SYNERGY OF MIND, BODY & EMOTION
Maja Rueger –
unmasked, from every angle
Medical Doctor. Psychotherapist. Coach. Educator.
My work is a reflection of my life — no dissonance, no double standards. What I share with you isn’t theory pulled from a book; it’s lived practice, values I stand for, and choices I make every single day — when things flow easily, and when things are anything but easy.
(+381) 653519563
I don’t offer quick fixes — but I do create a space for deep work and lasting change. A space where you understand yourself better, untangle your relationships, and overcome the inner obstacles that quietly shape your life.
For every dead end, sharp turn, and moment when it feels like you’ve reached the end of the road — our coaching sessions uncover new paths, shortcuts, and that inner North Star that guides you and lights the way forward.
My workshops and trainings are like a mental espresso — they wake you up, shake you a bit, and open perspectives you didn’t even know existed.
My life’s work is rooted in helping professions. When we share knowledge, it grows. That’s why I offer free workshops and raise awareness of the challenges so many face alone.
What you won’t find in my CV
I live with MS — not as a label, but as a part of me. It’s not light luggage, but it has been a teacher of resilience and courage, something I write about openly and share with others.
When inspiration hits, my creativity spills into words, color, or wood — and from that come Tiny Doors From my Heart, the Mature Hedonism Handbook, workshops, and trainings. It’s where ideas turn into things you can touch, feel, and use.
BUILDING STRENGTH FROM THE SYNERGY OF THE BODY, MIND & EMOTION
If you’re looking for someone who will listen without judgment, supports goals that are both realistic and ambitious, and work with you through knowledge, experience, and a dose of (un)necessary tenderness — you’re in the right place.
This website is a map of a complex professional and personal journey. A path that rarely moved in a straight line — more like a hopscotch drawn in chalk on concrete. Sometimes I skipped squares, sometimes I stepped back, and sometimes I chose unexpected jumps.
There were doubts, awkward steps, and detours. Still, I always walked out of that hopscotch smiling — because I chose authenticity over autopilot.
I work with people on multiple levels — through the body, the psycho-emotional world, in their professional lives, and in those turning points and crises that sometimes simmer quietly and sometimes ring like an alarm.
Different fields crossed paths in my life — medicine, psychotherapy, coaching, education, research, communication, and advocacy.
Instead of choosing one, I combine them — because that’s the only way I can be truly whole in my work with people.
My knowledge didn’t come only from formal education. It’s a layered reservoir that has been expanding, deepening, and connecting over the years.
It comes from many places, but nothing got lost along the way. Every experience found its place, and every lesson was put to use.
One of my most persistent companions on that road has been multiple sclerosis — present since my teenage years, a quiet but steady presence in the background. It is not my identity, but it is a teacher—and an additional reason to engage in helping professions with even greater depth, honesty, and intention.
Welcome to the page where you’ll see what Maja 360° looks like.
Explore. Connect. Choose your path.
Psychotherapy
For those who want deep change — and for those subtle inner alignments that quietly transform everyday life.
My first professional love was medicine — and it remains the foundation of how I understand human beings.
Psychotherapy came later, but it claimed a very special place: it gave me a language for what cannot be seen on scans, and a space for what the body holds but doesn’t know how to say.
Though they may seem different, medicine and psychodynamic psychotherapy do not exclude each other in my work — they complement one another, especially when working with psychosomatic difficulties, chronic conditions, and emotional patterns written into the body.
01
Psychotherapist
Certified Psychodynamic Integrative Psychotherapist (National License UPSKS and European certification AIPP)
Specialist in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (Euro-Asian Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists EKPP)
Symbol Drama / Guided Affective Imagery Practitioner, EKIPP)
02
Coach
Certified Psychodynamic Coach(National License UPSKS and European EAIPCM)
European Mentoring & Coaching Council — Senior Practitioner Coach(EIA SP)
SF Team Coach
Perimenopausal coach (IPHM, CMA)
03
Educator & Supervisor
Educator and supervisor in psychodynamic integrative psychotherapy and coaching
Author and facilitator of instructor-level and experiential courses and trainings
I’m also a Symbol Drama (Guided Affective Imagery) practitioner — which allows me to bring symbolic language, imagery, and creative expression into the therapeutic and coaching process.
