Coming Home to Yourself: Annette Sahara Hørning on Intuition, Embodiment and the Power of Being Fully Seen

Mother of six, therapist, psychic medium, movement facilitator and creator of The Lonely Queers podcast, Annette Sahara Hørning has spent more than 25 years helping women reconnect with their bodies, intuition and inner power. This summer, she joins ELLA Festival Mallorca 2026 to lead Dance Your Inner Queer Goddess, an experience designed to celebrate authenticity, freedom and joyful self-expression.

For those discovering you for the first time, who is Annette Sahara Hørning, and what

inspired your journey into dance, spirituality and women's empowerment?

I am a woman who walks her talk. Everything I share - every word about spirituality,

sensuality, self empowerment, self love and the feminine body - I have lived. Explored. Felt in

my own skin first.

I am a mother of six, a proud queer woman, a psychic medium and channeller, a therapist and

an independent business owner. And for more than twenty-five years, I have been weaving

together the threads that most people keep separate: spirituality and body movement, therapy

and self-love, the mystical and the deeply, unapologetically human.

My journey was never a straight line. It was a series of awakenings – some gentle, some that

brought me to my knees. And every single one of them led me back to the same place: the

body. The feminine body as a portal. As a temple. As the most powerful instrument we will

ever be given. Regardless sexual orientation or pronouns.

 Your work beautifully combines movement, yoga, intuition and personal growth. How did

these different worlds come together in your life?

Because for me, they were never separate worlds. I am a dancer, a yogini, a psychotherapist

and a sex therapist. And somewhere along the way, I realised that everything I am and

everything I know was pointing in the same direction: toward the body. Toward the profound,

transformative power of coming home to yourself.

For years I knew that this combination - movement, breath, intuition, therapy, sensuality and

self worth - would become the foundation of how I teach others. Not as separate disciplines

stacked on top of each other, but as one living, breathing practice. Body, mind and soul as the

holy trinity they were always meant to be.

And the reason it matters so deeply to me is simple: so many women have forgotten.

Forgotten to listen to their bodies. Forgotten to trust their intuition. Forgotten that their

sensuality is not something to be tamed or apologised for, but a source of extraordinary

power, creativity and wisdom. My work is an invitation to remember.

You often say that the body holds wisdom. What do you think women can discover about

themselves simply by moving differently?

The body knows everything. And it remembers everything.Every experience you have ever

had. Every emotion you were told to suppress. Every moment of joy, of grief, of desire, of

shame. It is all in there - stored in the tissue, in the breath, in the way you hold your shoulders

or guard your hips or forget to exhale. The body never lies. We just stopped listening.

When women begin to move differently - freely, curiously, without the need to control or

understand or perform - something extraordinary happens. The armour softens. The breath

deepens. And from somewhere beneath all the layers of conditioning and self-doubt and

inherited shame, something ancient begins to stir: A knowing. A trust. A quiet but unshakeable

sense of: I am enough. I always was. It ties in to self impowerment and self love again.

Movement is not just exercise. It is a conversation with yourself. And when you combine it with

breath and presence and the willingness to feel, you activate something that no book or

podcast or therapist can give you. You activate your own inner wisdom. The wisdom that was

never lost. Only waiting.

Because we are the truthkeepers of our own self-love and self-empowerment. Every single

one of us. We just have to give the body permission to show us the way.

At ELLA Festival you will be leading Dance Your Inner Queer Goddess. What can

participants expect, and why is this experience so much more than a dance workshop?

Dance Your Inner Queer Goddess is a celebration of who you are, exactly as you are. Of the

parts of you that have been quieted, dimmed or perhaps told to take up less space. Of the

feminine and the masculine that live within you both. Of the fluid, the fierce, the tender, the

self-expressed and the wildly alive.

For we are not one thing. We never were. We are a magnificent spectrum: soft and strong,

open and grounded, receptive and powerful. The divine feminine and the divine masculine are

not opposites at war inside us. They are partners. Two forces that, when they meet in balance,

create something extraordinary: a human being who is fully, unapologetically themselves.

When we release the shoulders, loosen the hips and let the body move - in this dance

workshop - the way it was born to move, something remarkable happens. The nervous system

softens. The chemistry shifts and oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins, and the body's own

extraordinary pharmacy begins to pour. And beneath all of that, something older and deeper

begins to surface.

The Inner Queer Goddess is not a character you put on. She, or he, or they, or it - is not a

performance. It is the most honest version of you. The one who exists before the rules, before

the conditioning, before the world got its hands on you and started editing. That version knows

how to move. Knows how to feel. Knows how to take up exactly the right amount of space –

which is all of it.

In this session we dance, we breathe, we mirror each other and we celebrate the full spectrum

of what it means to be human/ a queer / a lesbian. Every body. And the becoming, the

feminine and the masculine meeting in joyful, liberated movement. Come as you are. Leave as

more of yourself than you knew was possible. This is for everybody who likes to laugh and

dance a little.

