Learning to care for my body
revealed to me the most honest
form of truth
Hi, I’m Sam — founder of A Simple Mind.
I grew up in a generation where words like therapy or psychologist were rarely spoken. If you needed that kind of help, people quickly assumed something was seriously wrong.
So like many others, we learned to keep going.
Ignore discomfort. Perform well.
And above all: don’t feel too much.
A life within a light bubble.
For a long time my life moved within a light and fast-paced bubble.
Until my early thirties I travelled the world for work in consumer research within the FMCG industry. Always busy, always moving.
And if you don’t see a problem, then there isn’t one… right?
The turning point
The turning point came after the intense and deeply physical birth of my daughter.
While the world congratulated me on this miracle, something shifted profoundly inside.
Through that powerful bodily experience — the connection with my own body and with hers — I suddenly realised how disconnected I had been from my body for many years.
I had quietly edited the difficult parts out of my life.
My body, however, had been speaking for quite some time.
Recurring pneumonia.
Difficulty maintaining weight.
Periods of physical imbalance.
The bubble I had been living in had been breaking open for years.
Becoming a mother brought my feet firmly back to the ground. And slowly my body began bringing forward everything that had been pushed aside.
It felt as if layers that had long been suppressed could no longer remain silent.
Eventually I stepped away from my company, my career, and the life I had built — not out of weakness, but out of necessity.
A different path
I began training in therapeutic and energetic bodywork, completing a six-year training inspired by the work of Barbara Brennan.
That marked the beginning of a slow, honest, and deeply transformative process.
I became increasingly fascinated by the human being as a whole — how body, nervous system, emotions, and meaning are inseparably connected.
One of the most important discoveries for me was this:
I could feel pain without being overwhelmed by it.
And strangely enough, that made my mind quieter and gentler.
Quite simple.
From a place of safety, I gradually explored difficult experiences, allowed them to move through my body, and slowly a deep sense of calm replaced the tension.
The strict inner voices — those old internal dictators — began to lose their grip.
The simpler my thoughts became, the freer life began to feel.
My work today
What I have lived through myself informs the way I guide others.
Not by fixing or analysing people,
but by working together with what appears in the body and nervous system.
My work is somatic, psychological, and relational — always guided by safety, timing, and capacity.
What touches me most today is how many people struggle, and at the same time how courageous, aware, and wise many of them are.
Our generation seems more willing to feel, explore, and change in ways that earlier generations often could not.
I find that deeply hopeful.
Because honestly, our world may need that now more than ever
What we experience in life can sometimes feel overwhelming.
Yet, as Viktor Frankl wrote:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response.”
The more we learn to find and inhabit that space —
simply allowing ourselves to be present there —
the more our past experiences can slowly transform into strong and compassionate roots.
Roots from which we can begin to live with greater awareness and choice,
rather than reacting unconsciously to the echoes of our past.
With warmth,
Sam Colijn-Koschuch
Somatic & relational therapy in Amsterdam