The Great Pause is a two-day, individual immersive sanctuary
for breathwork and tailored, meaningful learning journey. An intentional interval where the quality of awareness, presence, creativity, and relationship can unfold in an impactful way.
I work one-on-one with people who sense that there is a deeper way of being, and who are ready to learn to live from it. I offer a space of intimate, honest relationship and embodiment in which you can be with the truth of your experience and learn to think, speak, and act from that truth. With breathwork as a catalyst, the combination offers a gateway for true change.
The premise is simple: the truth will set you free if you practice it, commit to it, and stay with it over a long enough arc. This is not self-improvement. This is not a technique. It is a way of being in relationship with reality - one that develops a lived, embodied trust in your own experience, intelligence, and nature.
WHY?
Something about the speed of our culture and our world is no longer working. We feel it. We see it everywhere. The pace of modern life has outgrown the natural rhythm of being human, and a deep longing for real connection is emerging. Every living system; nature, the human body, even the breath itself, moves in rhythms of expansion and rest. Without it, there's no renewal, only overwhelm, dysregulation,
and overstimulation.
What makes life more regenerative, is the quality of our presence. The quality of our attention. The quality of our relationships. The Great Pause was created as one response to that need. It is part of a larger cultural shift and exploration. As a layered process it cuts through distraction and opens up beyond the breath into a deeper relationship through personal stories, and the study of life’s process. It is not a wellness practice, but a process for cultivating relational and psychological, and existential awareness - interrupting automaticity and making space for something new to emerge.
Meet your guide, Katrien
I don’t believe life was meant to be mediocre, nor to be a copy-paste of someone else’s path. It is meant to be exceptional, and introduce new perspectives, awaken curiosity and courage, and foster meaningful change for a brighter future.
Clients often find me in times of transition, and are drawn to a highly private space where what’s ready to shift can be met with care, clarity, and depth - and from a wider and wiser perspective. Read more about Katrien
Who I Am
What I bring to the room
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Contemplative depth: over 10.000 hours of breathwork and meditation practice, 10.000 hours of yoga practice, 250 hours of Counseling training (Accredited); the Embodiment of Presence and Essential States, Supervision and the Integration of Mindfulness and Meditation. 500 hours of breathwork training. More than a decade of facilitation and design of breathwork methodologies and experience in non-ordinary states of consciousness.
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Embodied knowledge: My understanding of transformation is not theoretical. I have been through my own profound breakdown, multiple cancer diagnoses, and reorganization. I do not ask anyone to go anywhere I have not been.
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Psycho-analytic rigor and intellectual range: More than a decade of exploring depth and meaning in deep conversation and transformational practice with people and their complexities and complications. I bring depth, structure and understanding to the process.
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Independence. I work from a place of genuine freedom, which allows me to tell you the truth without any institutional motivation to do otherwise. I'm offering a confidential space for full transparency. For influential people surrounded by others with incentives to flatter, that independence makes a difference.
Who I Am
What I bring to the room
-
Contemplative depth: over 10.000 hours of breathwork and meditation practice, 10.000 hours of yoga practice, 250 hours of Counseling training (Accredited); the Embodiment of Presence and Essential States, Supervision and the Integration of Mindfulness and Meditation. 500 hours of breathwork training. More than a decade of facilitation and design of breathwork methodologies and experience in non-ordinary states of consciousness.
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Embodied knowledge: My understanding of transformation is not theoretical. I have been through my own profound breakdown, multiple cancer diagnoses, and reorganization. I do not ask anyone to go anywhere I have not been.
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Psycho-analytic rigor and intellectual range: More than a decade of exploring depth and meaning in deep conversation with transformative practice with people. My strength is of navigating complexity. I can see through human, systemic, and relational patterns with care, and clarity. I'm bringing professional insight, sharp intuition and knowledge to the process.
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Independence. I work from a place of genuine freedom, which allows me to tell you the truth without any institutional motivation to do otherwise. I'm offering a confidential space for full transparency. For influential people surrounded by others with incentives to flatter, that independence makes a difference.