Many women spend years putting everyone else first. Why do you believe reconnecting with

ourselves has become so important today?

Because we are living in a time of remembering. We are not the same as we were yesterday.

For generations, women have been quietly trained to make themselves smaller. To put

everyone else first. To measure their worth in how much they give, how little they need and

how rarely they complain. And somewhere in all of that giving, so many of us lost the thread

back to ourselves.

But something is shifting. Women are waking up – to their bodies, their boundaries, their

desires, their inner wisdom. We want to reconnect, live life and be happy. And I believe that is

not a coincidence. We are standing on a new timeline, and this timeline is asking something

radical of us: to come home. To ourselves. First.

Not because the people we love matter less. But because a woman who is connected to

herself - to her body, her intuition, her wildly alive inner world - has so much more to give. She

gives from fullness, not from depletion. She loves from wholeness, not from fear.

Reconnecting with ourselves is not selfish. It is the most generous thing we can do. For

ourselves, for the people we love, and for the world that so desperately needs women who are

fully awake, fully embodied and fully in their power. Happier. That is the work. And it begins

with one breath. One movement. One moment of choosing yourself.

Intuition is at the heart of your work. Do you think intuition is something we're born with, or

something we can all learn to trust again?

We are all spiritual beings having a human experience. That is my honest answer – and I have

never found a better one.

We are so much more than the eye can see. So much more than the body we live in, the job

we hold, the roles we play, the feelings we have. Beneath all of that is something vast and

ancient and knowing. And that knowing - that quiet, unwavering inner compass - is intuition.

We are all born with it. Every single one of us. It is not a gift reserved for the few or the

spiritually gifted or those who have done the work. It is as natural as breathing. As

fundamental as the heartbeat. But like any language, it needs to be spoken to stay alive. And

most of us were taught, very early on, to stop speaking it or being brought up in an

understanding that is nonsense and para normal: to trust logic over feeling. To follow the rules

over the inner voice. To look outward for answers that were always waiting inside. And not to

trust the heart.

The good news is that intuition never leaves. It waits. Patiently. Sometimes for years.

Sometimes for lifetimes. And the moment you turn toward it, with curiosity, with breath, with a

willingness to feel rather than think your way through, it answers.

We can all learn to listen again. To our bodies. To our higher selves. To the other realms that

are closer than we imagine and more real than we have been told. The veil between this world

and what lies beyond it is thin. And women, I believe, have always been the ones who knew

how to part it.

You've worked with women of many different ages and backgrounds. Is there a

transformation or moment from one of your workshops that has stayed with you?

There have been so many. But the ones that stay with me are never the dramatic ones.

It is the quiet moments. The woman who has held her breath for many years and finally

exhales - fully, completely, like she has been waiting her whole life for permission. The woman

who begins moving her hips for the first time and starts laughing and crying at the same

moment, because her body remembered something her mind had forgotten. She is a sensual

being.

The woman who whispers afterwards: I didn't know I was allowed to feel like this. That is the

moment that stays with me. Every time. Because it is never really about the dance or the

breath or the workshop. It is about a woman discovering, that she was never broken. That

everything she was looking for was already in her.

Watching that happen - watching a woman come home to herself – makes me want to

facilitate the workshops and the dance again. It is why I do this work. And it is why I will never

stop.

As an LGBTQ+ woman, has your own life experience influenced the way you create safe

spaces for others?

Yes and this answer is deeply. And personally. I came out as queer after more than 25 years of

marriage to a man. And I will not pretend that was a simple or painless journey. It was a

revolution - quiet at first, then impossible to ignore. A revolution that asked me to choose

myself, my truth and my wholeness over everything the world had decided I should be.

That experience cracked me open in the most necessary way. And it gave me something I

could never have found any other way: the knowledge of what it costs to hide and not dare.

What it takes to finally stop. And what becomes possible when you choose to live as the full,

unedited, gloriously complicated version of yourself.

That is what I bring into every space I create. The lived understanding that safety is not just

about physical comfort. It is about feeling seen. Truly seen – in your desire, your doubt, your

darkness and your light. Without judgment. Without agenda. Without anyone trying to make

you smaller or more acceptable or easier to understand.

It is also why I created my podcast – The Lonely Queers. It was born from a very real desire to

reach LGBTQ+ people who felt alone in their journey. To say: you are not broken. You are not

too much. You are not too queer or too late or too complicated. You are exactly right. And you

deserve to feel empowered in the life you are living. You deserve to dare and stay strong.

Because no one should have to wait 25 years to come home to themselves.

What does community and sisterhood mean to you, especially within LGBTQ+ spaces like

ELLA Festival?

It means everything. And it means something different when it is rare.