I work with clients who want to understand the deeper layers of themselves — and with those who feel stuck in their patterns, whose world has narrowed, or whose emotions pull them in directions they don’t fully understand.
Sometimes the work is about everyday struggles, sometimes about inner battles that run deeper — but in both cases, the therapeutic space remains safe, sincere, and alive.
I provide psychotherapy online, in both English and Serbian.
👉 You can read more about my therapeutic work on the Life Leaf website, or contact me for an initial consultation.
Coaching
For moments when change can’t wait — but you don’t want to step into it without real support. Coaching came to me as a natural next step — not as a trend, but as a continuation of long-term practice.
With more than 20 years in the corporate world, within large systems and demanding teams, I understand pressure, uncertainty, responsibility, and the weight of leadership firsthand. I work in three key areas:
- Business & Executive Coaching
- Health Coaching
- Perimenopausal Coaching
100%
authentic
20+
years of experience
1 goal
to be myself
Zato business i executive koučing za mene nisu “posebna oblast” – to je nastavak mog profesionalnog puta. Radim s menadžerima i liderima jer znam teren. I osećam ga.
But coaching is much more than that.
It has become my space of freedom and synthesis — a place where I can bring together everything I am: medicine, psychotherapy, education, lived experience, a deep curiosity for human nature, and hands-on work with people.
That’s why I’ve invested in developing myself specifically in:
Health coaching — where knowledge from medicine and psychotherapy meets everyday choices, habits, and lifestyle.
Perimenopausal Coaching — supporting women in this pivotal life stage, integrating everything: body, emotions, identity, relationships, and meaning.
I am an EMCC-accredited Senior Practitioner Coach, a supervisor, and an educator.
I am also the co-founder of Colossal Minds the largest coaching community in the Balkans, and the Vice President of EMCC Serbia, where I advocate for ethical standards and the growth of our profession.
I HAVE CREATED AND LED MY OWN ACCREDITED PROGRAMS
These programs are designed for psychotherapy and coaching trainees, as well as for anyone who wants to refine their communication, strengthen psychological skills, and build the capacities needed for a mature and grounded life. What makes these courses truly distinctive is their foundation: They are rooted in the psychodynamic model — in a deep, nuanced understanding of the psychological processes that shape the way we think, feel, relate, and act.
If you don’t have the time or space for long-term psychotherapy, try assertive communication training…
Love is a feeling — but it is also a capacity we develop throughout life…
I work online and in hybrid format, in English andSerbian — with individuals, leaders, teams, and those who want change with purpose.
My greatest professional — and deeply personal — reward is that moment when a client realizes they don’t need a “new version of themselves.” They already have everything they need. They simply need support to free it, expand it, and bring it to life.
That moment moves me every time.
Even after all these years, I am still touched when someone says, for the very first time:
“So… this is actually me.”
If you want to say that too — I’m here. 👉
You can read more about coaching on the Life Leaf website, or contact me to arrange an initial session.
What we offer through this initiative
Ask a question
(+381) 65 351-9563
Inicijativa za povećanje svesnosti o perimeno -pauzi
Imagine a doctor on an night shift in the emergency room.
Imagine a woman working on a factory floor.
A teacher standing in front of a room full of noisy teenagers.
A mother running from work to make it to a parent–teacher meeting.
Now imagine that each of them is experiencing symptoms she doesn’t fully understand herself:
hot flashes, insomnia, forgetfulness, anxiety, mood swings, irritability, joint pain, tingling in the hands, abdominal bloating…
And imagine that no one around her – not colleagues, not supervisors, not even her family — knows that this has a name: perimenopause.
More than 70% of women in perimenopause work full-time.
And most of them do it quietly. Alone. Trying hard not to be.
This life stage is a reality — yet still a taboo.
