Team
GROUNDED. LOVING. PROFESSIONAL.
It takes a dedicated team to create lasting change.
We have different personal backgrounds, fields of expertises and roles. Our common ground is our own graduation of the CORE retreat, a passion for human change, and dedication to truth and authenticity. We create safe, loving and deeply transformative spaces for you - with a dash of magic.
Karlijn Kouwenhoven
FOUNDER & FACILITATOR
With years of experience in psychology, meditation, and self-development, Karlijn is known for creating powerful, clear, and transformative experiences.
Read more about Karlijn
Blanca Durga Wennekes
CORE & HEARTCORE ASSISTANT
Durga is a ‘24 CORE graduate and lead assistant of HEARTCORE. She has a background in yoga, Tantra and emotional bodywork for over 15 years. She works as a corporate HR manager, and is founder of B-conscious guiding people towards body awareness and aliveness.
One of her own practices is kirtan with The Bhakti Groove. Durga’s global travels on her bicycle gave her life-changing insights. She loves working with groups, sharing her playfulness, care and inspiration.
Nicky Guinevere Keijzer
CORE ASSISTANT
Nicky is an analytical therapist and founder of In de Diepte, a training institute for Jungian depth psychology and bodywork. With a background in psychiatry and addiction care, she guides women to break free from patterns, trauma, and limiting beliefs.
Her work invites women, especially around motherhood, to meet and integrate their shadow rather than avoid it, reclaiming their primal power and autonomy. Drawing from her own journey as a partner and mother of two, Nicky creates warm, clear, and transformative spaces.
Esther Lotus Strik
CORE ASSISTANT
Lotus is a professional trainer, team coach, and co-founder of Rise and Shine Academy. With over 15 years of experience, she creates safe, open spaces for groups and individuals to connect deeply and grow.
Specialized in human skills and authentic connection, she brings a lively mix of peace and playfulness. Esther believes in the power of vulnerability and diversity and invites others to “get real” – meeting each other beyond roles and masks, with humor, warmth, and clarity.
Anna Sati Prat i Bascompte
CORE ASSISTANT
Anna Sati is a Tantrika and Psychologist. She teaches Tantra at her company Growing Loving Relations, and with her partner founded the Tantric Joy Festival Amsterdam in 2020. She has been working as a Psychologist for 27 years.
She has always dedicated herself to acquiring tools that support a healthy relationship between body, mind and soul; focusing on love relations as the source of healing. She considers her partner Mark, their three grown-up daughters and grandchild, her best teachers in life.
Brigid Kintsugi Kalkhoven
EVENT PRODUCER & COMMUNITY MANAGER
Brigid is the founder of Hartgedragen.nl, where she dreams, designs and brings to life the work that makes her heart sing. She guides women’s ceremonies, assists in sweat lodges, leads vision quests, and hosts transformative retreats and soul-journeys. Together with her dog Benji, she is based in Amsterdam.
As organiser of the SHAKTIPATS, manager of the CORE Graduate Community and host of our events, her intention is to create brave, nature-connected, wholehearted healing spaces.
Willem Nutan Rabsztyn
STRATEGY ADVISOR
Nutan is CEO and Co-Founder of Bookboost, a platform that helps hotels connect with guests through smart, efficient technology. With a background in tech development and entrepreneurship, he focuses on creating practical solutions that simplify hotel operations and strengthen guest relationships.
As a 2023 CORE graduate he provdies KABI·RA with strategic, technoligal and organisational counseling and support.
Ramon Bakhwar Strik
APPRENTICE ASSISTANT
Ramon is a biology teacher, professional trainer and co-founder of Rise & Shine Academy. He is warm, engaged, approachable and sincere, with an inquisitive interest in people. He makes you feel safe easily.
Besides being a father of two girls, wood worker and loving husband to his high school love, he is an eager, and critical scholar and visionairy on social dynamics, human behavior, learning & development and holistic biology.
In the CORE retreat and LEAD days he brings empathy, insight, humor, support and perceptive curiosity.
Uma
RETREAT CHEF
Uma is a chef, holistic therapist, ceremony leader, and founder of Paradijsvogels. She works with ritual, embodiment, and ancestral wisdom to guide people back to their inner truth and healing.
She assisted at VIVID retreat bringing her intuitive presence and grounding energy to the team. On her own journey of embodiment, she explores the raw edges of life and death, and integrating these experiences into her work.
Sanne ten Wolde
CORE RETREAT CHEF
Sanne is a vegan / plant-based retreat chef and the founder of Puur Sann. She cooks seasonally, using ingredients from her father’s biodynamic vegetable garden, and trains others in her programme to for retreat chefs. Her food is nutritious, innovative, caring.. With her positive, professional and bubbly energy a true asset to the CORE retreats.
“I believe my food & love can support building a more beautiful world in the most beautiful way.”
