Testimony Patricia Vanoutrive

The Into Silence Journey or Inner Transformation is completely in line with who I am and what I believe in: personal development has many layers and requires a range of insights and actions, all of which start with stillness in order to get closer to yourself and from here closer to the world.

Gnothi seauton was already the wise advice of the Ancient Greeks: know yourself, know yourself deeply, know your soul. But also: know yourself as a human being, because although we are all unique, there is also a lot in us that we share with others. All human qualities, all human goodness and all human evil are in each of us. Being able to learn to see and hear this in yourself requires stillness. Learning to control this incredible human color palette requires insight, commitment, connection with yourself and with others, action, practice and permanent adjustment.

This is all in the Into Silence program: becoming and being human in a more real way, starting from stillness, full of experiences, exercises and challenges to gain insight and action.

About me

Patricia (53), doctor, teacher, NLP-er, coach, hypnotherapist, group therapist, breathwork trainer, trauma release counselor, rites of passage facilitator.

I am Patricia (°1970), married to Hans who has been walking with me on the winding paths of life since I was 17 years old, and thanks to whom I was allowed to become a mother of 4 beautiful, now adult daughters who were and are my most important life masters.

I graduated in 1995 from the KULeuven as a doctor, specializing in general practice. Convinced by my personal medical history, I treated my patients from the start with a mix of classical medicine, phytotherapy and homeopathy.

I also obtained the aggregate diploma and so I also became a teacher in higher education (Vives). More and more I became intrigued by the links between body and mind. I became a master practitioner NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) and development-oriented coach. In order to transfer these insights to other professionals, I was one of the founders of the Vives Wellbeing and vitality management course and the postgraduate course 'Coaching via NLP'.

However, no matter how passionate I was, I took on too much, did not take enough account of my highly sensitive personality and went down with a burnout in 2012. This was a tough but also very instructive and healing phase in my life. In my search, I became more and more convinced of the (negative and positive) forces in our subconscious, and I followed the hypnotherapy training at the Vhyp (Flemish Scientific Hypnosis Association).

Consciousness and especially subconscious are the keys to ourselves and to our mental and physical health, and so I continue to perfect myself in ways to use the powers of your own subconscious and of the collective subconscious in a meaningful and correct way.

I became a Breathwork trainer (at Inner Camp) and Trauma release counselor (at Inner Journey), followed courses in Shamanism (at Anam Cara Belgium and Anam Cara Scotland) and in processwork through the methodology of Active Hope (grateful to have followed this with Joanna Macy herself!) and Social Presencing Theater (Presencing Institute). I also trained as a group therapist (at Focus on Emotion) because as they say in Africa: man is a man through the others. I also lived this wisdom in training as a kasàlà poet with Prof. Jean Kabuta, and thus also nourished my love of language.

Transformation is essentially 'passing': from one phase of life to another, and becomes more powerful with an accompanying ritual, so I also became Rites of passage facilitator, trained by the Australian Dr. Arne Rubinstein. I have already amassed a lot of knowledge, insights, skills and wisdom in my richly filled life, but I still remain a searching and inquisitive soul...

My mission is "learning through help and helping through learning". Anyone who consults me for care gets help and also enters a learning process (about yourself and life). Those who follow courses with me are also stimulated and helped to transform their own patterns.

An important attitude to life for me is active surrender to what comes your life path: pierce the illusion of control, there will be all kinds of things that you do not foresee and may not want, accept this, but maintain an active attitude of researching, making choices, taking steps. Even if you are not sure that it will take you to what you hope for, it will immediately give you how exciting experiences and development opportunities you have!

An important life motto for me is 'to live is to learn, to learn is to live': as long as you live you will have lessons to learn, and at the same time it is true that you live and continue to live thanks to further learning about yourself, life, living together with others. So enjoy both life and learning, the lessons you get to learn on your life path!

PS when I turned 50, this motto in life got a tail thanks to Abbé Pierre: 'to live is to learn... love'. Because love is the alpha and omega of everything!