About me
After finishing a bachelor's degree in biology and having a Phd in molecular biology lined up in NYC,
I decided to become an Emergency Room physician.
The first thing we did when I received my medical degree 12 years later, as a family of 3, was to move from Belgium to South Africa where I worked in the ER for 4 years.
These were very instructive and challenging years on the professional side, seeing more patients with severe pathologies, trauma and human suffering in a week than I would see in Belgium in a year.
At the same time these were amazing years for my family and I. We had a great lifestyle, the beach was a few minutes away, safari parks to see the Big Five an hour’s drive away...
The contradiction was often huge.
We then moved to Guadeloupe as a family of 4, where something snapped in me. I didn’t feel safe for myself or my patients. I was practicing a kind of medicine I didn’t agree with. I started wondering where the “health” and the “care” were in what I was doing (although in the ER we still do a lot of life-saving medicine).
I started to have anxiety (which took me several years to understand, as this feeling was completely unknown to me before) and felt an almost constant feeling of overwhelm.
When I realised that “the quality of my life is the quality of my emotions” I decided to reclaim my Joy, which led me on the path of becoming an empowerment coach.
When you know why you do the things you do and you become aware of it, you can choose to change what you’re doing or to keep on doing it. At least now you have a choice.
As Thich Nhat Han said:“The way out is in”.
I believe that joy is the truest form of human expression and that, if we learned how to tap into it consciously, the face of humanity (and of our beautiful planet) would drastically and beautifully change.
I believe that we have to unlearn who we were asked to become and rekindle who we were to begin with.
Healthstyle Coach
I am Iris Van Nespen,
your guide on the journey
to Reclaim Your Sparkle.
Empowering women to prioritize Health, Joy and fulfillment.
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