All of us are born with a nervous system that isn’t just capable of change but is designed to change. That is the essence of the incredible breakthrough of neuroplasticity: Your brain is not fixed. Instead, it changes in response to your experiences, thoughts, and actions. This allows you to think differently. Learn new skills. Forget painful experiences. And adapt to practically anything life throws at you. For a long time, it was assumed that only the young brain is plastic. (Something about an old dog and new tricks?) But scientific research is now undeniable: No matter how old you are, you can rewire your brain so new motor, cognitive and emotional skills are burned into the neural circuitry. The most widely accepted conclusion of current research in neuroscience is that of neuroplasticity: Our brains grow, change and adapt at all times in our lives. “Virtually everyone who studies the brain is astounded at how plastic it is.” (Kurt Fischer, Harvard Medical School)   The most underrated feature of your nervous system First, a quick note on how this works on a neurological level. Research has shown that consistently repeating an action leads to clear physical changes in the brain. Within our brains are billions upon billions of neurons, interconnected to form a complex set of...

If you've been beating yourself up lately because you can't focus “like you used to”… read this: Deep focus isn’t something you force. It’s something you protect. Now, what do I mean by that? It means prioritising sleep, building recovery into the day, and learning how to down-regulate your system instead of running it in high gear all the time. Especially as we get older… As we age, the brain doesn’t lose its ability to focus, but it does become less energetically efficient at doing so. Cognitive control tends to peak earlier in adulthood (between 27 and 36 years) and then decline. Over time, the brain becomes more conservative with how it spends its resources. So if you’re like me and you’re past that peak, don’t panic! This doesn’t mean a loss of intelligence, creativity, or depth. In fact, many higher-order skills improve with age. (I do genuinely feel wiser with a richer internal life than I did in my 20s 😉) It simply means that brute-force strategies that used to work (long hours, constant pressure, pushing through fatigue) now come with a much higher energy cost. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="407"] Image source: [Authors], “Li, Z., Petersen, I. T., Wang, L., Radua, J., Yang, G., & Liu, X. (2025). The...

15 Jan

I spent three days in total darkness on the island of Koh Phangan, Thailand. In this piece, I share what that experience was like—the moments of ease and discomfort, what came up when there was nothing to distract me, and what I’m taking forward from it. Night 1: Entering total darkness K., the retreat lady, quickly showed me around the sealed earth dome, —“Here’s how you turn on the air ventilation system, do that after every breakfast and dinner, when the air outside is cool. Here’s the shower. Here’s how you can communicate with us. Any questions?”—and then, she was gone. I stood in the middle of the dome, with a small torch in my hands. K. had told me to use the light to get my bearings and organize my stuff, and to turn off whenever I felt ready. Those first moments felt incredibly strange. I had just come off a 3-day boat trip with friends, a final wild night in our favorite restaurant in Phuket, and suddenly I was here, alone in this bare cell-like room. My friend, Ben, was in the hut next to me, but everything went so quickly and we did not have a chance to give each other...

24 Dec

Just learned about the *ta-daaaaa* list, from my friend Yasmin Vantuykom. Ever heard of these? It’s basically a list of things you’re proud of having accomplished (instead of only ever fixating on the hundreds of things you need to/could do/should do.) 2025 was my first entire calendar year of self-employment, running my breath- and body-oriented coaching & retreats business. (I still can’t really believe I’m actually doing this!) There’s lots of great stuff about it: The flexibility, the intellectual challenge, doing something I believe is meaningful… BUT… As you might expect, the level of self-motivation and self-belief required, day after day, is pretty relentless. So, if you’ll indulge me: I’m going to pat myself on the back just a little bit for some of the things I’ve done this year. No big end of year review. No major goal-setting. Just a quick run-down of what I’m most excited about from this year, plus the 3 principles I’ll take with me in 2026. 🔹 15 private coaching clients Out of everything, probably most proud of the reflections of these incredible people I got to work with. From Commercial Directors, to a Neurotech startup founder, to an Investment Fund General Partner, to Software Developer, to IT specialist. All highly ambitious, curious, driven people who...

The number 1 thing I work with clients on is this feeling of chronic activation. "Hard to switch off." "Always tense." "My body feels 'on' even when I'm supposed to be relaxing." It shows up in your body: Tight jaw, clenched belly, shallow breathing, that “always on” hum under the surface. It shows up in your attention: Quick to react, hard to slow down, bouncing between tasks without ever feeling done. It shows up in your sleep: Tired but unable to drop in, waking up through the night, or starting the day already depleted. One of the key ideas I explain to them is this: Relaxation is not an on-off switch. Your nervous system doesn't relax just because you sit down on the couch, step away from your screen, or turn off the lights. After months or years of running in overdrive, your nervous system has literally forgotten how to downshift. Your baseline of autonomic arousal has crept up. What now feels "normal" to you is actually a state of chronic sympathetic activation. Think about it: when was the last time you felt truly, deeply relaxed? Not exhausted, not crashed on the couch scrolling your phone, but genuinely at ease in your body? Every muscle loose, every limb heavy, deep...

