When she was in her twenties, she woke up one morning and couldn't straighten her back. She rode her bicycle hunched over to the payphone, got an appointment with Ellen Greenlaw, a polarity therapist (in Eugene, OR), she rode back to the house, from where she caught the bus to Ellen's all without being able to straighten her back. After Ellen worked on her for an hour, her back was fine again.

That caused her to want to study polarity therapy. She didn't get to study Ellen's type of polarity therapy, instead she studied with Alan Siegel in San Francisco the polarity method of Dr. Randolph Stone and Pierre Pannetier.

Around the same time, she had a roommate who was born with severe Asthma. Her friend had been helped greatly by a Shiatsu Therapist, and she instructed Susanne on how to press points on her back, when she had an Asthma attack. This friend then went to someone who gave her Reiki during an attack, which also helped with her Asthma. Those were the reasons, why Susanne also studied Reiki and Akupressure and Shiatsu. Later she studied various other modalities.