The story from which Holistica grows — a comprehensive method of working with the patient.
When I decided to become an psychiatrist, I believed I would find answers there to a question that had been returning to me for years: why do some people "fall apart" under the weight of life while others can get up after the most difficult crises. I wanted to understand anxiety, depression, insomnia, borderline experiences — and to be able to help in a real way.
What did classical psychiatry give me?
Through years of work in classical psychiatry I learned a great deal: how to diagnose, how to choose medications, how to stabilize acute symptoms. I see enormous value in pharmacotherapy — sometimes it is literally the gateway to getting out of bed, eating the first meal in a long time, sleeping through the night without repeated awakenings. Without it, many of my patients would have no real chance to begin the healing process.
Over time, however, I began to see more clearly the limitations of an approach that ends with a prescription. Medications calmed symptoms but did not change the way a person's entire nervous system functions — especially in people living with chronic stress.
When does psychiatry itself stop being enough?
Increasingly, entrepreneurs and leaders came into my office — people with enormous responsibilities on their shoulders. On paper they had a "well-ordered" life: companies, teams, families, plans for the future. And yet: insomnia, panic attacks, body tension, a sense of disconnection from oneself, chronic fatigue.
Medications often helped — but only up to a point. Symptoms quieted down, but the nervous system was still running in alarm mode. The body couldn't downshift from high revs. I saw that if we stop only at pharmacotherapy, many of these people will never feel that they have truly returned to life — only that they "somehow function."
The nervous system doesn't read prescriptions, it reads experience
The breakthrough came when I started working more deeply with the body and awareness — my own and my patients'. I understood that the nervous system does not "read" prescriptions, but experiences:
the rhythm of day and night
sleep quality and the way we fall asleep
breathing and the level of tension in the body
relationships and how we engage in conflicts
making decisions under pressure
the history of stress and unexpressed emotions
I saw how much the classical treatment model lacks space for regulating the nervous system, rather than just extinguishing the fires of symptoms.
Why I went beyond classical psychiatry?
That's why I went further — towards yoga, yoga nidra, breathwork, Ayurveda, a holistic view of the person. I began to combine what evidence-based medicine offers with what allows the nervous system to truly calm down, rebuild, and learn to function differently.
The deeper I went into this, the more I saw that for many people psychiatry alone is an important stage — but not enough to regain a sense of fullness of life, safety and agency. Lifestyle change, body work, ways of regulating emotions, and sometimes a whole change in how one functions as a leader are needed.
Holistica — a place where a prescription is only one of the tools
Today I am building Holistica — the Clinic for Nervous System Regulation and Awareness in Łódź. A place where a prescription can be one of the tools, but never the only answer.
Holistica is for entrepreneurs and leaders, who want something more than "somehow functioning." They want to:
understand their nervous system
learn to regulate it, not just suppress symptoms
have a real influence on their mental health
regain a sense of safety, control over life and hope
We combine psychiatry, psychotherapy, yoga, yoga nidra, Ayurveda and breathwork. In the future we plan technological support (AI assistant) so that the healing process does not end at the clinic door.
If classical psychiatry was an important step, but is not enough
What I am creating at Holistica is a response to the experience "in between": when the classical psychiatric approach was an important step but insufficient. When symptoms have quieted enough that "you can function," but internally there is still emptiness, tension, or a sense that life is just a checklist to be ticked off.
