Welcome
It's good to have you here
My name is Mike Berkholst.
I started 15 years ago as a personal trainer, with a strong focus on the physical body. In the beginning, my work was mainly about movement, training, and fitness. But over time, I began to see that health is about much more than exercise alone.
Gradually, my work expanded to include breathing, nutrition, sleep, the immune system, and stress. I saw that people do not only get stuck because of a lack of movement, but also because of tension building up in the body, a nervous system that is constantly switched on, and a system that has lost touch with recovery.
At the same time, I was searching myself. I wanted to understand who I was, where my patterns came from, and why I reacted the way I did. I analyzed my past, my pain, and my triggers. I wanted to understand it all. Why I used to run away. Why I would check out. Why certain patterns kept repeating.
I tried many things along the way. From silent retreats and men’s work to family constellations. I searched through knowledge, experience, insight, and the past. It gave me a lot. I learned more and more about myself and began to understand where my patterns came from.
But despite all that insight, I still found myself repeating the same behaviors at certain moments.
That became an important turning point for me.
I discovered that insight alone is not enough. You can understand very clearly with your mind what is going on, but if your body and nervous system are still reacting from old stress, tension, or survival patterns, then very little truly changes. Talking or analyzing may take you to a certain level, but not to real, lasting change.
The real shift came when I truly started including my body in the process.
In 2022, I completed a two-year TRE training and became a certified provider. In 2024, I completed a two-year breathwork training and became a breath therapist. Through this, I learned more and more about the nervous system, survival mechanisms, regulation, and release.
That changed not only my work, but also my own life.
I began to understand what was happening in my system. I learned how my body was holding stress, how old tension could build up, and how survival responses could become fixed in patterns. By learning to regulate and release, I came back into deeper contact with my body and my feelings.
I did not just feel lighter, I was also able to recover from stress again. There was more calm in my system, more clarity in my mind, and more space to choose from who I truly am instead of from old patterns. My capacity grew. I no longer only understood what was happening to me, I could actually begin to experience life differently.
