I live in Bruges. I am an aikido teacher and have been practising martial arts for more than forty years. But that is not the beginning of this story.
Krishnamurti at seventeen
At seventeen I was doing yoga and read J. Krishnamurti for the first time. I no longer remember exactly which book it was, but I remember what it did: it offered a question. Not a question to be answered, but a question to live with. What is it that truly changes in a human being? What is direct seeing?
That same year I started aikido. I did not see the connection at the time. But looking back, both began at the same moment and both pointed in the same direction.
Forty years on the mat
I have been training aikido since 1983. In 1992 I chose Tomita Seiji Shihan as my main teacher — a decision that shaped everything. In 1993 I helped found Ban Sen Juku Ghent. I have had my own dojo in Sint-Amandsberg and in Lembeke. I still teach, in Brussels and in Lembeke.
In 1997 I travelled to Japan. There I met iaijutsu master Yamakoshi Masaki — and a second path began alongside aikido: Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū, the Yamauchi line. The sword as mirror. The same essence, a different form.
I also practise taijiquan and spent years doing zazen. Each of these disciplines showed me a different aspect.
For those who want to know more about this path: the full story is at dojo.be/story.
Mukesh Gupta and self-inquiry
Out of my interest in the work of Krishnamurti, I began twelve years ago to participate in retreats led by Mukesh Gupta, connected to the School for Self-Inquiry — work that is rooted in Krishnamurti's teachings. What I learned there — or rather, what became clear in that silence — is difficult to summarise. It is not a technique. It is not a doctrine. It is more an invitation to look directly at what is happening in the mind, without trying to change anything.
Self-inquiry is not something you do. It is what remains when you stop trying to become something.
This work has changed everything, deeply. It is the background of everything I do: the way I teach, the way I walk, the way I listen.
Why walking
The meditative walks came about because I began to notice what happens when you walk slowly through a forest without needing to get anywhere. The mind quiets — not because you try, but because something else takes up more space. The awareness of the body, the ground, the light.
I walk regularly in Ryckevelde near Sijsele, on the edge of Bruges. It is a forest I know well. There I invite people to walk with me — not to learn something, but rather to unlearn something.
In 2026 I founded a non-profit Meditative VZW together with my partner Kim — a somewhat more structured form of what we were already doing informally: bringing people together around silence, movement and attention. An offering of walking together, practising aikido or iaido. Living in a meditative way.