The truth is that genuinely safe spaces for LGBTQ+ women are still far fewer than they should

be. We live in a world that has made enormous progress on paper – and yet the lived reality

for so many queer women, lesbian women, bisexual and transgender women is still one of

navigating spaces that were not built with them in mind. Spaces where they must edit

themselves. Where they must calculate how much of themselves is safe to show.

That is exhausting. And it is unnecessary.

According to multiple peer-reviewed studies – including research from the Anxiety and

Depression Association of America and a Stonewall report - LGBTQ+ adults are nearly three

times more likely to experience depression and anxiety than the general population. Half of

LGBTQ+ people report having experienced depression in the past year. Three in five report

anxiety. And these disparities are not caused by who they are. They are caused by how the

world responds to who they are. The absence of safe, affirming community is not a small thing.

It is a health issue. A human rights issue.

This is why spaces like ELLA Festival matter so profoundly. They are not just events. They are

proof that another world is possible. A world where queer women can walk into a room and

exhale. Where sisterhood is not conditional on conformity. Where the full spectrum of the

feminine – and the masculine that lives within us too – is not just tolerated but celebrated.

For me, community and sisterhood mean the end of performing. The beginning of belonging.

And in LGBTQ+ spaces specifically, that belonging carries an extra weight of tenderness –

because so many of us spent years believing we would never find it.

When women come together in that kind of safety, something alchemical happens. They heal.

They remember. They rise. That is the magic of sisterhood. And it is worth protecting fiercely.

If a woman arrives at ELLA feeling nervous, disconnected or lacking confidence, what

would you like her to know before she joins your workshop?

I would want her to know that her nervousness is not a problem to be solved. It is information.

It is her body saying: this matters to me. And anything that matters is worth showing up for,

even when – especially when – it feels uncomfortable.

She is perfectly normal. What she feels walking through that door is what so many women

feel. The disconnection. The self-doubt. The quiet voice that says: am I enough for this? Do I

belong here?

The answer is yes. Always yes.

I create spaces where there is no performance required. No right way to move, no correct way

to feel, no version of yourself you need to prepare or polish before you arrive. You can come

tired. You can come heartbroken. You can come not knowing why you came - only that

something in you said: go.

That something is your intuition. And it is never wrong.

From the moment she walks in, my intention is that she feels it,- that particular quality of safety

that has nothing to do with rules and everything to do with presence. The safety of being seen

without being judged. Of being held without being fixed. Of being in a room full of women who

are all, in their own way, finding their way back to themselves in one way or another.

She does not need to be confident to join. She just needs to be willing. The confidence comes

after. It always does. She can always come to me before or after. Or contact me online. I will

be there.

Beyond your workshop, what are you most looking forward to experiencing during your

ELLA Festival in Mallorca?

I am genuinely looking forward to being a participant too. So much of my work is about

holding space for others, and I love that, but it will be wonderful to step into a space where

someone else is holding it for me.

What I am most looking forward to is the sense of community. That feeling of being in a room

or an event, where everyone is celebrated and everyone belongs - no explanations needed,

no editing required. As a queer woman, I know how rare that genuinely is. Spaces that are

truly safe and truly inclusive for LGBTQ+ women are still far fewer than they should be. So

when one exists - and does it well - it matters enormously.

I am also looking forward to connection. The conversations between sessions. Meeting

women who are doing powerful work in their communities or are simply here to meet up, be

themselves and laugh. Being inspired. Being challenged. And I know that ELLA Festival

creates exactly the right conditions for all of that – with their carefully curated programme of

workshops, talks and events, they have built something that goes far beyond a festival. They

have built a gathering place. A space where women can show up fully and leave feeling seen,

energised and connected to something larger than themselves.

ELLA feels like a space where all of us are included. All celebrated. All seen. And I think that is

something worth travelling for.

The Body Never Forgets

Throughout this conversation, one message quietly echoes beneath every answer: everything we are searching for already lives within us.

For Annette, the body is far more than something we inhabit—it is a keeper of memory, emotion, resilience and wisdom. When we learn to listen again, we rediscover parts of ourselves that were never truly lost, only hidden beneath expectations, fear and conditioning.

Her work reminds us that healing doesn't begin by becoming someone new. It begins by remembering who we have always been.

At ELLA Festival Mallorca 2026, Dance Your Inner Queer Goddess is not simply a dance workshop. It is an invitation to breathe more deeply, move more freely and celebrate every expression of identity without apology. It is a space where laughter, vulnerability, movement and connection come together to create something profoundly human.

In a world where LGBTQ+ women still struggle to find spaces where they can be fully themselves, Annette believes that community is more than belonging—it is healing. Perhaps that is why ELLA Festival resonates so deeply with so many women around the world. For a few unforgettable days, it becomes a place where authenticity is celebrated, diversity is embraced and everyone is invited to arrive exactly as they are.