Not a coach.
A man who
knows the way.

I was born on July 26, 1988, an only child. My parents divorced when I was five. It did not go without a fight. My mother got custody, I saw my father every two weeks and half of the holidays.

That made it hard to build a bond with him. And at home, he was not always spoken of kindly, which left me not knowing how to relate to him. I missed a father without ever calling it that.

In primary school I was the heavier kid. I was ashamed of my body and did not belong. In my teenage years that flipped into rebellion. Skipping school, smoking, bars, girls — school meant nothing to me. And the closer I got to eighteen, the harder it became. Partying, drinking, drugs, chasing. Life seemed like a celebration.

That became my pattern. I escaped into parties and distractions. When that stopped filling me, I escaped into relationships where I lost myself. When a relationship fell apart, I escaped back into the partying. And later, when the partying was over, I threw myself into work. During the week I gave two hundred percent for my employer, got promotions, and there too they knew me as the guy who parties hard and delivers harder.

I only saw the common thread much later. I could not be alone with myself.

In 2017 I took a solo trip. For the first time I felt there was more than festivals and parties. I tried to turn my life around, cut back on the partying, surrendered to a new relationship. But once again I lost myself. My sense of self crumbled day by day, while I buried myself deeper in work to avoid feeling the emptiness. It seemed like an endless battle without any rest inside.

In 2023 I became a self-employed IT consultant. By the end of that year, everything reached a breaking point.

“Friday evening, November 24, 2023. An acute aortic dissection. My life literally stood still. I remember saying I did not want to die, that I still had so much to do. At the UZA hospital an emergency open-heart surgery followed immediately. Twelve hours. When I came out of anaesthesia seventeen hours later, my first thought was: now I am going to turn my life around.”

This time I meant it.

I rehabilitated, with ups and downs. I ended the relationship. And I started working with De Nieuwe Adembeweging, to rebuild trust in my body and my mind.

That is where the patterns were laid bare. The reason why I had kept running from who I was for all those years. It led me to deeper work, to Spekkoek Academy, Anima Nexus and Awake Origins, and to other journeys of awareness that shaped my awakening. I learned to look at the boy within me who missed a father and clung to belonging.

The work gave me back what I had never had. Responsibility. Inner peace. My own leadership. My own values. And perhaps most importantly: the bond with my parents is stronger today than it has ever been. Not because the past changed, but because I changed.

I still built systems — for companies, for projects. But now I build them for men too. Today I combine everything I learned — breathwork, systemic work, regression, inner child work and alchemy — in my work with other men, through Mãnava and Project Leonidas. Not because I studied it. Because I walked the path myself.