 21. Through years of rehabilitation, a law degree (plan B), and reinvention, Veronique turned to yoga, pilates, and trauma-healing practice. She realised that movement could be more than performance or aesthetics; it could be a tool for nervous system regulation, trauma healing, and identity reconstruction.
“The nervous system governs how we experience life.”
Today, Veronique’s work blends movement science, hormonal literacy, and nervous system education into a holistic approach, particularly supporting women navigating stress, burnout, postnatal recovery, and life transitions. She distinguishes between nervous system regulation and long‑term training, emphasising that our reactions often arise from stored patterns in the nervous system long before cognition catches up.
Veronique also conducts couples yoga classes, and can see how their nervous systems sync in a calming or dysregulated way. Through workshops and couple classes, she sees first‑hand how movement can reveal communication patterns, power struggles, people‑pleasing, and sexual disconnect.
These workshops also show how playful, shared movement can help partners remember why they fell in love.
Using practices such as AcroYoga, she watches trust, control, and surrender play out physically: some couples re‑discover laughter and tenderness; others confront that their relationship may actually be over.
Veronique’s upcoming digital academy and app (launching 2026) brings together:
Gabrielle Staiger is the creator of Golden Spine® & the Movement Choir. Her journey began in sports science and elite gymnastics, but the “faster, higher, stronger” mentality eventually felt empty, leading her toward contemporary dance and choreography at the Laban Centre in London. There, she combined ballet, contemporary technique, pilates, and choreological studies, later pioneering a democratised creative process where dancers co‑create movement instead of just executing the choreographer’s steps.
Her floor‑work technique helped redefine contemporary dance aesthetics globally, while her Golden Spine® method emerged from her own slipped discs and dissatisfaction with conventional physiotherapy. Golden Spine® uses 10 dynamic, spatially‑oriented movements to keep the spine mobile and functionally supported, first for professional dancers and now for office workers frozen in front of screens.
In 2013, asked to design a workshop on happiness, she created her first movement choir at Frankfurt’s Literaturhaus, a non‑technical, improvisation‑based format where anyone, regardless of experience, can “arrive at happiness quickly” through shared, creative movement.
On Amrum, she now runs multi‑day educational leave programmes where participants move together in nature, often reporting a profound sense of belonging, support, and social ease they had missed since childhood.
However, perhaps her most extraordinary creation is the Movement Choir. This is not a choreographed performance, but a collective improvisational format where everyone contributes equally, instantly dissolving hierarchy and igniting internal and external joy through shared movement. The co-creative element blends creativity, connection beyond words, and fosters a safe-space for co-regulation, akin to Veronique’s yoga workshops.
“A democratic, co-creative movement experience, where there is no right or wrong.”
A recurring theme in the conversation is that emotions are held in the body, not just the brain – and that movement can access these layers directly. Veronique notes that in yoga and somatic classes, she regularly sees tears, hysterical laughter, frustration, and other strong reactions emerge without conscious intention, signalling that the nervous system is processing stored experiences.
She explains co‑regulation: the way nervous systems sync with each other in couples and groups, either calming or dysregulating one another.
Movement choirs, performances, and partner practices can become powerful spaces of co‑regulation, fostering safety, creativity, and connection beyond words. Rick links this directly to relationships: true love requires first being regulated and at peace with yourself, so that you are not relying on a partner to soothe unresolved inner chaos.
He emphasises that time, self‑worth (“princess/prince” mindset) and the commitment to building an extraordinary life are non‑negotiable foundations for healthy love.
Rick outlines five worrying trends he sees today: committed people failing to find partners, serious matchmaking efforts under‑delivering, millions disillusioned by dating apps, many (especially women) staying in harmful relationships, and widespread dating burnout.
He highlights how digital platforms create an illusion of infinite choice, encourage “forward‑guessing” based on curated profiles and feed insecurity, leading people to hover between multiple options instead of truly committing.
His ’10 Cherries’ framework is divided into two groups of five: self‑awareness and definition, then decisive action.
Key questions include:
On the action side, he warns against the “sunk love fallacy": staying because of years invested, shared mortgages or children, rather than an honest assessment of current reality.
He encourages people to define an “ideal partner profile around what truly matters, ensure both “airplanes” are emotionally clean from past relationships, and stop wasting time in connections that clearly have no future.
Rick also addresses the specific pressure women feel around fertility, noting that options like egg freezing can reduce fear, often leading to more relaxed, successful partner choices and pregnancies.
Above all, he insists that true, long‑lasting, romantic love is possible – but it requires serious inner work, strategic clarity, and the courage to make decisions aligned with your deepest values.
You can listen to this and other episodes of The Lisa Burke Show on RTL Today Radio, via podcast, and on RTL Play with video.
