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Founder, Katrien Franken
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Katrien Franken's journey with breathwork began in 2004 as a personal healing and growth practice, which inspired her to share her knowledge with the world. Through Open Up, which she founded in 2015, she's investigating how breathwork can support mental, physical, and spiritual well-being, with a growing interest into how breathwork can become available for real problem solving in the world.
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Katrien develops immersive experiences, processes, and ideas of re-sensitizing ourselves to other worlds and away from the dominant human-centered view, calling for a new ecological imagination and regeneration. As a facilitator, she has guided individual and group experiences for thousands of people around the world, both in person and online. She's a trained breathwork teacher and therapist, holistic counselor, academic researcher, educator,
social entrepreneur, and facilitator of leading-edge projects, and educational processes across multiple societal contexts. ​
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Her non-profit initiatives focus on the future of health and education, investing in empowering younger generations in their (mental) health and care-making. In 2020, she initiated and led the first non-profit academic study on 'The effects of conscious connected breathing on cortical brain, mood states and altered states of consciousness' (published in 2023). In 2021, she began teaching breathwork to refugee youth in Uganda's Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda through the Open Up pedagogy.
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​Katrien is the host & creator of 10 editions of the 5-week in-person course 'The Breathwork Group Series' (since 2017), served as a lead breathwork facilitator at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research, and introduced Breathwork for/as Psychedelic Therapy at legal psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands (2022). In 2024, she became part of the teachers team of the Integrative Psychiatry Institute in the year-long Psychedelic-Assisted
Therapy training program. Katrien was the first in the Netherlands to develop an in-person breathwork training and lead the inaugural cohort of 24 licensed Dutch mental health professionals through the Open Up training, contributing to their accreditation in this emerging field.
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Trained in Holotropic Breathwork (Grof Transpersonal Training) and Biodynamic Breathwork trauma and tension release, Katrien is an Essential Counsellor and therapist (SIAF & CRKBO accredited), and certified Warm Data Lab host (by Nora Bateson of the International Bateson Institute). She is a THNK School of Creative Leadership faculty fellow, and has facilitated executive leadership programs since 2019, and works as an advisor for multiple initiatives that drive meaningful change forward.
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Before founding Open Up in 2015, she was an internationally recognized and multiple award-winning artist and photographer. www.katrienfranken.com​​​​
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Katrien is open to opportunities for advisory and consulting work, facilitation and training, and public speaking engagements.
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I deeply explore the questions:
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How can we open up in consciousness in such a way so we may improve our interaction with each other and with the world?
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How can the depth of experience in and shared process become a center-piece in creating our future?
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How can breathwork contribute to real problem solving in the world?
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Things that have guided Katrien for the past 20 years:
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I am curious about the confluence between mysterie and knowledge, openness and growth, longing and belonging, relation and connection, and the "space in between"
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I deeply listen and through that offer questions that open to the source of the issue where human complexity can be unravelled in quest for depth, meaning and healing
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My work is non-linear and experiments are central in everything I do. Nothing is fixed or final
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I value experience as the highest good
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I work with what is most alive to come alive, because that is often where life is
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I have become increasingly interested in the inner dimensions of change and healing
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Bridge-building between worlds (e.g. inner work, psychology, cognitive science, the arts, ecology)
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I weave visions for the possible, uncovering and discovering stories to re-store, re-imagine and expand perception of the interrelationality
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Building praxis for collective embodied action
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The appetite for time-bound experiments, rupture, curiosity, miracles, Dreaming, imagination and rooted possibilities for our mutual enrichment
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Methods and teachings Katrien is trained and/or certified in:​
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20 years of Zen buddhist practice & meditation
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Holotropic Breathwork as created by Stanislav Grof (ongoing since 2016)​
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Certified (level 3) BioDynamic Breathwork & Trauma Release by Giten Tonkov
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Breathwork based on the work of Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen
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Certified Warm Data Lab host by Nora Bateson of the International Bateson Institute
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Certified Essential Counsellor by Rafia Morgan and Turiya Hanover (School For Essential Counseling and SIAF) including The Enneagram personality typology, Essence work - the Lataif, and Inquiry (A.H. Almaas)
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Certified Yin Yoga teacher (200 hrs by Anat Geiger through Yoga Alliance)​​​
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Trained in Client Centered Therapy based on the work of Carl Rogers
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Trained in The Diamond Approach - A.H. Almaas
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Trained in Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine)
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Trained in Emergent Dialogue by Elisabeth Debold and Thomas Steiniger
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TRE (Level 1) - Tension and Trauma Release Exercise of David Berceli
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Story
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Katrien was introduced to conscious connected breathwork in 2004 which completely changed her perception on life. She realized that using this modality produced an increasing sense of wellbeing, cultivating the exceptional. Whenever she encountered presence, she experienced a completeness of being while becoming more open, experiencing effortless peace, explosive insights and profound, awakened relaxation. This alive learning entwined the journey of inner and outer learning, and eventually healing. "If we truly start to notice that nothing is more important than breathing, it would challenge us with new ways and tasks of thinking and of learning". A continuous search for “how” to live — the “how” also is the very nature of inspiration.
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With a history of cancer, and "being in recovery", responsible for her own well-being, Katrien was introduced to re-discover her response and ability to engage with life. Her cancer affected her whole being, and all layers of existence. She journeyed to a number of places with illness and had to address it on all levels. This experience; a falling into death opened up a transformative alive' learning. This ecological awakening, together with a deep interest in the evolution of consciousness led to the birth of Open Up.
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​With Open Up she hopes to support deeply meaningful changes in people's lives for co-creating a brighter future. She encourages an educational and experiential approach in order to facilitate the exchange of ideas and discoveries for mutual learning, growth and enrichment. To push gently into our edges, soften and open to our strength and vulnerability, delight in the joy and freedom in our authenticity – and come home, individually and together to our intimate belonging. Ultimately the wholeness she seeks is in the creation of our connected wisdom.
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Open Up is founded in 2015, community focussed and always heart–led, challenging and supporting new ways of sensing, seeing, thinking, doing and being for the long term future.
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