My Story
How does a nice, highly educated woman end up beating people for a living? This is the most common - spoken or unspoken - question that I get when people ask me casually: “so what’s your job?” and I answer honestly.
This is my journey to an unusual profession.
I was 17 when I first became fascinated by the extraordinary power of the mind over the body.
Fakirs walking barefoot across hot coals without a burn. Teeth extracted under hypnosis, no drugs, seemingly no pain. People multiplying their performance on a stationary bike while in trance, pushing past limits their own bodies set for them. How was any of this possible? I couldn't stop asking the question — and that question shaped the rest of my life.
The Scientist
That fascination inspired me to study psychology, and to dedicate myself to understanding the mind's remarkable ability to shape, transform, and sometimes transcend physical experience.
Alongside my studies I explored altered states of consciousness in every form I could find: hypnosis, holotropic breathing, ecstatic dance, meditation and endurance sports. I was a semi-professional swimmer and I ran two marathons — for no reason other than to feel the rush of adrenalin at a competition and the runner's high at running beyond 4 hours, in a professional setting that was relatively safe.
Eventually that fascination led me to my university degree in psychology , training in hypnosis, and later to a PhD in psychology focused on behavioral addictions — the non-chemically induced trance-like states of mind that can take hold of us just as powerfully as any substance. My research explored how motivation, personality and behavior interact over time, and how deeply our thoughts, emotions, and experiences shape not just how we feel and act, but the very biology of the brain.
The Masochist
Yet some of the most important lessons happened after university, not during it.
As a sadomasochist, I discovered impact play during my BDSM journey in Berlin, and was immediately captivated by its depth, complexity, and transformative power. My first experience being flogged was both magical and life-changing. It taught me, in my body, what I had spent years studying only in theory: how to let go, trust the process, and allow myself to fully experience whatever the moment had to offer — including suffering. And in that moment something unexpected happened: suffering transformed into never-before experienced pleasure. It felt as though my unconscious inclinations, my academic training, and my scientific curiosity had finally found common, fertile ground.
But doing impact play privately and doing it professionally are two very different things. Turning it into a career wasn't even in my wildest dreams at that point.
The Turning Point
After completing my doctorate, I worked professionally with data — first in academic statistics, later in data science. It was a different life. It wasn't until I became a mother, and later found myself in the middle of a midlife crisis, that I reconnected with the passion I'd set aside.
Between job searches, Covid and returning from parental leave, I immersed myself in the technical, psychological, and artistic dimensions of impact play — and shortly afterward, discovered finger flogging. Both meditational and technical, my practice quickly started to turn into a solid skill.
Slowly friends and play partners began asking for sessions. People started recognizing me at kinky parties. Others wanted to learn from me. What had started as a personal fascination was slowly turning into a calling.
The final push came during a profound spiritual experience at a dance retreat in the summer of 2025. For the first time, I allowed myself to stop treating this path as a hobby, and start treating it as the work I was meant to do.
Today
Today, I dedicate myself fully to impact play under the pseudoname, Hekate. What once began as a side project has grown into a full-time job. Through private sessions, workshops, and community events, I create spaces where Berlin's BDSM and impact play communities can experience, learn, connect and grow.
My approach combines nerdiness, scientific understanding, technical precision, and deep respect for the wisdom of the body. Whether through intensity, pain, pacing, anticipation or altered states of consciousness, I'm interested in one thing above all else: help people discover how much they are capable of feeling, enduring, and transforming suffering — into pleasure, meaning and growth.