Home of Core Strokes™ — Advancing Integrative Somatic Psychotherapy & Bodywork Since 1994

Dirk Marivoet can find the right words and touches in order to create confidence and security to release blocked energy in your physical and emotional body. By freeing up these areas, he re-connects us to our full potential…. 1000 thanks for helping me to be totally me in my freedom and my fluidity.

In the six years I’ve known Dirk Marivoet, he’s always impressed me with his enthusiasm for bodywork and his commitment to embrace the world and share his knowledge widely. He is a wise and loving teacher with a gentle heart and deep therapeutic knowledge about the body-mind.

“Encounter between people is central in psychotherapy. Dirk had and has the guts to push the boundaries of what is possible in the field of physical contact and encounter in the context of the psychotherapeutic process thoughtfully and ethically. Groundbreaking in his vision is the application of “back to body basics”. With his personal track and training institute he has put psychotherapeutic bodywork on the world map once and for all in Flanders (and elsewhere). A fantastic work that will hopefully be continued by you and many others.”

My deepest gratitude to Dirk Marivoet as my trainer, supervisor, therapist for continuing inspiration, support, wisdom and heartfelt qualities. He really “walks what he talks”: highly integrated competences and a wonderful human heart which can make space for everything.

I know Dirk since many years and I am always in admiration of his deep knowledge, creativity, wisdom and his tremendous skills working with the body and the consciousness. He is a great therapist and an explorer of the human nature!

I am Physiotherapist and I have a long experience as a sportsman and martial artist. I live with bipolar disorder (I could also say: “I have lived many lives and in many worlds…”).Working with Dirk I felt his great humanity and that he really cared about me.The experience was total and radical (New and as going to the roots). All my worlds, lives, mind, body were just one there and in this moment. Thanks to his presence, hands, voice, movement… lost memories came up. I was able to open my treasured spirituality after a manic episode. After this I felt fresher, lively from my bones to my mind and heart.

As a young retiree, I have always suffered from low back pain and have used a number of treatments (apart from surgery) to relieve myself. I find Dirk’s “Core Strokes” approach very beneficial for its holistic and in-depth action. Its action on the fascias during individual sessions gave me an immediate relaxing effect on the muscles in my pelvis, giving me freedom of positioning that I had been deprived of for a long time. A therapy combining more well-known techniques with its original and synthetic contribution that I absolutely recommend.

The Core Strokes Module 1 workshop left me with great admiration for this concept. As an Occupational Therapist and Massage Practitioner I can benefit from the learnt physical techniques and from experiencing how to integrate emotional processing in this work. This holistic approach is in my eyes the best way to help and support clients and I’m grateful that the workshop empowered me to work more holistically. The way Dirk teaches is very practical and interactive which I really enjoyed. The self-experiencing sessions where very helpful for my own processing and I experienced amazing personal growth. Thank you for all of that, Dirk!

Core Strokes: A beautiful modality that integrates various practices based on many years of experience in the bodymind integration space. It truly offers a practice which is inspiring and precious as a gift to humanity and will surely support many people into the praxis of being “the blossoming of their best selves”. 

The common thread through the week was a sense of allowing ourselves increasingly to be our fullest self, and to let the body (our own body) show us where current or past experiences are holding us back. It was deeply moving to see others (and myself too) tackle particularly painful holding patterns, and to see the joy, the lightness of being, the fresh energy that came available upon re-emerging from the intensive work.