I was born and raised mainly in the Dutch East Indies. This partially explains why familiarity with the physical and with massage comes so naturally to me.
I became interested in bodywork when I was a teenager; what particularly fascinated me was the interconnection of body and spirit. This fascination has run like a thread throughout my life. Movement became my most important ‘vehicle’. Of the movement forms I became most intensely involved with, my choice increasingly fell on the ones which focused on meditation, attention, intensity and introspection.
These were the elements I thought were most important when I was looking at options for a professional education. I found them at the Academy for Massage and Movement, a broad 4-year course to become a qualified massage and movement therapist. The course taught soft as well as deep techniques, besides various forms of movement and therapeutic education.
I don’t have a preference for a particular working method; all of them, depending on the context, are of equal value. Usually during a session there is talk of a hybrid form, which evolves out of the contact between myself and the other person, and communication on both a physical and mental level.
The massages I give can be classified as holistic massage. In other words, during a session I make the interconnection between the area of the body I’m working on and the greater whole of the client, in a physical as well as a mental sense.
The techniques I use can be nurturing, but they can also be deep and sometimes even confronting. What actually happens depends on what comes up at the time. During each session, I focus on expanding the client’s inner space and feeling of connection.
