team & location
Meet the core Team
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Alexander Faubel
ESSENTIYA Founder and CEO and retreat leader
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Caroline Flick
Psychotherapist and retreat facilitator
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Andreas Lackmann
Andreas Lackmann, Founder of allaboutFUNGI, a high quality mushroom-based supplements brand, and retreat facilitator
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Charlotte Nicholson
Body-Breath-Mind Program Director & retreat facilitator
OUR ETHOS
We have all done inner work with psychedelics and received profound benefits. We are committed to supporting others on their own journeys towards wholeness. An important part of this is bringing together into one integrated approach all the tools that have proved most effective for us as we’ve sought truth, transformation and peace.
For centuries in the West, not only has body been cleaved from mind, setting medicine back, but distinct approaches to healing - from diverse times, cultures and continents - have been put into separate boxes and variously called medicine, magic and mysticism.
We believe this is counter-productive. Rather than being mutually exclusive, there are many ways in which these disciplines - ancient and modern, clinically-researched or indigenously developed - can and do reinforce one another.
Which is why we weave ancient Eastern wisdom and cutting edge Western evidence-based techniques around all our work with psychedelics, offering a holistic perspective and varied modalities to empower our guests to take charge of their own healing and manage their wellbeing enduringly.
Our location
Nestled within a large nature reserve, our retreat estate, Zeeveld, dates back to the 1820s. It is half an hour Northwest of Amsterdam and just a 7 minute drive from the coast.
The house is cosy and welcoming, with a roaring fireplace in the winter garden at its centre - its walls covered with fig trees, grape vines and flowers - and underfloor heating in the ceremony room, a converted chapel, for the colder seasons.
Bedrooms are simply but comfortably furnished, with a mix of en-suite rooms and rooms with shared bathrooms. All the rooms look out either onto a large garden with outdoor sauna and cold plunge bath, or onto a wildflower field and the woods beyond.
Delicious, locally-sourced, organic vegetarian food is served from a purpose built catering kitchen at a communal dining table, or out in the garden when it’s warm, by our talented catering team.
It is the ideal setting to unplug from the outside world, turn inwards and seek answers.
