Your life can change in a fraction of a second… in my case an accident during my final year of high school where I became blind in my right eye. Hospital in, hospital out. One medical examination after another to save as much of the blind eye as possible prevented me from finishing that school year, among other things. I was able to pass the VWO exam a year later with adult education, but I had to stop my follow-up study at the UvA because of the heavy persistent headache as a result of extremely high eye pressure. Only after 12 years the ophthalmologists dared to have an eye pressure lowering operation by placing a drain in my eye.
Before the accident I was fanatical about Thai boxing at Chakuriki. The combination of not being able to see three-dimensional anymore and the urgent advice of my treating doctors made me decide to stop Thai boxing. Some time later I read an article about Wing Chun in an old martial arts magazine that I still had lying around. The article included a photo of a blindfolded workout. All I could think was that if you can train without eyes, you probably should be able to do it with one eye. Since my first Wing Chun training I realized that I had found a passion in which I could find my challenge physically and mentally. This was also one of the reasons why I started teaching Wing Chun. To give everyone an opportunity to experience the physical and mental challenge in Wing Chun. I am happiest when I can teach Wing Chun, share my knowledge, and meet new people through WuDae.
Since 1998 I have been teaching Wing Chun and soon found my home in The Hague where I opened the WuDae school. I myself have learned many different Wing Chun lineages and had different teachers, each one even better than the other. In addition to the quality of Wing Chun, it has always been important to me how people dealt with each other in a school, with respect for each other, as a good family. At WuDae, quality and family feeling remains important!
