Today we’d like to introduce you to Andreea Alexandra Dobre.
Hi Andreea Alexandra, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
You asked me to share my story, and even now, when I think about it, I get a knot in my throat and the tears want to fall. But this story, my story, it’s important because it shows how our biggest struggles can bring us to our greatest breakthroughs.
A Soul Shaped by Many Lands
I am European, born in Romania, a cold country emerging from the post-communist Soviet era after Ceaușescu was killed. An only child with early studies in the beauty sector, always eager to learn more, being very curious and attracted to beauty and fashion. I’ve lived across five countries and three continents, and now I’m the proud mother of a puppy and the author of a forthcoming book, “Whispers from the Child Within: Becoming the Parent Your Younger Self Needed,” where I share the wisdom I want to leave as a legacy for those who come after me. Today, I house a brand that represents transformation itself.
The Escape That Became My Freedom
I came to America with one suitcase and $50 in my pocket, maybe chasing the American Dream, or so I thought. But after a few years, I understood what it really was: my gateway to freedom. Freedom to be human again. Freedom to feel, to smile, to be happy, to find joy and harmony in small things.
For 14 years, I was in a marriage that was beyond toxic. I was exploited and trafficked as a human being, manipulated in such a way that I had to sell myself to keep what I thought was the love of my life. That’s how he manipulated me, brainwashed me, making me believe I was loved when I was only being used. He made me cold and far away from everything that was supposed to give me strength and empower me as a human being.
In my book, I explore this truth that I want others to understand: When you grow up starving for safety, even pain feels like home. That was my reality, and it’s a legacy of understanding I want to leave for those who might be trapped in similar darkness. When the Nightmare Followed Me
When I came to America, I came with the thought that this was the only country where I could get rid of this marriage that wasn’t really a marriage. It was the only door that I knew he would have a hard time following me through.
But after one year, when I divorced him and cut him off completely, he started harassing my family, harassing my friends, blackmailing me through all my relatives, calling places where I worked, people that I knew, friends, even threatening my own life. His visa for America was cancelled, so what did he do? He passed the border illegally and came to America, moving into the building across from where I was living.
My life became a real chaos that’s hard to talk about. More than one year of harassment and threatening and being chased. He put a tracker on my car, I had to sell that car because everywhere I was driving, he was there. I had to get a restraining order, which he broke, and he went to jail for six months before they deported him.
Before I took this decision, I called my father, and I told him he has to support me no matter what, because I did a lot of things that I wasn’t supposed to do, which I’m not proud of, and I felt a lot of shame and guilt about that. I remember very well what he told me: “You are my child. Doesn’t matter if you smell like shit, I will wash you, dry you up, and you will still be smelling like roses, because you are my child.” That call, that moment of unconditional love despite my shame, it saved my life.
Finding Light in My Own Ashes
From my own ashes, which I call it, I found the light. I found the focus, the purpose, and from that, Within Enlightenment was born. I started stepping on the healing path where I tried every modality, from breathwork, energy work, to sound healing, meditation, even plant ceremonies that helped me get into my subconscious mind and take, one by one, the dark days from my subconscious to the light, giving them love and compassion and understanding. Making that part of me be reborn.
Even during my toughest moments, amid the shadows, I discovered a flicker of light, a beacon of hope that guided me forward. The words “In the darkness, you will find the light” became my mantra. I looked at challenges as lessons and opportunities to push us beyond our limits, to test our limits, to be more than we are in that moment when we accept that situation, that circumstance, that person in our life, even if they bring us to such a bad situation or make us do bad things. These experiences push us to become more.
These are insights I’ve captured in my book as a legacy for others who need to hear them: “Sometimes survival looks like stillness. Sometimes it’s the quiet collapse that keeps a soul alive”. And another truth I discovered, which I share on my pages: “I used to think I was broken; now I know I was adapting to a world that never learned how to hold me.”
The Sacred Work of Sound and Body
Now, I guide big groups of people, bringing awareness to the feelings in the body and to the fact that we actually need to be in tune with the body, because that part is the feminine part, the emotions. We have two sides: the masculine, which is the mind, and the feminine, which is more emotion and feelings.
Harvard studies show that meditation and sound increase productivity by up to 20%. But beyond numbers, it’s about belonging. When people feel safe in their bodies, they remember who they are. Sound can bring us into the hypnagogic state of mind, actually theta brain waves, where the biggest personalities talk about it as the gateway to transformation, to changing your life, to repatterning and rewriting your brain, bringing light to the dark parts. This state can heal your diseases and bring you to a rebirth.
One of the most profound discoveries I share in my book is this: When language disappears, the body starts speaking. You see, we can’t reconnect the neurons that lose their connection when we have trauma. When we’re in fight or flight, the neurons stick to each other; they don’t collaborate. But through sound, through frequency, we can change this. Where energy flows, the tension goes.
The Body’s Ancient Wisdom
Our body is not just skin and bones; it’s a living, breathing, highly intellectual system with wisdom far greater than our mind. We keep in our body the experience of seven generations before us and seven generations ahead.
