Iulia-Aneta Denes — Speaker, Scientist & Guide
Speaker · Scientist · Guide

Iulia-Aneta
Denes

Scientist by training, spiritual seeker by nature. Here to show you both can live in the same body.

I help scientists, spiritual seekers, and high-achievers reconnect with the intelligence of their inner life, through keynotes, workshops, and immersive experiences.

I work with: event organizers · retreat leaders · corporate wellness teams · personal growth communities · individuals

On topics of: science & spirituality · mindful eating · AI & creativity · embodied living

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Based in Ghent, Belgium  ·  Available internationally

The path

I never left science.
I grew beyond it.

I grew up in Dej, Romania, a place where the mountains felt closer than the city centre, and where the natural world was never separate from daily life. I carried that sensibility into more than a decade of formal science: a veterinary medicine diploma in Romania, followed by a doctorate in Veterinary Sciences with a focus on molecular biology at Ghent University in Belgium.

My research touched the edges of the invisible: protein expression, molecules and cells, RNA & DNA, STED microscopy, FLIM imaging, the fluorescence signatures of living cells. I published in the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, presented findings to international peers, and learned to speak the language of evidence with precision.

But alongside the lab work, something else was always present: a deep curiosity about what science couldn't yet measure. The felt sense of a body in balance. The intelligence of a forest. The way some knowledge only arrives when you slow down enough to receive it.

The turning point came not in a laboratory, but in grief. When I lost my kitten, a loss that is small by the world's measure but enormous by mine, I found myself facing a pain that no scientific training could solve. That pain became a doorway, one that led me to Mindvalley University 2025, to kundalini energy, and into a deep dive into the spiritual field I had always quietly sensed but never fully entered.

"I didn't choose between science and soul. I started listening to both."

What I found, and what I now bring to stages, retreats, and workshops, is that these worlds are not opposites. Rigour and wonder live in the same body. But data and intuition speak in different languages. And you need to know how to listen.

I am based in Ghent, Belgium, and I work internationally as a speaker, creative guide, and mindful living facilitator. My audiences range from scientific communities and corporate teams to spiritual retreats and personal growth communities like Mindvalley.

PhD Veterinary SciencesMolecular BiologyPublished ResearcherKundalini & Energy ImmersionsMindvalley CertificationsAI tools for creativityBelgium · Romania · International
What I speak about

Four doorways. One invitation.

When science meets soul

A talk for audiences tired of choosing between evidence and experience. I share what a decade inside research and molecular biology taught me about the limits of measurement, and why the most rigorous thing we can do is stay curious about what we can't yet prove. Grounded, personal, and quietly radical.

Keynote · Panel · Retreat day

AI as a creative companion

I have taught children to create music and generate visual art with LeonardoAI, I composed ethereal soundscapes on Suno and I used ChatGPT and Claude as writer companions to turn my messy thoughts into refined poetry and prose. This talk explores what happens when we stop fearing AI and start creating alongside it. Practical, playful, and full of live examples.

Keynote · Workshop · Corporate

The golden bite: mindful eating as a portal

Food is not just nutrition. It is memory, pleasure, presence, and connection. In this immersive experience, inspired by Ayurvedic principles and the science of sensory attention, participants slow down enough to actually taste their lives. Offered as a full sensorial workshop.

Workshop · Retreat · Corporate wellness

Forgotten Truths: What gets lost when logic becomes our only voice

In our modern quest for perfection and optimization we quietly stopped trusting anything we couldn't quantify. Including ourselves. This talk asks what we've left behind: the knowledge that lives in the body, in dreams, in nature, in the parts of experience that don't fit a dataset. Not as a rejection of science, but as an honest audit of what gets filtered out when logic is the only voice in the room.

Keynote · Retreat · Spiritual communities
The creative world of iuande

One soul,
many expressions.

Beyond the stage, I move slowly, I pay attention and I create. I make music that floats between chant and dream. I paint, draw or generate visual art from the language of nature and the cosmos. I write poetry that follows the rhythm of seasons rather than deadlines.

But the fullest picture of who I am includes what happens when I close the laptop.

The body as teacher:

I am a pole dancer and a pole dance teacher. I came to it not for the performance but for what it demands: full presence, trust in your own strength, and the willingness to be a beginner again and again. It is one of the most honest practices I know. It can teach you more about embodiment than most books can.

