Getting into my drivers seat has been at the core of my personal experiences and challenges in academic, professional and private life.

The text above is the description of my experience when I was truly on all levels my own pilot, while piloting a car on a frozen lake, as fast as possible.

Through exploring, experimenting, learning and applying different approaches and ways I have developped my experience and knowledge, with continuing training and personal development ongoing.

Central to me and my approach are:

• embodied presence and performance
• energy management
• resilience
• learning
• awareness, focus, centering and concentration
• complete presence in the moment
• centred in safety and connection within oneself
• true connection with others

To be calm, centred, focused, aligned and fully present while being entirely alive. In connection with the whole range of personal energy, abilities and potential. In my own way, quality and optimal intensity in each moment. In high energy and intensity just as in calm and quietness.

In consequence developing true resilience. Not by avoiding challenge, fear and potential failure, but by training to recover quickly and efficiently back into the optimal state when experiencing a setback or a « passenger seat moment ».

Performance inherently having:

• the ability to perform consistently and efficiently at a high level without wasting energy, respecting own needs and characteristics.
• the ability to quickly recover and shift back to the optimally aligned state in the moment when own and outside challenges interfere with the ability to perform, to recuperate and connect to support own health and well-being.

In other words : true resilience and embodied performance.

Having experienced a burnout myself in professional context I was faced specifically with my own energy management, and all belief and value systems attached to it. Applying all my collected experience to analyze, identify and gently phase out the old outdated strategies and reactions while developing new ones to get myself back at my own wheel of well-being and performance.

Piloting intensity

Identified as High Potential/Highly gifted at university, not due to success but due to looming failure after being faced with an inability to learn because my old ways (waiting to the last moment, creating high pressure to be able to focus and concentrate) didn’t work anymore and had become highly inefficient.

Working with naturally higher intensity, speed and sensorial input hence required me to free up and let go of beliefs and expectations of what is normal, what is performance according to others and to explore my own ways, characteristics, speed and rhythm fo learning and doing.

I started to be and work with myself, not against, to become the pilot of these forces and abilities, not their passenger. Nor outside expectations and standardisations.

Finding and developing my own adaptive and adaptable settings and identify people and contexts to build my own playing field.

To develop these abilities and my skills to use, apply and combine them.

To make my performance equal to my highest potential while taking care of my well-being. The foundation of any performance.

The joy of going flat out and being intensely present in calmness

The joy of going flat out is the experience of my energy atits highest rooted in safety, at the limit of where it shifts into defense. Being able to modulate it and get to this, my inherent, limit of activated safety. The zone for Performance.

It is the joy of sensing my complete trust in my own ability to go flat out while remaining in control and being able to shift back into calm being intensely present. To fall asleep with a book on the couch, have the social battery go on empty and respect the need for recuperation, the joy of a day of doing nothing else than your hobby, alone or in connection with others, the luring call for another travel, playing with not knowing, quickly recovering from a failure, fear or anger… .

It is the joy of being and piloting all that is. To truly be. Not scared of going flat out and the high energy, nor being in calm and tranquility at lower energy level. Modulating energy, yet being entirely present at every stage.

The piloting being mastery in continuous progress, never reaching an end, but expanded and challenged everyday. Becoming a performance and joy in itself.

Moving History: reconnecting and moving from 2D to 3D

My work on integrating a PTSD reaction reinforced my approach and made me discover further new and more fundamental ways along with fostering a deeper understanding yet.

Connecting brain and body, mind and neurophysiology on a deeper level. Adding yet another fundamental dimension, changing from 2D to 3D.

Integrating the personal history and experiences, so they become part of the foundation, skills and abilities to move the own story forward.

Aligning with oneself from the metaphorical sea ground to the waves on the sea’s surface. Whatever the weather.

Being Safe and experiment: The PlayLab

During my studies, the place I liked best was the workshop and laboratory. The place where theory, practicality and reality connect.

A place where you check ideas, assumptions or explore to see « what happens if… ».

Knowing is not the starting point. Daring into the unknown in a controlled way, finding out and learning is. It is ok not to know the outcome, the importance is on how you set up and run your experiment. So it is safe.

In consequence, the Lab is the place where it gets interesting. 

It is the space where your true understanding develops. And you meet yourself. From frustration to satisfaction.

The experiments observed, every snippet of data and observation gets noted. Observed, not judged!

The analysis follows later on in detail: What happened? Why? What does that mean? Are there errors in the measurements? Other influences? What are they? How big are they? Do they impact my observation? If yes, how?

And, again and again, my favorite question: What does that mean?

In other words: a laboratory is a special setting, where you can experiment, in safety. Concentrating entirely on your experiment. Following a certain way to be able to observe as objectively as possible, without judgment interfering.

Over time I applied a similar approach to my own way of learning and self-development.

My term, steming from polyvagal theory, for such a space and setting is: the PlayLab. 

The PLayLab is hence a central part in my coaching approach.

It is the safe space where you can explore, observe, play and experiment in safety.

In the PlayLab you can dare not to know, without negative fallout.