I just had a workshop for a breast cancer support association where I did sound healing and talked about how energy stays stuck in our fascia, which wraps around every muscle, every bone, every organ. It connects everything like a simple messenger between your nervous system, your lymphatic system, and even your immune system. Emotions are stuck in the fascia, and fascia holds memory. This is why during yoga, especially yin yoga, or during breathwork, we have releases, crying, spasms of muscles, because our body starts to let go of that memory, that part that doesn’t serve us anymore. Sound incorporates so beautifully in all this because vibration, frequency, and resonance go at the cellular level.
Think about the feminine like this: a woman is the one who creates from her womb, she creates life, babies. You give her two bags of groceries, and she makes you a warm meal. You give her four walls, and she makes a house, a place filled with love and care. We keep the ancient wisdom that connects the realm of spiritual to Mother Earth. We hold in ourselves the womb, it’s a void that connects the two realms. When we deny that part of us, we deny our power to transform.
Building Bridges Through Collaboration
My brand is more than just a collection of products or services, it’s a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of enlightenment. I’m the first company in Miami that rents and supports collaboration with yoga cork mats, the first one with Yoga Cork in Miami. When we get into the power of ourselves and understand how much value we have, collaborations start to show up.
Right now, for example, I collaborate with SLS LUX Brickell, many collaborations with Tierra Santa, Faena Forum, also with Samadhi Soul, people that are on the path of understanding we are not only matter. I’m very happy for that.
With each sage smudge, each whiff of Palo Santo fume, and each crystal held in my hand, I felt the veil of confusion lift, revealing glimpses of truth and clarity. These ancient tools became my companions on the journey, offering solace and wisdom as I navigated the complexities of my existence. They brought me more aware, more in tune with my body, because they enhanced the senses of my body, the smell, the touch, and brought me closer to my feminine side, which was unknown for more than 18 years that I was trapped in that marriage.
This wisdom that I want to pass on as a legacy is captured in my book: The body always knew the way home. I just finally learned how to listen.
The Hardest Forgiveness
My first book, “Whispers from the Child Within: Becoming the Parent Your Younger Self Needed,” which will be released at the end of the year or maybe on my birthday at the end of January, explores what actually brought me to seek love in a man who had so much darkness in his life, and me being blind, not able to see it.
In the pages of this book, I share the most important realization of my healing journey, something I want to leave as a legacy for others walking similar paths: The hardest forgiveness is not for those who hurt us, but for the parts of ourselves that believed we deserved it. This understanding changed everything for me. And another truth I discovered and documented for those who will come after: Healing is remembering that the same hands that once trembled in fear can now tremble in creation.
My Mission Through Within Enlightenment
I’m now building a wellness program that I want to offer to big corporations and hotels. Most importantly, I’ve rebuilt my relationships with my mother, my father, my family, all the connections my ex-husband didn’t allow me to have. He made me understand they were using me, not loving me, and I believed it. But now, I know the truth.
Today, as a life coach through spirituality, a guide, an alchemist of sound and restorative frequency therapy, I help others understand how the body feels, with feelings, with care, compassion, with love. We have more than 7 trillion atoms in our body that create energy for us to be able to breathe, to focus on our tasks. We are bowls of energy, pulsating, vibrating, alive.
I embarked on a journey to discover the true meaning and purpose of life, which led me to enlightenment. And now, through Within Enlightenment, I guide others to find their way back to themselves, to regulate their nervous systems, find presence, and remember their innate light.
America gave me something I never expected when I arrived with my single suitcase and $50. Not the American Dream of wealth or success, but something far more precious: the freedom to be human again. The freedom to feel, to heal, to help others remember that they too carry light within their darkness.
This is my story, raw, magnetic, and deeply human. It’s a story of how trauma can become transformation, how silence can become song, and how even in our darkest moments, we can become the light we’ve been searching for.
This is the truth of who I am and why Within Enlightenment exists. It’s not just a business, it’s my life’s mission born from my own resurrection.
Andreea Alexandra Dobre is the founder of Within Enlightenment, the first company in Miami offering yoga cork mat rentals and collaborations. She offers sound healing sessions, corporate wellness programs, and transformative workshops throughout Miami in collaboration with SLS LUX Brickell, Tierra Santa, Faena Forum, and Samadhi Soul. Her first book, “Whispers from the Child Within: Becoming the Parent Your Younger Self Needed,” will be released at the end of 2025.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all, my road was anything but smooth, it was a long, uneven path through confusion, fear, and rediscovery. When I left the toxic environment I had been trapped in for years, I was in a state of emotional and psychological intoxication, I didn’t even know how to think for myself anymore. I remember telling my psychiatrist and life coach, “I need someone to tell me what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.” That’s how disconnected I was from my own intuition.
One of the clearest memories burned into my mind is walking alone on the beach, carrying a yoga mat under my arm, crying as the sun went down. I kept looking behind me, afraid for my life, unsure if I would even live to see the next sunrise. That night I went to a full moon ceremony, something I had never even heard of before, and that became my first glimpse of healing, my first connection to a community that would eventually become my new family.
