Hi, I’m Anna Shilina.

Success did not teach me how to love.

I moved from Kyiv to Cape Town at six and grew up in an immigrant home. The fighting I witnessed sent me looking for answers long before I called it a career.

I thought achievement might lead to connection. There were school awards, a BSc in Property Studies, honours, cum laude, and eight years in hospitality, including work as chief stewardess on a 160-foot superyacht.

I later built and exited a security guarding business with almost 1,000 employees. Signing contracts and managing people taught me a great deal about leadership. It did not answer everything that mattered at home.

For me, it was love.

I could keep collecting achievements and still feel desperately lonely. The work that changed my relationships asked something harder of me: to loosen my grip on the identity I had built around achievement.

My parents are still together. It took me decades to see their fighting differently: two people doing their best with the Relating Intelligence they had at the time. Humans love at the level they were taught.

The bridge between knowing and doing

My path has included training as a certified Lumina Spark practitioner, learning relationship coaching tools at the Gottman Institute and years studying human behaviour with Dr. John Demartini.

Relating Intelligence took shape through my own practice and study, including silent Vipassana retreats. It brings together relationship models and practical ways of working with the gap between what we understand and what we can do in the moment.

Relationships are ratios plus capacity.

The Man. The Math. The Muscle. Choose who you want to be, understand what the relationship needs and build the capacity to act on that understanding.

What you can expect from me

Warmth, directness, practical work and the occasional uncomfortable question. I will take your situation seriously without treating you as a problem to be fixed.

We work with the part you can influence: your choices, your responses and how you relate. We leave room for another person’s choices too.

Frank is the explorer. This is your life.

He helps us recognise the familiar moments: doing more, feeling less wanted and wondering why the same argument keeps finding him.

Your relationship will have its own details. Bring those. The Gym is where the work becomes personal.

Come and meet me.

Book a conversation →

Want to understand the approach first? Begin with the book or look inside the Gym.

Peace. Power. Play.