In late July 2018, I traveled to a small village near Brussels for my very first Ayahuasca retreat. I had heard, through people I trusted, about Maestro José from the Shipibo lineage in Peru — a reliable and experienced guide for this plant medicine, who was traveling to Europe with his community to share their knowledge and wisdom. (The Shipibo have a well-known and respected retreat center in Peru, carrying generations of passed-down wisdom about plant medicines.)

I had been hearing more and more about Ayahuasca, and I felt drawn to experience it for myself — to form my own sense and understanding of it. I was also at a point in my life where I felt a deep pull to surrender more fully to life itself. Somewhere, early in my life, a switch had been flipped — a switch of scarcity — and I carried an enormous longing to feel more abundance, more of the richness life has to offer. There was a No living inside me, but what I longed for was a bigger YES to life.

So I set off for my first Ayahuasca retreat in Belgium. I spoke my intention: I want to come to know all-encompassing, universal love. I have to laugh now, looking back — that’s not exactly a “let’s take it slow” intention. That’s an intention of “give me everything.” And I went in seriously. When you ask for everything, there’s a good chance you’ll receive everything. What followed was an enormously long, deep journey — one I still remember as if it were yesterday. Two ceremonies, closed with a Temascal, a sweat lodge ceremony centered on rebirth. I mention that last part because the process within me kept unfolding there too.

This journey changed my life. Ayahuasca let me experience something I had never felt before, and left me with a mountain of insights. It has taken me a long time to integrate all of it into my life. My intention had been vast — not something you simply “finish” a year later. Honestly, I am still integrating that journey. But here is what shifted: it broke open a deep pattern in me — a pattern of deeply rooted scarcity I had carried from my family lineage, passed down in various ways. And I can tell you, I was deeply stubborn in my own protection mechanisms. Breaking through that was a challenge — but exactly the kind of challenge I needed.

Second: it set me clearly on the path of my soul, on what I am here to do. My inner whispers became so much clearer — and I started listening to them far more. And they are so often right.

Eight years ago, Maestro José closed the retreat with personal words and reflections for each of us. To me, he said: you could do what I do — you have it in you to see people, and to guide them back to their own ground tone.

For years, I didn’t dare speak that out loud. A whole world had opened up to me that I didn’t yet know — though I felt at home in it from the very beginning — a world many people enter with a certain spiritual ambition. Not a part of me was ready to claim that. I let it go, and thought: we’ll see.

But after this first experience, I was hooked. I still had so many questions about what I had been through, and I began making more psychedelic journeys with “chocobliss” (psilocybin, kapi, and cacao). These experiences helped me understand and integrate the Ayahuasca journey, piece by piece. Every now and then, I guided someone else — and I could feel which part of this called to me, and that it wanted to grow further. But first, I needed to embody so much more of my own gifts myself — to bring them, literally, into my body and my life, rather than carry them as a concept. To become more grounded, and to stay there.

This is how breathwork found its way into my life — it offers such powerful support for dropping into the body, for releasing old emotions and beliefs. This is how systemic work and family constellations found their way (back) into my life too — because it is also about truly standing in your place, both in the larger whole and within your family system. When you stand in your place, things begin to flow — on every level. And if you’re not standing there, it can never fully flow. I, too, needed to land more deeply into my own place, and free myself from old baggage.

This is also how VITA-Coaching entered my path — the journey toward full sexual embodiment, because that layer, too, is essential to our existence. We are sexual beings. This has been deeply important for me personally — to drop deeper into myself, and to let sexual energy flow through me as life force and creativity.

What I have ultimately learned is this: it is about daring to leap, and trusting that the right people will come into your life to support you on your path. In the end, it is a path on which we walk each other home.

Since this year, 2026, I notice myself stepping more and more into ownership of guiding psychedelic journeys — that I can do this, that I love doing it, and that I have a healthy, positive relationship with psychedelics. This, too, took me a long time to arrive at: what is the place of psychedelics in our world, in our society — and yes, I feel the call to bring this more fully into the world. Along the way, I’ve gathered people around me whom I learn from, who feel like teachers to me on this path — and the more I feel that, the more I can claim this work as my own, knowing I have ways to feel supported.

So what do psychedelics and plant medicines actually do?

They help you reach the places within yourself where you’ve built enormous protection mechanisms — often so old that you no longer even remember how they were formed. But you can feel that there is a longing for something else: to come back to yourself, to stand more firmly in your own place, to gain insight into what else is possible for you. Perhaps you feel a longing for a bigger Yes to life — for more richness, more abundance. To give love more freely — and to receive it too. Whatever words you give it, however you name it for yourself.

Something like chocobliss, for example, can leave a beautiful, positive imprint on your nervous system — you get to experience what it feels like to be more relaxed, more held, more carried. So much is possible here. You set your own intention for your experience. And slowly, you may find yourself feeling more room — more space inside your own skin.

What I offer

I talk through your journey with you beforehand, so you can prepare well and get out of it what matters most to you.

I am with you. I choose supportive music for the journey. I guide the dosage. Sometimes I play live music. I hold space for your journey and your experience. And if it feels right and needed, I will offer touch, or hold you.

If this is your first experience, it’s completely natural to approach it with curious openness — first discovering how it works, and what it does for you. If you already have more experience, surrender often comes more easily, and you can work together with the medicine to reach the places your questions are pointing to — going deeper, journey after journey. But even in a first experience, so much is possible.

You might try psychedelics once, simply because you want to experience it. But it works even more powerfully when it’s part of an ongoing path of personal growth — as a complement to that path. Beyond the journey itself, integration of your insights and experiences matters enormously — and I offer guidance for that too. You are always welcome to join The Embodied Journey as an individual path of integration, to book a few standalone embodiment sessions around your theme, to join a family constellation day, or to follow a breathwork session.

I currently work with psychedelics in small settings of one to three people, in my own space. This allows me to give real presence and attention to everyone who is there.

What place do psychedelics hold in the world?

My dream for the world is the birth of a New World — one in which we hold far more space for our shared humanity, and in which a natural balance between the masculine and feminine returns. A world with deeper connection — to ourselves, to each other, and to the earth — with far more room for love, compassion, an understanding of natural cycles, and a true sense of community.

I see plant medicines holding an important, supportive place in this — carrying an immense intelligence and wisdom that can help guide people back to themselves, back to their soul’s path, and toward the kind of fulfillment this world is asking us to find. And I’m grateful I’m not alone in this: even within conventional mental health care, this is increasingly being recognized.