It’s one thing to have insight into how you feel and how you react around certain people and in certain circumstances. It’s an entirely different thing to practice new patterns, the ones you actually want, in the presence of another person.
Awareness and practice are at the heart of my work, in person and virtually. Together, we find and explore the inner workings behind your stress and problems, so you can experience how you take in and process sensations, thoughts, and emotions, and catch the small moments where your reactions begin.
Then rubber meets the road: you practice responding in new ways, in my presence, and feel the shifts as they happen.
Foundational to this work is growing inner silence, from which awareness can arise. As awareness arises, more choices open up, stress and problems can diminish, and you get to be who you choose to be.
If this interests you, you can schedule a free conversation
to see whether this way of working fits your needs.
Why this way of working?
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None of us built our patterns alone. They formed with family and friends, teachers and coaches, and the kids who teased us long ago. Without knowing it, we learned what we deserve, good and bad, when to feel shame or blame, and which parts of us are acceptable and unacceptable. Seeing where these came from doesn’t excuse anything, but it frees us from blaming ourselves and makes room to actually work with them. What formed in relationship needs relationship to change, which is why this work is one-on-one rather than a book or an app.
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We work with the engine running. A knock in an engine can’t be diagnosed from a description over the phone. The car comes into the bay, the engine runs, and we listen together. Sessions work the same way: less talking about what happened last week, more attending to what’s happening now. The tightness that arrives with a certain sentence, the hand already reaching for the phone, the words that want to come and don’t.
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Underneath our inner noise, there’s a quieter kind of attention. It isn’t about blocking things out or chasing what feels good. It’s a silence with room for all of it: hurts and shortcomings, hopes and beauty, and freedom to choose what you do with any of it. Together, we practice resting in that silence and working with what comes up, building your capacity to be present with yourself.
This is what one client had to say
about her work with Dirk:
"Before working with Dirk, I was trapped in a cycle of anxiety, anger, and self-blame, constantly feeling like I wasn't enough. Despite previous attempts with therapy and medication, nothing brought lasting change. I needed a deeper, more personal form of support.
Working with Dirk has been a game-changer. I've gained the strength to face my discomfort and traumas with more calm and acceptance. The process hasn’t removed the challenges, but it has transformed how I engage with them. Dirk’s unique presence—firm yet nurturing—has helped me see and embrace parts of myself I had long avoided. My relationships have deepened, my stress is more manageable, and I approach my personal and professional life with a newfound resilience.
Dirk’s patience, boundary-setting, and the safe space he created allowed me to confront and process my fears in ways I couldn't have imagined. This journey has felt like a warm, secure tent where I could explore my deepest concerns and emerge feeling more whole and capable."
Nicola Rigor
Marketing Consultant
About Dirk and Innerguide Coaching
Offering the care and help I wish someone had offered me is the most meaningful thing I know to do with my life.
Many people spend years, sometimes decades, trying to feel better, trying to work through their stuff. Like I did, they try books, therapy, workshops, retreats. Each one helps a little, and the old patterns come back.
I know that path well. It took me most of six decades, thirty years of working with patients, Hakomi training, guides and counselors, marriage and parenting, and a lot of wandering down roads that didn’t lead anywhere.
What I came away with is a clearer sense of what actually makes the difference: slowing down enough to notice what’s happening in you beneath the surface, staying with it instead of turning away, and, very importantly, practicing new ways of responding.
Where I struggled most was staying with it. I didn’t have an advocate - someone who could see me pull away from the process, and then kindly and firmly help me stay with it, with myself, and guide me from there.
I can’t walk your path for you. But I can be that support, and help you shorten or avoid some detours, and spend less time and suffering getting to what works for you.
Underneath these practices is something nothing else replaces: experiences of deep acceptance, from yourself and from another. That’s what changes us.
Through Innerguide Coaching, I help you experience deep acceptance.
Your Discovery Session
Getting onto a call with a stranger, especially about one's personal situation, can be uncomfortable. Yet, it is an important step.
Please know that I show up at sessions without judgment or prejudice and that I deeply respect and hold confidential all of the feelings and information shared.
Your Discovery Session will have several aspects to it that will flow organically:
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Introducing ourselves and your situation:
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How things are for you now,
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How things have been for you,
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How you want them to be.
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Sharing about myself and Innerguide Coaching.
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Answering any and all questions you have.
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Depending on the situation, we may do a brief exercise to help you get a flavor of how I work.
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Ideally, we will conclude your Discovery Session with a clear, go-forward plan that is in your best interest — whether that is scheduling your first session or otherwise.
I make every effort to help you feel and know that all of you is welcome, heard, understood, and accepted during your Discovery Session.
I look forward to meeting you.
~ Dirk
Elements of Innerguide
Coaching
I can’t do this work for anyone, and I wouldn’t want to. What I can do is notice alongside you — say what I see, offer what’s helped me, suggest something to try — and then step back so the choice stays yours. Over time the noticing becomes yours too, and in my own life that’s where the strength has come from: not from someone else’s insight about me, but from a growing capacity to feel what’s happening and choose what to do with it.
I’ve learned to work this way through three decades of providing patient care and coaching, addressing my own life’s emotional, medical, and situational challenges, and helping raise two deeply connected, self-motivated children to adulthood with my wife of thirty-six years. I bring a multi-faceted perspective, deep understanding, and non-judgment to every session.
During Innerguide Coaching, I use various approaches, including:
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Shadow work — getting curious about the parts of ourselves we’d rather not claim
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Contact statements — naming, simply and out loud, what’s noticed in the moment, and seeing what it stirs
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Simple awareness exercises
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Guided meditation and silence
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Written exercises
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Stories from my own life, when they’re useful
Recognizing that each client is unique, I tailor my approach based on our interactions and your needs and preferences. I offer suggestions and guidance, and together we decide on the direction to take. Your choices guide our work, and I fully support you in pursuing them.
