Journey from IT to the Self Love Academy – Exclusive Interview with Liesbet De Rouck
- Brainz Magazine
- Jul 4
- 7 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
From boardrooms to embodiment. From performing to presence.
Liesbet De Rouck is a spoken word artist, body-oriented coach, and founder of The Self Love Academy – a sanctuary for emotional healing, somatic truth, and radical inner leadership.
Once a high-flying tech entrepreneur, she lived between airports and meetings, chasing success while quietly unravelling inside.
Her transformation didn’t begin with a breakdown – it began with a question:
“Why are you still doing this?”
What followed wasn’t a pivot, but a return to her body, her truth, and a way of working that doesn’t fix, but remembers.
Today, she guides others through the fire of becoming, with movement, poetry, presence, and a fierce softness that helps people come home to themselves.
Liesbet De Rouck, Body-Oriented Coach & Spoken Word Artist
What was the defining moment or experience that led you to radically change the course of your life and career?
I didn't begin this path in healing or embodiment. I started in recruitment and IT. I had a successful international career, a vast network, and a calendar filled with conferences, meetings, and flights, living from airport to airport, hotel to hotel. On paper, I was thriving. But inside, I was nowhere. I moved through those rooms in a dissociated state, laughing, networking, making deals, while quietly wondering: What am I doing here? I felt different. Not better. Not worse. Just… not there. Behind the polished performance lived a deep internal split. I was the savior, the fixer, the high performer. And yet I was angry, resentful, and tired of carrying responsibilities that were never truly mine. I had created a life that looked successful from the outside, but was rooted in pleasing, proving, and performing. I wasn't choosing for myself.
“I had built a life that looked like freedom, but it was stitched from survival.”
The turning point came when an investor, after years of building my own software company, looked at me and asked one simple question: "Liz, why are you still doing this?" And I had no answer. That was the moment the dam broke. The moment I realized I had been living two lives. In the boardroom, I was chasing deals. At home, I was healing trauma, studying embodiment, and training in transformational work for over 22 years. The day I stopped trying to be who the world expected me to be was the day I started becoming who I truly am.
What has been the most unexpected or transformative gift that came from walking this new path?
In 2020, as the world slowed down, I launched Just Dance – a freeform, non-guided tantric dance community where experienced movers could reconnect without being led. It was simple, raw, and alive. We gathered to move, to breathe, to return to our bodies without explanation or instruction. That space, unstructured, intuitive, and embodied, became a quiet revolution. It built a community. It built soul momentum.
Around that same time, I was already living a double life. By day, I ran my software company. But in the same building, just down the hall, I had quietly begun creating a spiritual community space called Tower of Light. For over two years, both worlds coexisted: code and contracts on one side, breathwork and dance on the other. By mid-2022, The Tower of Light had blossomed into a vibrant home for daily practices like ecstatic dance, yin yoga, acro yoga, healing circles, and somatic workshops. The space was alive, full of movement, energy, and connection.
“We gathered in silence, and somehow – in that stillness – a revolution began.”
And still, part of me was split. One foot in the old world. One foot in the new. But after the bankruptcy, something deeper cracked open. I spent the summer of 2023 working as a beach waiter, far away from boardrooms and meetings. And for the first time in years, my calendar was empty enough for something real to begin. That’s when I created Tender Tuesdays: intimate weekly sessions where people were invited to lie down, drop into their bodies, and listen. Each gathering began with spoken word, raw, poetic, unfiltered – a transmission to help people land in themselves. From there, we moved into simple give-and-receive practices: "Can you place a hand on my heart?" "Can you sit with me?" "Can you hold me for a moment, just by being there?"
These gentle, honest requests became sacred rituals. Eventually, I began adding Tantric Dance workshops into the rhythm of the space. Movement. Presence. Energy. Truth. Momentum grew. People came. And somewhere in the midst of it all, I realized: I’m home. This work, this deep witnessing, emotional release, and movement alchemy, wasn’t something I offered. It was who I am.
