Welcome,
I'm quite confident that our external challenges are intimately linked to our inner struggles. 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, relating, evolving and thriving in the world. 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. It is an ecology of spaces and places to practice and experiment ways of opening ourselves to the unknown and the unimaginable in partnership with the more-than-human world.
I develop methodologies and facilitate transformative experiences that shift perspectives, unleash energy in a rigorous approach to create positive change – and chart bold, ambitious futures together. A future and culture that fosters inner growth, social change and creative expression. This is not merely about being and acting differently in the world, but also about creating new worldviews that are prerequisites for true societal transformation. Can you take an instant to visualize this event?
Looking forward to connect,
Katrien Franken, founder
Katrien Franken
I'm a multiple award-winning artist, serial social entrepreneur, breathwork and inner growth facilitator, educator and researcher, poet, writer, and activist, as well as founding director of Open Up. I view my work as an act of journey; an expression of assembled studies, longings, learnings, spiritual practice, failures collaborations, experiments, and experience of twenty years at the edges of our evolutionary growth.
In our experiential learning journeys we make care for Mystical experiences, Catharsis, Serious Play and Psychological insight where we can expand our intelligence and gather the necessary information for constructive meaning-making. We gather with others to feel into our body, to revisit the ordinary and what's already here, and to come to new senses of freedom and joy in our intimate belonging in altered states of consciousness.
Open Up acts as a portal
Mystical experiences
A re-orientation to ascend up and the return back, down. In carefully curated journeys, we encourage meaningful change with a deep care for strange encounters in ecosystems of being. Through conscious connected breathing we open the bodymind and access altered states of consciousness which changes the nervous system, changes the state of our mind, and changes the way we perceive the world. This state reveals deep existential truths about interconnectedness and life.
Positive
Catharsis
The art of releasing and of letting go creates space for shifts and energy, to come into your potential. From small and subtle shifts to bigger ones, we challenge and support the release and relief from what is holding us back to come to new senses and perspectives of power, joy, and freedom. In these shifts we co-generate
care in partnership with the more than human world. Allowing ourselves to feel beyond our limitations.
Serious
Play
Play is an essential part of a learning process throughout life to bring something incomprehensible into the world at the end of knowing. Serious Play engages fundamental transformative processes for us. With a high level of sophistication we move from our orderly world to a place of imagination,
creativity, connection, and
openness. Let us re-visit the ordinary and remember what is already here.
Psychological insight
Participate in socratic inquiry, and active, intuitive listening. A matter of deeply exploring our reality through our experience and gathering the necessary insight for constructive meaning-making. A process of evaluating and assessing each situation with curiosity and presence in search for profound wisdom.
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 interconnectedness. Join us in this activism of inquiry to unleash energy in bodies, in flows, in possibilities, from meaningful experiences to action.
Longing
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
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.