Dr. Femke E. Bakker

Dr. Femke E. Bakker

Dr. Femke Bakker is a Selfgentleness guide, meditation teacher, political psychologist and former actor. For decades she was the strong one, tired and hard on herself, until she found a gentler way she now calls selfgentleness.

Meet Your Guide

Why Being The Strong One Is Exhausting You

Femke's TEDx talk: The Power of Selfgentleness

When you’ve lost touch with what you need (with 2 minute practice)

About Your Guide

I spent most of my life being "the strong one". The capable one, the one who held everything together and never seemed to need much. I worked as a professional actor for two decades, then went back to study and became a political psychologist at Leiden University, and along the way a certified meditation teacher. From the outside it looked like I had it all figured out. Inside, I was tired, and quietly hard on myself, no matter what I achieved.

What changed was when I stopped trying to fix myself. It was learning to treat myself with the same gentleness I gave so easily to everyone else. I call it selfgentleness: radically accepting yourself as the most important person to consistently deserve your own gentleness. Not only when things go well, and especially not when they don't.

It starts smaller than you might think. A few minutes of tuning in, feeling what is really going on inside, and asking yourself what you need right now. It also holds up in the harder places, under other people's expectations, the roles you carry, the pressure to perform and to keep it all together. These journeys are gentle, practical steps back toward yourself, for anyone who is tired of being their own harshest critic and of putting everyone else first.

I would love to walk part of the way with you.
When You Always Have to Deliver

When You Always Have to Deliver

You're the one everyone counts on to deliver, whatever it takes. And even when you love what you do, part of you has started to wonder whether it has to cost this much: the stress, the pushing through exhaustion, the sense that your best only ever comes at a price. It doesn't.

Over seven short tracks, Femke Bakker, selfgentleness and meditation teacher, TEDx speaker, and researcher, guides you toward an easier way to arrive at your best. You'll learn to relax your body on demand, loosen the grip of time, reconnect with the quiet place your best work comes from, and become your own steadiest support. Each track pairs a short reflection with a guided practice, so you discover what this means for you rather than just hearing about it. No hustle, no pressure. Just a calmer, more spacious way to do what you already do well.

1 hour 39 minutes

You Can Be Yourself, Until People Need You

You Can Be Yourself, Until People Need You

You know who you are when it's just you. In your own company you can hear yourself clearly, and you trust what you find there. Then someone needs an answer, a decision, a direction, and something shifts. You reach for the old rational mode, the one that has carried you for years, and the person you are when you're alone goes quiet. This is a ten-part journey for anyone who guides or carries other people, in a family, a small team, or something much larger, and who wants to stay themselves while they do it. Through meditation, visualization, and a set of unhurried reflections, you'll move through what it takes to lead without leaving yourself behind, and arrive at a way of leading that still sounds like you.

2 hours 47 minutes

The Reflex to Say Yes

The Reflex to Say Yes

You watch yourself do it. Saying yes before you have decided you really wanted to say yes. Apologize for something that was not your fault. Give until something in you runs out. Across three short audios you name the reflex, look honestly at what it is costing you, and find a gentler way to hold yourself, one where you matter too.

16 minutes

Free
The Last Person You're Gentle With

The Last Person You're Gentle With

If you say yes when you are already running on empty, hear a critical voice the moment something goes well, and lose your footing when someone is disappointed in you, this short journey is for you. Across four gentle audios of a few minutes each, you meet three patterns that quietly keep you coming last in your own life, and you sit with each one kindly instead of trying to fix it. There is nothing to achieve here and nothing to get right. By the end you will have a name for a gentler way of being with yourself, and a small, clear sense of where to begin.

13 minutes

Falling Asleep with Selfgentleness

Falling Asleep with Selfgentleness

A four-night audio journey using selfgentleness to help you fall asleep, one night at a time. Each night meets a different shape sleeplessness takes, a mind that won't stop, fear of the night itself, a day that won't close, and offers a selfgentle way through it. The beautiful, soft background music is composed by NRJ Guide Tom Evans.

48 minutes

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