🎵🎶🎼 “So What” – Pink
“We’re not toddlers, after all,” Belinda, our wonderful yoga teacher, said with a smile. ❣️
There we were, hands tucked under our armpits, chin resting on our chest, eyes cast downward.
It did look a little familiar tough… 😉
I smiled to myself and thought back to something I had shared only moments before about my work as a family mediator.
About how, as adults, we like to believe we have our emotions under control.
But if we’re honest…
sometimes it takes only one tender nerve being touched for the little child within us to awaken.
The exercise in which we were definitely not sitting like children 🙃 was designed to send our nervous system a single message:
You are safe.
Only then could we begin to open our hearts.
The more I reflect on it, the more I realise there is far more in common between a yoga mat and a mediation table than one might expect.
Because our bodies and our behaviour are deeply intertwined.
The good news?
Both can be transformed.
As a mediator, I have the privilege of helping people move through that process.
Often in circumstances where they are so profoundly triggered that the very worst parts of themselves rise to the surface almost automatically… while I gently invite them to reconnect with the very best within them.
That is not an easy task.
Because separation and conflict stir something far deeper than reason alone.
They touch our minds, our hearts… and our bodies.
The connection between our nervous system and our behaviour fascinates me more with every passing day.
Or perhaps, more broadly, the connection between body, mind and soul.
And if I may add one more element, it is the heart.
The quiet bridge that holds them all together.
The place where love becomes the glue.
My yoga mat has become so much more than a place to stretch.
Yes, you bend into places you never imagined to reach.
You discover muscles, sensations and streams of energy you never knew existed.
But the real transformation happens elsewhere.
You do not merely become acquainted with your body.
You become acquainted with yourself.
You learn to notice what lives quietly beneath the surface.
To release what the outside world has asked you to carry for far too long.
To recognise tension before it ever turns into words.
To let go of what your body has been holding onto in silence.
To breathe all the way into the furthest corners of yourself, until your body feels fully alive again.
Your mind grows quieter.
Your energy begins to flow again.
And perhaps most importantly…
your nervous system slowly learns that it is safe.
That, to me, is where something profoundly interesting begins—not only personally, but professionally.
Because every single day I witness what happens when a nervous system shifts into survival mode.
Conflict changes us.
Our heart rate rises.
Our breathing becomes shallow and hurried.
Our vision narrows—literally and emotionally.
We stop listening.
We stop understanding.
We simply react.
Or we retreat into silence.
We may no longer be children.
Yet in those moments, it is often the child who once learned to wrap their own arms around themselves because no one else did, who quietly takes the wheel from the adult we aspire to be.
How extraordinary, then, that this very same posture can become a gesture of safety.
A way of telling the body,
You no longer have to protect yourself.
It invites us to return to our breath.
To our heart.
To ourselves.
Taking responsibility for ourselves in the midst of conflict begins exactly there.
By learning to recognise what is happening inside us, so that it is no longer our wounded child responding, but our grounded adult self.
And perhaps, just as importantly, by learning to recognise the wounded child in the person standing across from us.
Because shouting, blaming or shaming rarely brings two people closer together.
Emotional maturity asks something different of us.
It asks us to look beneath behaviour and recognise the pain that gave rise to it—even when that pain does not excuse the behaviour itself.
Perhaps, if we are able, we might even learn to wrap our arms around that pain, if only in a figurative sense.
Because seeing with gentler eyes is also a form of emotional maturity.
That is why I increasingly believe that conflict requires much more than finding the right words.
It asks for a wider perspective.
Including my own as a mediator.
A perspective that allows ears to truly hear again.
Hearts to soften.
Words to become bridges rather than weapons.
That is also the direction in which I want Perspectieven, my mediation office, to grow.
To become far more than a place where people learn to separate with dignity and respect.
I want it to become a place where people rediscover happiness through genuine human connection.
In every relationship.
With themselves.
With one another.
And perhaps, more than I ever imagined…
yoga has a place in that journey too.
With love.
Always,
Maaike
❣️
If these words resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share this essay with someone who might need it today. ❤️
Love in Action – Maaike
I give words to what connects & what separates us.
To moments that move us.
To what builds bridges between hearts & people.
In the hope of creating a little more love & connection.
For everyone who has ever struggled to understand someone else & themselves
❣️
Love in action 
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