Topic starter 19 October 2026 12:33
A rare gift for holding space
I met Elke during a psychedelic retreat in the Netherlands that she led together with Ronald. Looking back, I still feel deeply grateful that our paths crossed.
At first, I probably saw Elke mainly as part of the team organising the retreat and making the experience feel safe. But during the days we spent together, I gradually realised that she brings something much more personal and difficult to describe to this work.
There is something very special about the way she interacts with people.
She does not seem to enter your experience in order to guide it or explain it to you. She listens, observes, senses what is happening and somehow seems to know when a moment calls for a word, a sound, a gesture, a little more presence, and when the most powerful thing is simply to wait.
I once told Elke that some people I meet have what I can only describe as a sort of “master quality”.”
I do not mean “master” as someone who stands above you or claims to know what your experience means. Quite the opposite, in fact.
For me, it is the rare ability to be fully present without dominating the space.
Every has that quality.
There is a sense of strength in her presence, but also warmth, friendliness, playfulness and something very open and vibrant. I experienced this particularly strongly during the psychedelic journey. Moments can unfold almost like waves. Something from the past emerges, then something entirely of the present, and sometimes something that feels as though it already belongs to a future version of yourself.
Elke seemed to have a very keen sense of these movements.
Sometimes her presence, a sound, a gesture or a few words seemed to gently reinforce what was happening. At other times, she seemed to realise that there was no need to say anything at all.
I have come to see this as a kind of active waiting.
Being fully present, whilst knowing when to engage with an experience and when not to disturb it.
At times, this personally reminded me of something I associate with C. G. Jung. This is his openness towards symbols, dreams, active imagination and what he called the numinous: experiences that cannot always be understood by analysing them straight away.
I am not comparing the methods themselves. It is more a question of the underlying respect for an experience that may hold meaning before we are able to put that meaning into words.
That is something I really appreciated about Elke.
She allowed emotional, symbolic, physical and even transcendent experiences to exist without immediately reducing them to a single interpretation.
Together with Ronald, she helped to create an atmosphere in which vulnerability, humour, silence, imagination, therapeutic work and something more mysterious could coexist.
For me, healing in those moments didn’t feel like something being “done” to me.
It felt more as though something had been given the right conditions to emerge.
And perhaps this is Elke’s greatest gift as a guide:
She can touch the very essence of an experience without trying to possess or define it.
Even months later, some of what happened during that retreat is still unfolding and sinking in for me. Elke remains an important part of that memory and of what made those days so meaningful.
Thank you, dear Elke, for your presence, your warmth, your courage and the powerful spirit you share with others.
Meeting you really did feel like one of those unexpected gifts from the universe.
A grateful retreat participant