A topic women may whisper about to each other, but rarely speak about openly.
At work, it’s treated as a weakness.
At home, as hysteria.
In society, as if it doesn’t exist.
That is why I launched the Perimenopause Awareness Initiative.
Its purpose is to:
- Educate and empower women going through this transition
- Sensitize colleagues, HR departments, leaders, and partners
- Open dialogue and create space for support
Workshops, Courses & Trainings
My workshops and trainings are like a mental espresso — they wake you up, shake you a bit, and open perspectives you didn’t even know existed.
Teaching and facilitating are some of my favorite moments in professional life.
As an educator and supervisor in psychodynamic integrative psychotherapy and psychodynamic coaching, I share what I’ve gathered over many years — through extensive education and decades of experience.
It took me years, effort, and investment, to acquire these skills and insights. Today I pass them on to others — in a more straightforward, warmer, and more accessible way.
My trainings, courses, and workshops are not just the transfer of theory - they are living encounters: of knowledge, personal experience, curiosity, and contagious enthusiasm..
That’s why the formats vary — from long-term training programs, to intensive workshops, to iskustveno-edukativnih ciklusa koji ostavljaju trag u svakodnevici.
They are intended for trainees and professionals across helping disciplines, as well as for anyone who wants to enrich their life with knowledge and skills that bring depth, clarity, and fulfillment.
Author-developed accredited training programs:
Offered in two formats: an instructor-level course for those who will teach others, and an experiential-educational course for anyone who wants to develop emotional and communication literacy.
A training designed to help you understand why we often struggle in love — and how to grow psychologically so we can build mature, fulfilling relationships.
Carefully designed for specific populations — such as women in perimenopause, or professionals seeking deeper psychodynamic self-reflection.
Open to anyone who wants to learn more about themselves, about working with others, and about the worlds that live between words.
Humanitarian aspect:
The Life Leaf Association , which I founded, organizes numerous free webinars and workshops on mental health.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we delivered more than 150 hours of free webinars and workshops – because knowledge should be accessible to everyone, not only to the privileged.
I love spaces where people ask questions, get a bit confused, laugh, grow, and go home with the feeling that they’ve reconnected parts of themselves they’ve been avoiding for a long time. I also love when, after a workshop, we keep in touch, create joint projects, and keep enriching one another.
SO —
IF YOU WANT A TRAINING THAT STAYS WITH YOU LONG AFTER ZOOM IS SWITCHED OFF —
I’M HERE.
Take a look at the current programs and sign up:
Midlife: My Time for Growth and Reset
Psychodynamic Assertiveness Training
Mature Love
(+381) 65 351-9563
Send an email
info@majarueger.com
A place where ideas don’t stay in the drawer.
I was never someone who waits for others to start. When an idea rises from somewhere deep and becomes so impatient that it itches, I know it matters — and I know it won’t leave me alone until it becomes tangible and visible.
Nothing new — except that over the years, this impulse has only grown stronger.
Midlife sparked my creativity and proved, once again, that it genuinely is a generative period — not a business strategy, not a hobby, but an inner restlessness that demands a shape, a color, a word, or a piece of paper.
And that’s how Tiny Doors From my Heart were born – my most passionate and creative project, created during my Symbol Drama (guided affective imagery training). It brought back a memory from my student days. This small, curious episode I never imagined would keep digging from the inside until it finally surfaced.
Those tiny wooden doors — imagined as a symbolic, personalized gift — are not the biggest thing I’ve ever done. But they are the best example of how one playful idea, infused with the passion and enthusiasm that were probably radiating from me every time I spoke about it, can become contagious enough to inspire others, too.
👉 Read the story behind Tiny Doors From my Heart – here, maybe they’ll open a long-buried creativity in you as well, and spark the urge to create something with your own hands for someone you love.
Medicine: the frame through which I see the world
And life added everything else.
I entered medicine quietly, a bit unsure, but I fell in love with it quickly — have been in love since.
It gave me a foundation, a way of thinking and one essential feeling:
that the world is meant to be understood
– deeply, complexly, yet still logically.
