CHALLENGING & SUPPORTING HUMANS TO OPEN UP
Breathwork foundations for inner innovation and social transformative cultural change
Welcome
Open Up is founded in 2015 by Katrien Franken, born from a firm conviction that inner innovation can catalyze holistic solutions for global problems. Today, we harness the power of collective action through an evolving ecosystem of co-creative projects aimed to increase radical kinship with the human and more-than-human-worlds.
Through in-person and online sessions and events, joint projects, scientific research, philanthropy projects, and publications, we inspire and equip individuals and organizations to reinvent themselves, and to shape more humane futures from an inner learning perspective.
In places and processes of Open Up, we root ourselves in our own breathing, our body, the present moment, and become curious about the inner dimensions of change and healing; to open up new places of power and responsivity; to bring feeling into being; make space for the unknown; taking unconventional detours, and help open our vital connections with ourselves, others and the nature.
Our work is also a form of therapy; a research inquiry; an experience and process of worlding the now; shocking the familiar, composting new realities which we coin Alive Learning education. Through the practice of conscious connected breathing, making-into-relation all that breathes, we liberate perspectives and possibilities from a deep place that usher social transformative change.
Our philanthropy initiative in Scientific research unravels the neurobiological and psychological effects of breathwork. We develop learning programs and apply this also for
refugee youth in Africa in one of the largest refugee settlements in the world.
We are building foundations for what's possible in exploring new understandings of human healing potential and growth. We encourage an experiential approach in order to facilitate the exchange of discoveries and insights for our mutual growth, joy and enrichment where something truly creative and meaningful can arise. Emergent curriculum: nothing is fixed or final here. Please stay tuned.
About
Katrien Franken
In order to open up, you must generously engage with the unknown. Katrien's work is an expression of assembled studies, longings, learnings, initiatives, collaborations, experiments and experience of twenty years at the edges of our evolutionary growth.
She has become increasingly interested in the inner dimensions of change and healing, especially at the intersection between psychotherapy, neuroscience and spirituality. She has applied her inner growth development background & breathwork across multi-disciplinary projects and for organizations, leaders, purpose-driven networks, schools, artists, experienced activists, refugees, policy-makers, and communities.
Our Series
Inspire. Connect. Transform
Offerings
Come flow with the motion of the interrelational, and learn from the inner dimensions of change and healing
Between eternity and nothing lives Open Up; an emergent space, transversing; situated across; side by side, relative to some hopeful defined "forward" direction.
Independent Initiatives
Open Up
Philanthropy
We're building a movement of Open Up to increase radical kinship and empower next generations to become leaders of change. Our initiatives ignite a start of how social innovation can contribute to transformation of society. We are working at the forefront of it.
Seth Tabatznik - Founder of 42 Acres and Be the Earth Foundation, UK
My session with Katrien was one of the most delightfully powerful and unique experiences of my life. I enjoyed wonderful creative insights and felt calmly energised beyond anything I’ve previously experienced…and all from just air! I felt well supported and in safe hands, and I’m truly grateful to Katrien and her calm energy for guiding me through an experience that now lives deep inside.
