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Open Up is pioneering breathwork

& inner growth for the shift and

shifters in service of a new culture

Welcome,

The emergence of our time calls for a generous and adventurous descend that leads us to interesting new places that open up other ways of seeing, learning, living, evolving, thriving, and relating in the world. I'm quite confident that our external challenges are intimately linked to our inner struggles.

​Open Up is a breathwork and inner growth institute, and an attempt to cultivate the necessary rupture and wisdom for becoming other-wise in an embodied way in service of a new culture and living planet for future generations. It is an ecology of practices, a research inquiry, and experimentation for ways of opening ourselves to the unknown and the unimaginable in partnership with the more-than-human world. This is not merely about being and acting differently in the world, but also about co-creating new worldviews that are prerequisites for true societal and cultural transformation. Can you take an instant to visualize this event?

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Katrien Franken, founder

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Katrien Franken

 

I'm a multiple award-winning artist, social entrepreneur, educator, breathwork and inner growth facilitator, counselor, researcher, writer, poet, and activist, as well as founder of Open Up. I view my work as an act of journey; an expression of assembled studies, longings, learnings, spiritual practice, collaborations, failures, experiments, and experience of twenty years at the edges of our evolutionary growth.

 

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Mythodology

 

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Based on our own research, training and experience for

transformation, we bring care to four worlds of work. It 

addresses our fundamental research inquiry: How can we open up in consciousness and the body in such a way, so we may improve our vital connections with ourselves, each other and the nature?

Mystical
experiences


Opening Relationship

We challenge and support people to breathe and open up in consciousness and the body and move beyond the conventional. In carefully created journeys we open to access altered states of consciousness, which changes the nervous system, changes the state of our mind, and changes the way we perceive the world. A state that reveals deep existential truths about interconnectedness and life. 

Spontaneous
Catharsis


Opening Embodiment

In our learning journeys we make space for rupture to release and unleash energy, to shift perspectives and cultivate a profound receptivity for opening to the real in a non directional way. In that shift we open to new senses and perspectives of power, joy, and freedom in an embodied way. We learn to co-generate
possibilities in​ partnership with the more than human world. 

Serious
Play


Opening Imagination

We help people imagine new futures in a time of upheaval. We consider serious play to be an essential, transformative part of a learning process through- out life. With a high level of sophistication we bring a deep care for strange encounters in ecosystems of being, and move from our orderly world to a place of imagination, openness,
experiment,  connection and creativity.

Psychological insight

Opening Wisdom

Opening to the kind of knowing by Being that grounds our ability to make sense of the intelligible of reality and truth, intimately.

A conscious process of engaging in inquiry, rigorous thinking, feeling the emotions and gathering the necessary insight for constructive meaning-making. Combining

philosophical, contemplative practice with the Sciences, Arts and complexity.

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Offerings & Engagements

Caring for Changemakers

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FUTURES

ARE US

Becoming Other-Wise

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Join the Shift

Be the Shifter

Re-imagining education and mental health

ACADEMIC 
BREATHWORK
RESEARCH


READ OUR PUBLICATION




A stunning invitation is in the air, urging us to rethink ourselves, our ways of learning and our actions in the world to what mutually benefits us. In an Open Up based pedagogy, the longing is to deeply explore what it means to be alive in the world today, being in the body and to bring more than just breathwork, more than just solutions, more than just a future. We practice breathwork to open to new places of power where there is joy in carrying the health and well-being of our interconnected- ness. Join us in this activism of inquiry to unleash energy in bodies, in flows, in possibilities, from the raw unknowing of transformation and meaningful experiences to a place of rooted possibilities.

Longing

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Writings by Katrien Franken

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

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Our

PHILANTHROPY 

Open Up's impact initiatives are set out by Katrien Franken in 2020, and are deep offerings to whole systems change. A human investment in a future of inspiration and longevity, unlocking new opportunities for radical change and healing. 

 

She's exploring how the conditions of transformation come together on the fringes of the culture. Her engagement is with deep inner practices, and journeys of coming alive to critical shifts in ways that allow ruptures to grow the new. 

"I have had several breathwork sessions before, but what Katrien offers is something very special. It's beyond just breathwork. She is incredibly intuitive and able to sense exactly where you are at and what you need. She has an exceptionally healing presence, and uses touch and sound to deepen the journey. The sessions offer a window into your deeper self and allow profound healing and awareness to come through."

David Fuller – Founder of Rebel Wisdom, London, UK

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