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From IT MANAGER to HOLISTIC COACH
Read my story below
Welcome, glad you're here!
It's my mission to help people live from their heart. To lovingly challenge them to show themselves, to stand up for who they are and open their eyes to new possibilities.​
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I want to help people live their lives as happily, healthy and authentically as possible. I truly believe that happiness and health can be found in authentic living. That by getting to know yourself better, learning to listen to your body and knowing how your nervous system works, you can flourish and magic can arise in your life. I get a big smile on my face when people dare to show their true colors and show themselves. I applaud everyone who is prepared to turn inward and dare to take on the true life.
I live passionately from my heart, stand for authenticity and loving leadership and get a sparkle in my eyes when it comes to personal growth. I like to go into depth and share my knowledge and experiences with people. I work as a holistic coach, organize events and have been asked as an expert on the autonomic nervous system for further training.
Although I have read many books, and done courses and trainings, my biggest source of inspiration is life itself. I teach from the experiences I have lived and the practices that have helped me.
Where I came from
My life wasn't always so promosing. Despite thinking I had made it (with a master in econometrics, manager job in IT, my own house and a respectable partner), I also had unexplained health symptoms. When I hit my head and got a concussion, the misery started. Recovery was not forthcoming and I felt more and more stuck.
Slowly I started to discover that I actually did have boundaries (surprise!) and that both I and others constantly crossed them. My body was stuck in freeze mode and I was often dissociated. This was due to unprocessed (sexual) trauma, destructive patterns and a lot of unprocessed emotions. At first I was not aware of all this, I thought that the way I lived my life was 'normal' and that everyone experienced these things. But underneath the surface there was a lot going on:
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Small things felt very intense to me, a deadline that was approaching, an unanswered text message, it kept haunting my mind
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I was constantly worried about what others thought of me and how I came across
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I was afraid of making mistakes and was busy trying to keep control
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My life consisted of to do lists, (self-imposed) rules and 'that's how it should be'
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Patterns kept repeating themselves and even though I knew I wanted things to be different, I didn't know how
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My body was often tense, I grinded my teeth a lot and suffered from tense muscles
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I developed an eating disorder at a young age and 'overcame' it through willpower. However, one unhealthy coping (eating and vomiting) was replaced by another (men and alcohol)
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I often had trouble falling asleep and woke up tired
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I was ill frequenty and had already been ill for a long time (unexplained) twice before the concussion
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I could react very emotionally to things, when I felt stressed something small could affect me deeply
Maybe you recognize one or more things. In my search for recovery I discovered that many people experience these symptoms. Fortunately, I also discovered that this can be changed, only most people do not know (yet) how.
My first experiences with spirituality and consciousness was at a young age. My mother was the director of a yoga teacher training school. As a child, I attended the yoga classes at home (in my pyjamas, so that I could go to bed afterwards). When I was a teenager my father encouraged me to meditate, by giving me extra pocket money if I did guided meditations, as he recognised the restlessness in my head.
It was a small step for me to start again, when after a few months the concussion did not seem to recover. However, the big change for me came when I went to my first tantra retreat. I had no idea what it was and went there because I heard that it was 'the ultimate way of self-development'. Once I was there, I felt I had found my passion and purpose. Practice groups, workshops and retreats came into my life and I started to notice a shift in myself. I started to feel more flow and aliveness. I started discovering what I wanted in life, where my boundaries were and what gave me energy. My focus started to shift to self-exploration and trueful living. In the past, the word authenticity was associated for me with awful restaurants for tourists, but now it became one of my core values. My heart started to speak again, my body relaxed and my relationships deepened.
Slowly, I also came across the autonomic nervous system and brain retraining. I started to apply these concepts and experienced how I could shape my own life. Where I first thought it was at odds with tantra: "letting be what is" vs. "shaping your life", I started to find more and more similarities. In order to be able to perceive what is, you have to be in a present (and therefore relaxed) state. Many practices within tantra are calming the nervous system and the precision with which we choose our words in tantra fits in well with brain retraining.
Eventually I found my own mix of practices and went from 'learn to live with this' to 'healed'. I started my own business, deepend friendships to a level I could never have imagined and now live full-hearthedly. By now, I use these practices in my coaching and I organize events to introduce people to tantra and invite them to live authentically.
My healing path