I discovered I could see people. In their movement, I saw what hadn't been said, the places their bodies held grief, longing, or hesitation. And through presence, spoken word, breath, and intuitive guidance, I helped them move through it, gently, powerfully, sometimes without words at all. Because transformation doesn’t always look like a breakdown, sometimes it looks like truth returning.
I stopped planning. I stopped fixing. I started following my body. And magic happened. These weren’t coaching sessions. They were journeys. I wasn’t working. I was remembering, alongside them.
How do you help others reclaim their truth and self-love, and what makes your approach unique?
In June 2024, I made the leap. I let go of all IT work and stepped fully into the unknown. I was terrified. Afraid of my own greatness. Afraid I wouldn't make enough to survive. But I had already gone bankrupt once, so I thought, 'How bad can it get?' I was finally enjoying my work, deeply, truly. And I knew: This is the life I want.
I launched my first full three-month transformation program: deep, weekly 1-on-1 sessions, both online and offline. People came. People opened. People changed. But soon, I craved more. More depth. More continuity. More group energy.
In September 2024, I launched my first intensive group journey: a 9-month fixed group, gathering once a month. About 10 participants. A few assistants. And a massive learning curve. Because group work doesn't just reflect your gifts, it reflects your gaps. I realized how vital it is to set the field clearly: boundaries, expectations, energetic agreements, and commitment.
In April 2025, I launched a second group, more condensed, more focused. Eight sessions across three months. And what unfolded was beyond words. I watched people arrive hardened, not knowing they were hardened, and soften into themselves. I watched hearts open. I watched years of suppression dissolve in the space between a breath and a sentence.
“I don’t guide people into who they should be. I hold space for who they already are.”
Because this is the core of my work: helping people remember that they're allowed to feel whatever they feel. I speak what's in the field. I trust the words that arrive. I follow the body. And what comes through is a transmission, not just from me, but through me.
I say the things we're not supposed to say. I name the thoughts we're trained to silence. And in doing so, I permit others to exist. That is my purpose. Not to fix. But to hold. To mirror. To open the door to who we've always been, before the world told us we weren't enough.
What vision do you hold for the future of The Self Love Academy and the people it serves?
After everything I've learned these past few years, from watching groups transform, from failing forward, from showing up again and again, I know it's time for another shift. I'm letting go of the loose, one-off workshops, the drop-in experiences, the light-touch events that ask little and offer less. Because my work isn't surface-level, it never has been. I'm here for the raw, the real, the willing. The ones who want to walk through the fire of remembering, and come out softer, not smaller.
This year, I'm building something deeper. A year-long training, starting in September, under my new brand: The Self Love Academy. This is not your average curriculum. No slideshows. No fluff. Just soul-level learning, rooted in poetry, presence, and body-based truth. We blend theory, spoken word, movement, and somatic practice. This training includes access to my full 9-part online program, A Path to Self-Love, which is now live.
“We don’t grow smaller when we remember who we are. We soften. We expand. We rise.”
This online journey is a next-phase recalibration. Not for beginners. But for the ones who've done the work and still feel the pull of self-criticism, inner chaos, or the collapse into old stories. It's deep. It's embodied. It's uncompromising. The Self Love Academy is not tantra-based. I'm intentionally creating space beyond that world. The tantric scene holds too much confusion around sexuality for the kind of grounded, soul-rooted work I'm building now.
This work is about wholeness. About sovereignty. About healing the relationship with yourself so deeply that the world around you has no choice but to shift. And yes, I'm still holding space for those ready to dance through their transformation. A new 4-month Tantric Dance Intensive will run from September through December.
Behind the scenes, the team is forming. The next wave of co-creators, spaceholders, and community builders who rise beside me, and sometimes beyond me. I don't know exactly what the next year will bring. I've never been this much in the unknown. But I've also never felt so clear.
I see myself leading four and five-day retreats, creating large-scale transformational events, growing committed group containers, and letting the ripple of this work extend far beyond what I can plan. Because we learn from each other. We heal through each other. And when one person opens their heart… the whole room begins to remember.
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