START YOUR JOURNEY
Come back to yourself. Open your world. Find your greatness in the calm.
Step 1
INTAKE
In a 30 minute intake call, we will investigate if we are a good fit, and the process can truly serve you.
Step 2
PREPARATION
Before The Great Pause, you will complete an intake form. We’ll review it together to create a personalized starting point. You’ll also receive preparation materials by email to help you begin well.
Step 3
THE WORK
With honesty and depth, we will work at the core of complexity, through theory, practice, rituals, and four breathwork journeys. This process allows visions and insights to emerge that can shift your identity, history, and lived reality with internal alignment.
Step 4
INTEGRATION
True transformation takes time, and integration is an important part, also during the two-days. After The Great Pause, we will have one or two integration session calls. You will have the option to continue working together to reinforce and build on your insights and change.
Working Together
What to expect?
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Breath work: Conscious Connected Breathwork combines continuous breathing with music to influence your nervous system. It may help release tension, increase self-awareness, and improve emotional and body awareness.
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Depth work: Explore the deeper layers of your psyche, bringing unconscious patterns into awareness for greater integration and transformation.
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Process work: Connect with your body's felt sense through experiential and science-informed practices, fostering awareness, presence, and lasting inner change.
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Trigger work: Explore emotional triggers and unconscious patterns, uncovering hidden aspects of yourself and creating space for greater awareness, compassion, and conscious choice.
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Presence work: Being conscious, co-creating with the different energies, tensions, frictions with awareness and wholeness. Being present with what emerges within, and between us - making space for newly sanctioned.
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Relational work: Opening to the nature of relationships. Learn to learn from all that informs us from the present, past, and future. Making-available for us to practice our infinite opportunities to connect through the small and intimate.
Conscious Connected Breathwork
In a world drowning in complexity, breathwork is the simplest, most powerful tool to reconnect with yourself, regulate your nervous system, and expand your consciousness.
In The Great Pause you will be offered four carefully curated breathwork journeys that acts as a bridge between knowledge and embodied wisdom. It is an extraordinary self-healing practice that supports emotional processing, nervous system regulation, and access to altered states of consciousness. In a safe and trauma-informed space, this breathwork invites deep inner listening and the unraveling of what's been held, both positive and negative, and open a new relationship with emotional blockages, stress, tension and trauma, as well as your deeper truths and inner freedom.
Read my academic study on The effects of Conscious Connected Breathing on Cortical brain activity, Mood and State of Consciousness (Published, 2023)
INVESTMENT
Step 1: Complimentary Intake
To ensure alignment, the initial 30 minutes conversation is free of charge.
Step 2: Intake
A deeper assessment with a 30-minute debrief conversation.
Step 3: The Work
Customized to your needs as a two-day immersion in Amsterdam from 10.00 - 16.30/17.00. Lunch costs are not included. Pricing is customized if a structured, long-term approach is requested, and/or if the work will take place at another studio location than the Open Up studio, or outside of the Netherlands.
Step 4: Integration
After the two-day intensive we will schedule 1 or more integration calls of 30 minutes to further explore what is needed.
Starting from
EUR 3000
Excl. 21% VAT
NOW WE NEED HUMANS
THE GREAT PAUSE
The Great Pause is part of a larger exploration which I've started calling "Now We Need Humans". It urges us to remember that human beings and societies are not separate. The way we think, feel and relate to ourselves shapes the systems we create. Inner transformation and societal change are therefore deeply connected. My work through Open Up exists to explore this connection. We need more human-making, analog processes that are not separate from the practice of evoking the spirit or essence of a phenomenon, place, animal or person. The individual is part of the collective and by living and bringing those worlds together, it allows for a new kind of anchoring of individual minds into a more collective identity, reality, and process.
I Work With
The Great Pause is for those who operate at the highest level and seek a trusted space to challenge their thinking and process, and gain clarity and impact beyond immediate challenges. Top entrepreneurs, founders, politicians, academics, scientists, healthcare professionals, veterinarians, policymakers, celebrities, artists, and also with young potentials who are ready to strengthen their presence and direction for the future.