But the struggle didn’t end there, when I started rebuilding my life and launching Within Enlightenment, I faced many obstacles, especially legal and business challenges. I had no idea how to open a company, what papers to file, or how to start from nothing. I was good at sales, but not this kind of sales, not the kind where you’re selling something born from your soul.
Asking for help was another mountain to climb, for most of my life I equated asking for help with weakness, I was used to doing everything alone. But I had to learn that vulnerability is not failure, it’s strength in disguise. There were moments when I hit rock bottom, nights when panic attacks took my breath away, when I couldn’t breathe, and I felt completely alone except for my little puppy. My life coach taught me to tap on my chest with my knuckles, like waking my own heart back up. At the time, it was just a survival technique, but now I understand it was also my body teaching me how to come back home to itself, to ground, to feel, to reconnect.
That’s really what this journey has been about, learning to return to the body, to rebuild the bridge between mind, body, and spirit. The road was painful, yes, but every tear, every panic attack, every moment of fear became part of my awakening.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I consider myself an artist of energy, space, and emotion. My work lives at the intersection of healing, design, and consciousness. Everything I do, whether it’s sound healing, somatic facilitation, creating wellness tools, or designing spaces, comes from the same intention, to help people remember the wisdom of their own body and the beauty of being alive.
I’m the founder of Within Enlightenment, a sustainable wellness brand that creates toxin-free, conscious products like cork yoga mats, ceremonial kits, and mindful tools that bring harmony to both the body and the Earth. I also guide experiences, sound healings, frequency activations, breathwork journeys, and energy ceremonies that help people move from survival into presence, from numbness into feeling.
My sessions are not just relaxation, they’re deep nervous system recalibration. I use sound frequencies, vibration, breath, and intuitive somatic guidance to help people reconnect with their own life force energy, what I call the sacred current of the soul. I blend ancient practices with modern science, polyvagal theory, quantum frequency work, and fascia-based movement, so that every experience feels both mystical and deeply embodied.
Beyond that, I am also an architecture student, which influences everything I create. I see space as a living organism, just like the human body. Both can hold energy, both can heal, both can expand or contract depending on how they are treated. My dream is to design environments that breathe with the people inside them, spaces built with consciousness, where sound, light, and structure align to support emotional regulation and inner peace.
What sets me apart, I believe, is my capacity to merge worlds that usually don’t meet, science and spirituality, design and energy, the nervous system and the soul. I don’t just talk about healing, I build it, I design it, I create it in form and frequency.
I am most proud of the moments when people leave my events or sessions and say, “I felt my body again, I felt safe in myself for the first time.” That’s what it’s about. Healing isn’t about perfection, it’s about reconnection.
My art is the human experience, the alchemy of turning trauma into presence, pain into beauty, and fear into freedom. Everything I share comes from what I lived through, from the silence of the crib near the wood stove to the sound of gongs that now echo through sacred spaces. I believe every body carries a story that deserves to be sung, and my work is simply helping people remember their song.
Because, as I always say, the body always knew the way home, we just have to learn how to listen.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
The most important lessons I’ve learned on this journey are not from books or mentors, but from the moments I thought I wouldn’t survive. Life became my greatest teacher.
First, I learned that safety doesn’t come from a place or a person, it’s something we build inside ourselves. The moment I learned to regulate my breath and listen to my body, I started to feel home again.
Second, I learned that asking for help doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human. For years I tried to carry everything alone, but real healing started when I allowed others to walk beside me.
Third, I learned that the body is the soul’s first language. Before we speak, we feel. The body keeps the truth, it never lies. Once I began to listen, I found answers that words never gave me.
Fourth, I learned that pain is not a punishment; it’s an initiation. Every heartbreak, every panic attack, every failure was a portal that led me closer to my purpose.
And last, I learned that healing is not about becoming someone new, it’s about remembering who you are beneath the fear. The light was always there, even in the darkest moments. I just had to stop running from myself long enough to see it.
Pricing:
- Private Sound Healing & Frequency Therapy 75-minute private session: $222 Couple or Duo session: $333 Group or event-based sound healing: starting at $555
- . Energy Work & Kundalini Activation 90-minute private energy session: $222 Couples or duo activation: $333 Group or retreat session: starting at $555
- Cacao & Sacred Ceremony Experiences 2-hour guided ceremony: $144 per person Private or small group: from $333 Integration kits with sage, and crystals: $44
- Within Enlightenment Wellness Products Cork Yoga Mat – 3 mm: $88 USD Cork Yoga Mat – 5 mm: $111 USD Smudge Kit (Palo Santo & Sage Kit): $34.99 USD Yoga Bag: $33 USD Within Enlightenment Signature Bundle (e.g., “Renaissance Bundle”): $130 USD
- Corporate or Hotel Wellness Programs Half-day immersion (yoga, sound, tea ritual): starting at $ Full-day retreat or activation residency, Custom program proposals available upon request
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.withinenlightenment.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/withinenlightenment/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61562162199893
