People sometimes ask how a boy from a flat, grey corner of the Netherlands ended up teaching movement and breathwork on a volcanic island in the Atlantic. The honest answer is that I needed it myself, long before I could ever offer it to anyone else.
MindBodyInMotion isn't a brand I dreamed up at a desk. It's the name I gave to the way back — the path I found out of my own darkest years. So before I tell you what it is, let me tell you where it comes from.
The grasslands and the sea
I was born and raised in the quiet countryside of the northern Netherlands, and from the very beginning I was drawn to movement and to the natural world. The wide, open grasslands around my home became my sanctuary — a place where I felt genuinely connected and at peace.
School was a different story. I wasn't one of the popular kids, and I often felt like an outsider, never quite sure where I belonged. But whenever life felt like too much, I went outside. The quiet stillness of the fields was a refuge from schoolwork and pressure — and a moment of clarity I couldn't find anywhere else.
And then there was the sea. On our yearly sail trips, the rhythm of the waves and the freedom of open water gave me a deep, unexplainable calm. Those moments shaped my bond with nature and planted the first seeds of mindfulness — long before I had a word for it.
Those early years taught me something I would only fully understand much later: nature has a profound ability to heal, to restore, and to guide us back to ourselves. That belief became the foundation of everything I do now.
The city, and losing my way
Everything changed when we moved to the city. The connection to nature I had always leaned on was suddenly replaced by noise, concrete, and chaos. As a teenager I felt lost and disoriented — unsure of who I was or where I belonged.
In my search for an identity, I drifted into a life of partying and rebellion. I neglected school, got into trouble, and couldn't see a clear way forward. Eventually, in a desperate attempt to take back some control, I turned to martial arts. The discipline and structure gave me something solid to hold on to when everything else felt like it was slipping away.
Discipline — the martial path
What began as survival slowly became a love that shaped my whole character. It started with tennis and grew into a deep devotion to martial arts: Karate, Tang Soo Do, Muay Thai, Kung Fu, and eventually Tai Chi.
For more than 36 years I trained across many different schools and teachers. Each one gave me far more than technique — they gave me resilience, humility, and a sense of purpose. Martial arts became my world: a lifelong discipline that taught me how to fall down and how to stand back up.
"Train as hard as you like — but if you never learn to direct the energy, you're building on sand." Those words from an early teacher stayed with me. I just didn't yet know how badly I would need them.
From pain
Then life had other plans. A severe injury during a sparring match ended my competitive martial arts overnight. In a single moment, the thing that had given me strength, structure, and identity was simply gone.
It plunged me into a deep well of pessimism and despair. The days were dark, and I genuinely struggled to find a reason to keep moving forward. When the thing that holds you together breaks, you find out very quickly what — if anything — is underneath.
To motion — how Qigong gave me a way back
And it was there, in the middle of that darkness, that I found something that would change my life forever: Qigong and Tai Chi. These ancient practices — built on breath, slow movement, and meditation — offered me a way out of the spiral I had fallen into.
Slowly, I began to regain control over my own thoughts and emotions. Not by forcing anything, but by creating the conditions in which my body and mind could finally settle. I started to feel changes I couldn't yet explain.
Years later I would learn the modern language for what I had experienced: a nervous system shifting out of survival mode. A deep exhalation dropping the shoulders, slowing the heart. Energy — call it Qi, call it vagal tone — flowing freely again. Back then I only knew that, for the first time in a long while, I could breathe.
A new beginning in Tenerife
With a little hope returning, I decided it was time for a genuine fresh start. I moved to Tenerife — an island of ocean and mountains, a place where I could reconnect with the nature that had always been my refuge.
Surfing and exploring the island grounded me in a way I hadn't felt in years. The rhythmic waves and the silent strength of the mountains mirrored the balance and harmony I had been searching for all along. Now, more than 20 years later, Tenerife isn't just my home — it's where I rediscovered my purpose.
The path keeps going — my teachers
I never stopped being a student. My path took a new turn in 2021 when I began studying with Sifu Jesse Lee Parker, founder of the Immortal Arts Academy — a system of Taoist Qigong that bridges ancient wisdom with modern tools for self-healing and inner growth. With him I also study Neigong and Taoist Inner Alchemy: cultivating and refining internal energy for physical vitality, emotional steadiness, and clarity of mind.
But I have never trained in just one lineage. I also practise within the White Tiger Qigong system, and I study Bagua Zhang with Sensei Hans Menck. Every teacher I've ever had is part of why I'm able to do this work today.
My goal was never only personal mastery. From very early on I knew I wanted to become someone who could guide others — to take everything these teachers had given me and pass it on.
What MindBodyInMotion is
So that's where the name comes from. MindBodyInMotion is the practice of treating movement as medicine. Used consciously, movement becomes a meditative tool — a way to release tension, sharpen focus, and restore vitality.
It brings together everything that saved me and everything I've trained in for decades: mindful movement and breathwork, Qigong and Tai Chi, functional training and Pilates — always with the nervous system at the centre. The exact blend matters less than the intention behind it.
Every session is designed to meet you exactly where you are. The aim is never to push harder or grind more. It's to help your body feel safe enough to open — so it can do what it already knows how to do: restore itself.
Why I do this
Looking back, sport and nature were always the things that brought me home whenever I lost my way. My own journey — from pain to healing, from confusion to clarity — is the entire reason I do this work.
I understand the struggle because I have lived it: the stress, the anxiety, the feeling of being lost inside your own life. And I also know the strength and peace that are waiting on the other side. Helping someone find their own way back is what gives my life meaning — it's the purpose that keeps me going.
Everything I went through stopped being something that simply happened to me, and became something I can use for someone else. That, more than any certificate, is what I bring to the people I work with. And I care deeply that this work stays within reach for anyone who needs it, whatever their circumstances.
Everything I survived became the reason I get to help someone else through theirs.
Walk it with me
If any of this feels familiar — if you're carrying stress, recovering from something hard, or simply longing to feel at home in your body again — you don't have to do it alone.
Whether online or here with me on Tenerife, I would be honoured to walk part of the path with you. Come and experience the power of mindful movement, breathwork, and Qigong for yourself. Take a look at my workshops, or get in touch — and let's begin.
