Back home to well-being
Reactivity, irritability, anxiety, burnout or stress?
A safe environment
We provide you a safe environment in which you can learn about and experiment with nervous system and emotional regulation.
Regulating the nervous system
Our innate regulation of our nervous system is sometimes stuck in activation because of overwhelm. This impacts our heath, our perception of the world and puts us at risk of descending a downward spiral.
Everyone can get back to a normal regulation, even if defensive states have taken root since long, even when caused by trauma. The pathways to regulation are personal and each of us can (re)discover them.
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With simple exercices I can teach you how to recognise nervous system states along your day (regulated, or defensive states).
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You can (re)discover which conditions trigger your nervous system states, and which conditions help you transitioning between states. As a result you will develop your preferential pathways back to regulation, well-being and calm. Your tolerance for stressful triggers will increase.​
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​The more you will be in regulated states, the more you will benefit from your innate capacity to recover and heal, and the more you will feel nourished by your relationships.
Emotional regulation
Emotional competences are complementary to neural regulation. They can be developed and improved for a better emotional regulation, more resilience, building high-quality relationships, influencing and conflict resolution.
Supporting practices
You can support your journey with self-awareness, self-compassion, slow, conscious movement such as yoga, exercise, creativity, and quality nutrition, according to your preferences, needs and pace.
Findings from medical studies
Medical studies find that the techniques we use significantly reduce hypertension, chronic inflammation (brain, coronaries gut), reduce food sensitivities and positively impact auto-immune diseases.
What clients say
"After one week of doing exercises I am far less stressed and sleep better. Also my son is doing better. There is a clear before and after starting this work".
Nervous system regulation
We are the best version of ourselves, when we feel safe, and we regulate ourselves together with others (coregulation). We tend to have more positive emotions, we recover and heal better, our brain is more capable of learning and innovation. The level of activation of the autonomous nervous system is within our window of tolerance
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When we are activated by stress, anger or anxiety, and we come back quickly to a normal regulated state, this is normal and healthy. It is when activation becomes chronic, we become exhausted and we can develop burnout.
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Another possible reaction to exhaustion may be an immobilised state, when we give up, withdraw or feel depressed. We also can arrive in this state when the stress was far to big to manage it as in traumatic events. The result is ‘shutdown’. Sometimes people oscillate between a depressed and an over activated state.
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Knowing your states, discovering pathways back to safety and recovery, helps you finding back your energy, creativity and quality relationships.
Emotional regulation and intelligence
The nervous system reacts extremely fast to perceived changes in safety. It informs the brain that generates sensations in the body that we interpret as emotions. The brain will do a quick comparison with situations that caused similar states, and injects behaviour patterns and urges: wanting to leave, to be alone, to argue, to impress or to hide. There is a chance we react before thinking.
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Only at this point we (can) become conscious of our state. We now build a story that matches the situation and our feelings, for example “it’s too much, I can’t cope” and the temptation to follow the suggestion of the automatic brain. One can also apply free will, regulate oneself, and respond thoughtfully. The more we practice this, the easier it becomes.
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Emotional regulation is not the only emotional intelligence skill. We need emotional self-awareness before we can regulate. Other competency clusters have to do with emotions in relationships; empathy and social skill. All of these can be trained and improved.
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The more we are capable of reacting with calm, distance and humour, the better we cope. Practicing emotional skills makes us more resilient, more calm and our relationships become more rewarding and nourishing.
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We use a simplified model of emotional intelligence that was derived from brain studies by Richard Davidson. It is simple to assess its aspects and to improve them.
The link between nervous system states, emotions and the brain
When someone tells you what to do, or puts you under pressure, or in any other stressful situation, the nervous system's defences kick in. The result is:
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Rejection and anxiety​
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A narrow focus on the stressor
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Prevention focus, advocacy
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Stress, and quickly depleting energy
The adult thinking brain (prefrontal cortex, PFC) goes off-line. which means that social thinking becomes impossible. Learning, memorising, and creativity become become impaired.
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When somebody offers you options to choose from we feel interested. If somone demonstrates care, we feel cared about. The nervous system relaxes:
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Affiliation and interest​
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Widens perspective
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Promotion focus
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Renewal, builds energy
The adult brain is on-line and is capable of empathy, social thinking, creativity and learning.​
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Why we need to regulate
Our inner world is not as simple as action needs to reaction. In the middle there is the nervous system as mediator, that primes us for specific emotions and flips the brain to states that influence our interpretation and our thinking.
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The three states: regulated, activated (fight or flight) and immobilisation (giving up, depressed) each colour our interpretation of the world: for example the world is fundamentally a good place, the world is full of people trying to disadvantage me, or I don't care anymore.
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In the regulated state we are capable of rational thinking as well as co-regulating with others for mutual support, while in the other states the world is more black and white.
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In the regulated state our body and mind can recover and heal, while in the other two states we compromise our mental and physical health.
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Although the activated and immobilised states keep us safe in accurate danger, and can be ver useful when blended with the regulated state, the chronically activated or immobilised states are to be avoided.
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How we can regulate
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The first thing is to get to know our nervous system and its state. Ideally we need to be aware of it from moment to moment.
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Next we need to get to know ourselves and discover which conditions put is into which states. Then we can start preparing and protecting ourselves.
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We also need to learn what can bring us back to a regulated state. Once we are activated, and are aware of it, we can apply these practices to calm ourselves down.
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This is a somatic and simple approach. We can also analyse which our needs are that are threatened when we are activated, and which are needs are to calm down. These are often coupled with nervous system activation or immobilisation. Once we know our functioning, and we can catch ourselves reacting, we can also help ourselves to find the way back to harmony and well-being.
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With simple exercises I help you discovering yourself and finding your pathways back to calms and well-being.