Koen De Leeuw: "Sleeping outside is a reset for your system"

I am Koen, former Para Commando, survival guide and passionate adventurer. After my time in the army I chose to use that experience to guide people in the outdoors. These days I lead expeditions in some of the most rugged and untouched regions in the world.

Sleeping outdoors has been part of my life for years. But when I first did it as an entrepreneur, in the middle of a hectic working life with plenty of pressure and little time for myself, I really started to feel the impact. What it does to your body, and to your head.

For a lot of people the first nights are uncomfortable: you toss and turn, feel every pebble under your mat and miss the small certainties of home. You are used to falling asleep with background noise, but on expedition those stimuli disappear. No wifi, no walls, no distraction. Just you, the group and the elements.

Breaking away from your everyday surroundings by sleeping outdoors is no small thing. It takes time and a willingness to let go. But once you are lying there, something remarkable happens.

It becomes less and less about the luxuries you think you are missing, and more and more about the small things you only appreciate once they are gone. Things that seem obvious, until you have to do without them for a while.

What does the sun have to do with decompression?

I am grateful that I get to discover the most beautiful places in the world and share them with others. But that change of environment always brings an adjustment period. My body clock looks for something to hold on to, because that structure determines my hormone cycle: when I get tired, when I get hungry, when I feel emotionally balanced.

So every expedition starts with a small disruption: the shift from the rhythm at home to life outdoors. Waking with first light, sleeping as soon as it gets dark. No alarm needed. It is as though my head is switched off and my body retunes itself to the rhythm around it.

In the other direction, coming back from nature to home, adjusting is the harder job. You would expect it to be comparable, but that is not my experience. Nature offers stability and continuity. Your alarm clock is the sun, and you cannot snooze it. The input I have to process is physical and unforgiving: cold, fatigue, hunger. Precisely because of that, I get a lot of mental space.

At home far more factors influence my rhythm: light and dark, screens. I can steer my rhythm through all those variables I control myself. Structure and rhythm become a choice there. That adjustment does not happen by itself. It takes commitment, energy and decisiveness.

I sleep best on the ground

Every single time I notice how used my body has become to life indoors: artificial light, screens, heating, constant stimulation and noise. Those first nights under open sky are withdrawal. I still check Instagram on my phone right before sleeping, even though there is no signal at all. My head is still running at full speed.

But as the days pass, my sleep deepens. Not because I am physically exhausted, but because my system genuinely settles. Fewer thoughts, more calm and space. I feel the difference in everything: waking up sharper, more energy, more balance.

No friction, no shine

It is something I experience again and again: how my body recovers from being outside. My breathing gets deeper, my movements smoother. My body feels sturdier and more stable, as though the weather and a bad surface no longer have any hold on me.

I know part of that comes down to movement, fresh air and sunlight, but something subtler is at play too. Something in the surroundings that feeds my system. Time after time I feel it: nature does me good.

Physical space creates mental space

At the start it is noisy on the inside. Every time. My head is still racing from the rush I left behind: deadlines, conversations, planning, screens, notifications. Sometimes I literally jump around to shake off that internal storm.

But without stimulation, without constant input, something shifts. The silence that felt uncomfortable at first becomes clear. My attention comes back. Not because I force myself to focus, but because there is finally room again. All I have to do is be.

What I take from it

Every time I go on expedition I leave something behind: comfort, convenience, control. And every time I notice that it feels like loss first and only later like gain. No excess, no hurry, only what is necessary. That is enough, more than enough in fact. It reminds me what really counts, and how much noise there usually is on our ordinary days.

It does not always click from day one. But I am certain of this: sleeping outside has changed me. Not suddenly, but permanently.