  If you struggle with low energy, lack of motivation, or feeling stuck in procrastination, you're likely experiencing nervous system dysregulation. This simple breathwork technique helps shift your state from hypoarousal to your optimal Window of Tolerance in under a minute. I keep this Post-It on my computer to remind myself to SHIFT MY STATE. I tend to wallow when I’m feeling flat. To beat myself up for not being productive. To wish I had more drive. Of course I know fully well that wishing and wallowing doesn’t do anything for me. Action does. So I need a physical cue to remind me that focus, energy, motivation are states I need to actively create. The Breath Technique: From Hypoarousal to Energized An easy and quick way to do that, especially when you’re already sitting down behind your computer, is using your breath to generate energy: Take 15 seconds of vigorous, deep breathing: inhale strongly through your nose, exhale with a quick, powerful “ha” or “pah” sound Hold on full lungs for 6-15 seconds Repeat for 2-4 rounds You might feel a bit silly but you’ll quickly get over that once you realize that you’re creating a very rapid physiological shift in your system: Activating sympathetic nervous system, raising...

Just finished my 30 days no caffeine experiment. It was a success (so much so that I’ll largely continue it), and it made me realize something important about nervous system regulation—the skill I work on with people every day. We're great at coming up with tools to “regulate” ourselves: breathing techniques, grounding practices, cold plunges, meditation, movement. And these tools are powerful. But we're terrible at the other half of the equation: subtraction. Regulation isn't just about what we add. It's equally about asking, "What am I doing that consistently throws me off balance?" And then being honest enough to experiment with removing it. This is hard because the things that dysregulate us are often the things we love. Coffee, alcohol, scrolling, Netflix binges. Habits that feel good in the moment but drain us after. It's uncomfortable to admit that. It's uncomfortable to let them go, even temporarily. But that discomfort is exactly where progress lives. (I’ve experienced it firsthand with alcohol, and now with caffeine.) Only then do we get the data that matters: “What does my nervous system feel like without this?” How do you know it’s time to subtract? When the thing has more control over you than you have over it. My coffee experiment For a long time,...

It’s 5:00 PM and you’re just coming out of another long meeting. Your chest feels tight. You take a deep breath. One of those big, reaching breaths that feels like you need to push past some invisible ceiling just to get relief. Sound familiar? That big, gulping breath you need is called a sigh—a breath 2-3x bigger than your normal breath size. Now while occasional sighing is normal (your body actually does it automatically every 5 minutes to sustain lung function), when you're doing it every few minutes… it means something’s off. Chances are, you’ve trained your body to over-breathe. (Well, not you exactly. The world we live in, the jobs we have, the foods we eat,…)     Here’s what’s happening: Every time you take one of those big, relieving sighs, you dump excess carbon dioxide (CO₂) from your system. Wait! Don’t write this off as biochemistry nonsense that’s only relevant in the laboratory. This absolutely matters for your daily experience: CO₂ isn't just waste you exhale. It's the key that unlocks oxygen from your red blood cells. When CO₂ drops too low, oxygen gets stuck in your bloodstream instead of reaching your brain and muscles. That's why you feel air-hungry, foggy, and like nothing you breathe is quite...

You know that moment when you're three slides into a presentation and suddenly realize your shoulders are practically touching your ears, your jaw is clenched, and you have no idea when that started happening? Or when you walk out of a meeting feeling completely drained, but you can't pinpoint exactly when or why your energy shifted? If you're nodding along, you're experiencing something most people deal with daily, but are unaware of: Living disconnected from an incredible sensory system that could change how you handle stress, emotions, and decision-making entirely. The 6th sense you never learned about We all know our five senses, right? Vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste. But there's a 6th sense that's just as important for your day-to-day experience: It's called interoception—your ability to accurately detect and interpret what's happening inside your body. Heart rate, breathing patterns, muscle tension, that flutter of adrenaline before a difficult conversation, the subtle shift in energy when you're about to hit a wall. These are just a few examples of the countless signals your body sends you every day. One study found that people who could accurately detect their heartbeats (a measure of interoceptive awareness) performed significantly better on tasks requiring emotional intelligence and decision-making under pressure. (So quite literally:...

Our visual system is perhaps the strongest lever by which we can shift our state of mind and body. (Andrew Huberman) Soften your gaze for a moment. Without moving your head, guide your eyes in a slow, deliberate circle – as if you're tracing the edge of a clock on the wall. Feel the smoothness of this movement, the subtle stretch as your eyes reach each corner. Let your eyes slowly close halfway, then three-quarters, then open them wide like you've just seen something surprising. You can direct them up toward your eyebrows, down toward your cheeks, or dart them quickly from side to side. Play with these micro-movements. Now focus on one single word on the screen. One single letter. And now expand your visual field, taking in as much of the space around you as possible without moving your head. Notice how you can easily switch between these modes. This conscious play with your eyes is more than just an exercise—it's a rediscovery of a powerful tool you've always had but perhaps never fully explored. These delicate organs that move automatically throughout your day are completely under your conscious control. Each movement sends ripples of information through your nervous system, influencing your entire state of being. How come the eyes...