My inner circle:

I share my home with my partner and with our three cats. My cats are, without question, among my most important teachers in the art of rest, boundaries, and unconditional softness. And although I live thousands of km apart from my parents, this age has blessed us with telephones and internet so I talk with them every other day.

Where I go to reset:

Nature is not a backdrop for me, it is a source. I hike or go to the beach when I need to think or to stop thinking. I garden to calm my mind. I bike on country side roads stopping to say hi to cows or to take pictures of pretty little flowers. I stare at the moon and wonder about the mysteries of the universe.

And all of it, the science, the soul, the movement, the stillness, is part of the same inquiry:

What does it mean to be fully alive?

How I see the world

The world, if you look closely enough, is made entirely of wonders.

I spent years in laboratories learning to be precise. To look closely at things. To zoom in until a cell wall became a landscape, until a protein became a character with a story. That kind of attention changes you. You start to understand that everything, absolutely everything, is more complex and more beautiful up close than it appears from a distance.

And then there is the other education, the one that happened outside any institution. Over 50 kundalini sessions with a kundalini master, cracked open an understanding of energy, the body, and consciousness that no microscope could have shown me. I completed Mindvalley's Spiritual Mastery programme, studied Nei Gong and Qi Gong in live workshops, and I continue to show up, every day, to practices that expand what I think I know. This is an ongoing investigation, as rigorous in its own way as anything I did in a laboratory. The difference is that the instrument is me.

This is what I bring to my work: a trained eye that is also a soft one. A mind that has read the studies and still believes in mystery. A body that has learned to trust its own signals as much as it trusts a peer-reviewed journal.

"I don't ask anyone to abandon their rationality. I invite them to expand it."

My work is for people who are done pretending that their inner life doesn't matter. For scientists who have private spiritual practices they've never mentioned in a paper. For seekers who want their curiosity grounded in something real. For anyone who has felt the tension between what they know and what they sense, and wondered if there was a way to live in both at once.

Becasue science and spirituality are not enemies. They are companions that should be listened to together.

Moments of recognition

Where the work has been seen.

Podcasts

Appeared on the Samantha SAvvy Podcast and discussed about bio electricity and spiritual meaning, through personal stories and observations from the world around us.

Podcast · Online

🎧 Listen to the episode
Mindvalley University 2025 Tribe Events

Hosted "The Golden Bite: A ceremony of taste and tenderness" a sensorial journey where food becomes more than nourishment, it becomes presence, pleasure, and poetry.

Workshop · Amsterdam, The Netherlands

📃 Check event page
Mindvalley University 2025 Tribe Events

Hosted "A Doorway into Grief: Release and Acceptance" a reflective meditation where grief is honored, felt, gently held and released with compassion.

Workshop · Amsterdam, The Netherlands

📃 Check event page
Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry

Featured researcher and interviewee in the JHC online magazine, covering advanced fluorescence imaging techniques (STED microscopy and FLIM) and their application in cellular biology.

Published research · Ghent University

📃 Check the article
Frontrunner Days - Ghent University

Invited to speak for the Frontrunner Days event, presenting original research and insights on STED and FLIM microscopy techniques to an academic audience.

Academic presentation · Faculty of Bioscience Engineering

📽️ Watch the video
Art with AI — Upper Primary Afterschool Programme

Facilitator of Art with AI, an afterschool club introducing children to AI as a creative tool, demonstrating that the bridge between technology and imagination can be built early on.

Educational initiative · Belgium

Testimonials

This space grows with every talk, workshop, and session. If we've worked together and something shifted for you, I'd be grateful to hear it.

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Find me

I exist in a few quiet corners.

The best way to understand my work before reaching out is to spend a little time in my world. Start wherever feels right.

Invite me to speak

Let's create something real together.

I speak at conferences, corporate wellness events, spiritual retreats, personal growth summits, and educational programmes. Every engagement is shaped to the audience in front of me, I don't arrive with a fixed script. I arrive with a presence.

If something on this page resonated, if you felt a small pull of recognition, that's usually a good sign. Reach out and tell me about your event. I'll respond personally.

Location: Based in Ghent, Belgium · Available internationally
Languages: English · Romanian · Conversational Dutch
Talk formats: Keynote · Panel · Workshop · Retreat day · Corporate session
Topics: Science & spirituality · AI & creativity · Mindful eating · Emotions

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