Medicine is my frame for everything the body, emotions, relationships.
I wasn’t always loyal to one single field; you could say my medical interests branched out in every direction, and guided by an endless curiosity.
One moment I was fascinated by gynecology, then urology, at one point I even studied dentistry in parallel (!).My heart always skipped a beat watching an interventional procedure or or a minimally invasive technique that looked like pure magic.
I worked as a clinical support specialist which meant I was "on the ground": in operating rooms and angio suites, beside patients and physicians, right where science, technology and practice meet.
I was both a witness and a quiet companion to surgical teams - learning, observing, supporting
And yes, I often wholeheartedly “voyeur-ed” from the shadows, watching every new device or technique with that familiar excitement:
“There it is! Something new again!” 😄
My years in clinical research were a perfect match for my curiosity.
I was literally at the source of innovation, in contact with therapies and technologies long before they became standard.
It allowed me to witness what it looks like when science changes everyday life and to follow new ideas as they earn their clinical approval.
That work fed my hunger for medicine and real-life contact.
But I tasted the other side too — the serious side: industry, business, sales, marketing.
And in that space as well, I learned, grew — and enjoyed myself.
Because while tracking the latest medical breakthroughs, I was also learning:
- how to lead meetings
- how to negotiate and communicate with CEOs
- how to build a brand and organize a team
- how to present, persuade, and interpret numbers
It was the meeting point of knowledge and the marketplace — in real time.
One of my dear mentors used to joke:
“When I cure you of medicine, you’ll become a good psychotherapist.”
I never got “cured” — but I did manage to weave everything into one beautiful bouquet. 😊
Medicine gave me structure.
Psychotherapy gave me space.
Neuroscience gave me relief.
Because it confirmed that my medical intuitions weren’t illusions: everything, after all, leaves a biological trace.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy — my second great passion — opened a space that medicine didn’t reach:
contact with the psyche, with emotion, with the symbolic world inside us.
Together they give me synergy and depth. Through them, I learned to approach a human being holistically — as a doctor and as a therapist.
Medicine is my foundation and structure.
But psychotherapy is my space of freedom and creativity.
No numbers or reference values. No neatly defined parameters.
Just a person. In their wholeness.
When all of this comes together into one living, playful system it creates the work I enjoy today:
supporting women in perimenopause.
It’s the place where hormones meet identity, where fatigue meets desire, where the past meets a new definition of self.
And I come into that space with everything I’ve built over the years - to walk with them and support them at this turning point.
Because perimenopause isn’t just a cluster of symptoms - it’s life itself showing up.
With all its systems: the body, emotions, relationships, roles, expectations.
And not only our personal ones, but the ones we carry from culture, generational narratives, and family scripts.
That’s why the approach has to be holistic nothing in this process stands alone.
My once restless medical curiosity, the one that carried me through so many fields, , is now exactly what allows me to see a woman in her full complexity — and her full potential.
This isn’t a story about heroism or suffering.
It’s a story about everyday life with a diagnosis that can be demanding, unpredictable, sometimes irritating…
…but often — deeply instructive.
MS taught me not to run.
To walk however I can — but to think faster, deeper, and gentler.
To pause. To be present.
To choose only the battles that matter.
I don’t speak about MS as the main topic — but as a companion..
This experience is part of me: when I work with women in perimenopause, when I teach, lead teams, hold individual sessions, create projects, write, or build something new.
MS is not my identity. But it is my filter.
Everything passes through it: with more awareness, more patience, more truth.
Which is why everything becomes more valuable.
Want to know more?
Read my personal blog “My Plus or My Cross” — where I write honestly, humanly, and sometimes humorously about what everyday life with MS looks like.
Don’t worry — no melodrama, just life.
I’m also preparing a book: The Funny Side of MS.
Because if there’s something we can do together, it’s laugh even when the diagnosis tries to steal the spotlight.
MS is my + because it made me stop and look inward.
To step away from conferences and suitcases, from tenders and deadlines - and return to the place that had been neglected far too long: myself.
