BREATHWORK TOWARDS
WHOLE SYSTEMS CHANGE
INNER GROWTH EXPERIENCES • NON-ORDINARY EDUCATION • RESEARCH • ACTIVISM
Welcome,
Katrien Franken founded Open Up in 2015, an organisation that works to build capacity for new ways of seeing, learning and being from the edges of our evolution into mainstream consciousness. She does this by pioneering breathwork into refugee camps for refugee youth, and introducing breathwork into general healthcare, in education at universities, in scientific breathwork research, through writing, and by creating deep exploratory journeys and transformative breathwork and inner growth experiences that invite us to find ways to evolve and thrive in the chaotic times we live in.
With Open Up she works for profit and non-profit, weaving visions of the possible across multiple societal contexts – with the public, private and community sector. Opening up to shift perspectives, unleash energy in a radical and rigorous approach to practice moving from experience to action, and create positive change and chart bold, ambitious futures.
Her work asks the questions: How can we open up in such a way, so we may improve our vital relationship with ourselves, others and the nature. And, how can our education, and the way we learn support our health? And, how can the depth of experience and shared process become a center-piece in creating better moral futures?
In an Open Up based pedagogy, the longing is to bring more than just solutions, more than just a future, more than just breathing. In an activism of inquiry we are interested in discovering new kinds of inner growth practices, bringing worlds together with cognitive science and psychology to create powerful experiences that transform. Practicing openness as a doorway to open new imaginative spaces and places of power where there is joy in carrying the health and well-being of our interconnectedness.
A stunning invitation is in the air, urging us to rethink ourselves, our bodies, our ways of learning and our actions in the world to what mutually benefits us. The emergence of our time calls for an adventurous descend that leads us to interesting places. Our work is with the curious and non-ordinary that can shake the familiar. It is a research inquiry, engaging the vibrancy of the world; taking unconventional detours; moving from the raw unknowing of transformation to a place of rooted possibility. Can you take an instant to visualize this event?
Katrien Franken
Welcome! I'm a a multiple award-winning artist/photographer, and certified counselor, facilitator, educator, writer, activist, social entrepreneur, as well as founder of Open Up. My work is an expression of assembled studies, longings, learnings, failures, collaborations, experiments, and experience of twenty years at the edges of our evolutionary growth. I view my work as an act of journey.
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.
We are exploring how the conditions of transformation come together on the fringes of the culture. Our engagement is with deep inner practices, and journeys of coming alive to critical shifts in ways that allow ruptures to grow the new.