A space and setting where you are safe enough to dare to try a different way, a different approach. There is no judgement, no evaluation. Just experiencing, feeling, observing and learning.

You can dare go for a challenge while being scared and observe what happens.

Understand, analyze and derive another approach. And then try it out. Having time to observe. To actively experiment. And learn through aligning with yourself, brain and body, your neurophysiology.

Which then can be transferred into other contexts with similar constraints and demands, outside the PlayLab.

Creating new ways, possibilities, skills and tools so to shift your neurophysiological states to remain aligned with yourself. On a deeper level, to really be.

Humor in the PlayLab

Connection with yourself and others are also a core element to the PlayLab. And with it are humor and laughter.

Humor allows to be completely in a task and moment while retaining the ability to observe and see, without judgement. Hence to learn with an open mind.

It is a super-force to self-& co-regulate in safety.

Serious play

The word play is hence quite present in my coaching as well.

“I think play is the most serious thing in the world”, as Jacques-Yves Cousteau said. I agree.

Play meaning being completely present, open and in a state of safety and connection where creativity, curiosity and learning occur naturally.

Without judgement and evaluation. In this moment, what is is. See, hear, listen,…observe, be curious, investigate, experiment, alone or with others.

To learn and train in full awareness, allowing to then ramp up and address challenges consciously in a different way. And to perform.

Hence play is one aspect at the core of my approach, the PlayLab is its space and setting.

Life Kinetik® is one of the many and growing number of experiments of my PlayLab setup. It allows to gently nudge the limits of the comfort zone through a training of tasks that combine movement, perception and cognition.

Laughter, curiosity, frustration, joy, anger,…while following a scientifically proven training for your brain and perception you can in parallel observe and shift these reactions into the most optimal one aligned with yourself in that moment.

To meet yourself at the limit of your comfort zone, realizing that it is not the limit of yourself.

To find your own ways with yourself, not against. And be autonomous, while connected with others, in exploring and applying these in alignment with yourself.

Being present in calm, quietness and contemplation. Breathing and being. And being just as present in a high-energy activity.

Hence : To Be. & To Be Your Own Pilot.

Driving and Piloting

I love to drive. From the earliest age I loved the feeling to move and seemingly glide over the road. To feel the forces acting in turns, when accelerating and braking.

It is somewhat philosophical. Being at the wheel in the present, looking to where I want to go while regularly checking in the rearview mirror where I come from. 

Driving being an art. « Good driving », as my father says. Smooth, flowing, not wasting energy, efficient, using the terrain to support the movement of the car and at the ideal (and authorized) speed for the setting. Keeping the forces in the centre and using them in certain contexts differently. See, listen, feel and adapt to what is.

In consequence, seeing the road as an « Us » not a « Me ». If my driving allows you to drive good, then we are all safer, more efficient, and connected. And less stressed. 

« If you want to know a person observe how he/she drives. » was my grandmothers advice. Ari Vatanen said something similar (1): «Driving is in a way the extension of your personality».

Driving is linked to our neurophysiological state and our ability to shift it.

Combining all the sensorial data, your current state, ability to shift stress, anger, fear while being safe, efficient, yet as fast as possible (and allowed) in a context that is constantly changing with conditions, weather, other drivers, car status, tire status, time pressure,…is complex.

Coordination of feet-hand-eyes and speed of reaction are essential.

In our everyday driving and modern cars this gets lost a little. Yet it is still, despite all the driving aids, as essential as ever.

Good Driving and Piloting: the Metaphor

The activity of driving, good driving, and piloting in a motorsport context are my joyful and intense PlayLab.

And the big metaphor I use for navigating the complexity in a world of unknowns, constantly changing variables on the outside, leading to reactions from within myself requiring me being in the moment to shift states, to connect with others, to be safe, to learn and adapt to changed settings.

Be it on a metaphorical small road at walking speed, a motorway, stuck in a traffic jam, searching for a parking space at the supermarket, on an icetrack or a closed road in a rally setting.

To be and be flexibly at the wheel, in total awareness and presence is key.

The piloting PlayLab

Motorsport has proven to be the most intense space for me where I can bring all my experience and knowledge on performance, resilience and presence together in a high-intensity environment. Here I actively continue to develop, explore, experiment and above all enjoy and relish to perform – in high-intensity, connection and calm.

It is why I also chose it as the practical life-size PlayLab experience setting where you can train and experiment with your new ways of handling and being and gently push your comfort zone. Hence the Driving & Coaching experiences are optional to all the Coaching Programms I offer.

The movement continues: being and piloting

This is my ongoing winding roadtrip. With questions, failure, joy, frustration, relaxed intensity, calm, success, daring,… . 

The movement continues. To be at the wheel, each moment, of my story.

To Be. My Own Pilot.

You can find more information on my coaching and my offers on this website on the menu under « Coaching ».

If you feel that my coaching offer resonates with you and your aspiration and objective, then feel free to contact me and let’s meet in a free discovery Zoom call.

To Be. Your Own Pilot.