I am from the Netherlands and came in contact with meditation around 2005. I wasn’t feeling so well at that time and a friend of mine recommended to do some meditation. I went to the library and there was just one book about meditation. I took the book home and in the next few days I read it totally. It all made sense to me; how we were living in our minds, judging and never in the moment itself. Only by reading I already felt better. I started to understand more why certain people did certain things (myself included). I started with meditating, but the book didn’t really told me how to do it. It just said that I had to sit and be in the moment. I did this everyday and it felt good, but I wanted more.

This started my journey. I went to many lectures, teachings, meditation centres and read many books. Everyday I learned something new. One day in a meditation centre we did some yoga because we meditated every day for many hours and we started to feel this. This brought me to the idea to start a yoga studio. I was studiying at the university at that time and needed one more year to finish my master, but I was not making me happy. I looked online and saw that a yoga teacher training would start the next month not far from my home. I emailed them and I could start.

I stopped with my regular ‘education’ and this was not easy, since I had high scores and nobody understood me. I started to work at the company of my father and in the weekends I did the yoga teacher training. After one year I also went to India to do another teacher training and to learn more. After this training I opened my first yoga studio and this expended the next several years. I myself started to teach less and kept the focus on meditation and philosophy since this always had my most interest. We expended with schools in several parts of the Netherlands and I would teach philosophy at the teacher training.

Now many years later I still am mainly interested in meditation and philosohpy and this idea of online meditation with only donations came to my mind. I think this is the most honest way and I hope my experience can be usefull for others. Some other personal information; born in 1982, happily married with three daughters.