My yoga journey
Facebook was not yet public, Barack Obama was serving as the fifth Afro-American senator, and the Black Eyed Peas had a number one hit with Mas que nada, when I booked my first yoga class in 2006. I was revalidating from a motorcycle accident and became addicted to the energy and hot sweat of Bikram Yoga. I already had an interest in taoism, practiced chi kung and tried out different meditation techniques, but only after a ten day vipassana (it's 2014 by now) this began to take more serious forms. This led to long solo retreats in the Sahara and India, and the question 'Who am I?' received more and more attention.
     In the meantime, I began to practice other styles of yoga, such as vinyasa, ashtanga, iyengar, kundalini and especially yin yoga, that became my passion. During a retreat in the Amazon (we are living in 2020 now), I gave my first seven yoga classes, inspired by the seven veals of ignorance. As I became locked down in Peru, I organised daily yoga classes in the hostel in Lima to a group of 15-20 fellow travellers for three weeks.
     I took my joy for teaching home with me, followed a teacher training in Rishikesh, and after receiving my certificate I gave my first professional classes in the 'yoga capital of the world'. In the summer of 2023, a meeting with Maite Hes during an Ecstatic Dance propelled into the first musical yoga classes, in the Amstelpark, out of which Song of Yoga was born.

My poetry
I always doubt whether I should say I like poetry. When I open a collection of poems, I'm always looking for the shortest poems, as my mind tends to drift away when the reading takes longer. Until I come accross a poet that really touches me. In my college years, I became acquainted with some of the most gifted in Dutch language: the melancholy of J.C. Bloem, the fiery eloquence of Lucebert, the sensitivity of Rutger Kopland, but also the baroque lyrics of Lennaert Nijgh and the raw raps of Def P. I got familiar with South African poets like Ingrid Jonker and Antjie Krog. My world expanded, with Paul Celan, Zbigniew Herbert, Wislawa Szymborska, Fernando Pessoa... well, it turned out I loved a lot of poets. WithO Amor Natural Carlos Drummond de Andrade even wrote a collection of poems that I read in one go.
     Only much later, I discovered the realm of mystical poetry, after I came to understand why these old poets are so lyrical. I was preparing for a journey through the Sahara, and wanted to learn about the local mystical tradition, sufism, which led me to Rumi. It turned out that every month sufi gatherings, zikrs, were held nearby my home in the city centre of Amsterdam. I found myself in a house full of books, with among them one of the most practical and well written spiritual guides I know: Open path: recognizing nondual awareness by Elias Amidon, the pir (spiritual leader) of the international Sufi Way. Right before my journey I discovered that Elias Amidon had also written a collection of forty poems, written in forty days, following an old sufi tradition called chilla . As I was going to the desert for forty days, I took the booklet with me, haphazardly, without taking a look inside. It was a lucky shot. Every morning I read a poem, that started to resonate with the emptyness around me during the day. The next year, I translated the collection, named Munajat in forty days, which was published in 2019, by the Dutch branch of the Sufi Way, which holds office in this Amsterdam house full of books.
     At the presentation of this booklet, I met Aleid Swierenga, who translated hundreds of books in the spiritual niche into Dutch, such as The Prophet of Kahlil Ghibran and works of authors like Thich Nhat Hanh and the Daila Lama. We found each other in a new project, that's still running: Dutch renderings of the poetry of Rumi, inspired by Coleman Barks.
     Until then, I seldomly wrote poetry myself. I didn't think I had this in me. Until a retreat of two weeks in the Amazon. I had put a collection of poems of Pablo Neruda in my bag (not too thick), and on one wondrous morning his poetry inspired me to write something on a scrap sheet. After this timid beginning, I more or less burst into poetry, and thanks to the covid lockdown I had the time to explore this outburst, right after I got out of the jungle.