Thanks to MS, I met my Mentor - the one who taught me that meaning isn’t something you search for outside, but something you build from within.
And I met my husband, real German, who is now my gentlest ally and companion.
He’s there when I stay up late crafting my little doors, and when I enthusiastically invent twelve things at once.
With him, the world is softer — and I am stronger.
MS is not an ending.
It was an invitation to stop running from myself — and to start choosing differently.
Today, when people see me with a cane, they don’t see what I know:
that I didn’t give up.
I still work in the medical industry — just in a different way.
I’m still an educator, a therapist, a writer, a workshop facilitator, someone who keeps opening new chapters…
My work used to be chaotic and a constant rush.
Today, it is still intense - but with a different quality:deeper, more present, focused on what is most intimate and most human in people.
Then came acceptance — and with it, a search.
For solutions.
For approaches I didn’t know existed.
For myself - not through heroic endurance, but through constructive exploration.
That’s how Life Leaf was born — an organization offering psychological support to people with chronic illness and reduced social participation.
To give them understanding.
To help them recognize what’s happening within them — and learn how to meet it with more gentleness and wisdom.
MS gave me the opportunity to help in a new way.
Not only as a doctor, psychotherapist, and coach —
but as a human being who knows what it’s like when your body says “no”, and you answer:
“Maybe differently — but still YES.”
Today, when I work with women in perimenopause, with people living with a diagnosis, with those in transition or in crisis —
I work with all of who I am: my experience, my knowledge, and everything illness, love, work, and life have taught me.
Why I refuse to let “coaching” be associated with charlatanism.
At some point — usually when you’ve been in the profession long enough — you stop rolling your eyes. You just give a bitter little smile. But I can’t accept that. I won’t.
Whenever I heard someone say they were a “coach,” and then realized that behind that title stood nothing but three watched Reels and a self-promotional workshop called “Make Millions with Essential Oils and the Power of Your Zodiac Sign,” I didn’t know whether to laugh or sit down and cry.
That’s how many have tarnished coaching — turning it into something people distrust, even mock.
But coaching is something entirely different.
Professional coaching — the kind I practice and stand for — is not improvisation.
It’s not a motivational mantra like “You’ve got this!” or “Drink water and think positive.”
It’s a profession. It’s an evidence-based practice.
It’s a skill you learn — seriously, rigorously — even at universities and accredited programs around the world.
As it should be. Because you are working with a human being — with their dilemmas, potential, fears, and life.
That is why I created Colossal Minds - together with an IT partner who knows how to build a platform that not only works, but has a soul. I brought the expertise; he brought the structure. Somewhere in that collaboration, the idea was born: a space that offers more than a Google search for “life coach Belgrade price.”
I wanted to create a place where a client immediately knows:
That is why the Colossal Minds platform includes only coaches who are already accredited or in serious, supervised training. People who understand the scope of coaching — and the line between coaching and therapy.
People with real competence and capacity for this work.
They know that coaching doesn’t heal — but it empowers.
They know coaching doesn’t resolve trauma - but it can help you step out of professional, emotional, or existential fog.
One of the biggest reasons people avoid coaching is - simply the lack of trust.
They don’t know whom to rely on. And given the sea of charlatans — they are absolutely right.
I can’t watch that happen. In psychotherapy, I meet clients who would benefit far more from coaching — but they don’t trust coaches, the “merchants of magic.”
So Colossal Minds isn’t just a website. It is my mission to restore the dignity of coaching. To make it clear:
If you’re a new coach with no clients yet — but you meet the criteria — you’re welcome here. Coaches, especially at the beginning, struggle with visibility - yet they can make an enormous difference.
And if you’re a client who has lost trust — believe me, there are those of us who work seriously, ethically, and with integrity.
In the Colossal Minds community, we connect trustworthy, ethical coaches with people who want real conversation, real change, and real growth. That is our mission.
No mantras. No mystification. No “gurus.”
Just a human being who knows what they’re doing — and someone you can trust.
(+381) 653519563