Hello, I’m Els van der Horst.
I believe in your transformation because I believed in my own transformation.
This is my story.
Today I work in the US as a Leadership Coach and a Journey Therapist. I combine these practices with Mindfulness and I have an MBA because I love working with businesses as well as with individuals to create desired change.
In my worklife, I was trained and originally worked a Dutch physical therapist, then became a Yoga instructor in Amsterdam, specializing in working with children, while my own children were still small. Meanwhile I was involved in the inception of the natural birth movement in the Netherlands. Helpful here was my postgraduate studies in Haptonomy (Greek for the science of touch).
Ever since I was a young adult, I have had my finger on the pulse of the art of healing. Looking for different modalities, new discoveries.
I found myself intuitively implementing a lot of what neuroscience is now telling us, long before those facts were scientifically known.
Hungry to see and feel what is working.
In my experience we know when it is working because the body, psyche, mind, soul tells us so. We receive an internal YES, this is good even when there might be simultaneous resistance for certain changes. As it can takes practice, work and diligence to form new habits.
I feel lucky to live in a time where, for instance, ancient traditional buddhist wisdom and new science come together with absolutely stunning new techniques and discoveries.
As I am descended from a long line of people with a strong sense of social responsibility, it is most probably in my genes (I see this is in my siblings and children as well). This contributes to my desire to want to make a positive impact for others and the world at large.
My work though, that I love greatly, is originally born out of pain.
Deep early childhood tragedies left me scarred and untethered, simultaneously,
I experienced absolute freedom and stunning spiritual experiences, like lighting up like a lightbulb with total understanding, flow, deep insights and meditative states.
Which sounds contradictory and I experienced it as such as well.
I have always been happy to live in the here and now though at the same time had a deep longing to let go of what was not serving me. Consequently, going on a quest for releasing the pain, obstacles and anxieties is exactly what I did.
Finding along the way, more and more common ground in this, with all my fellow humans.
At the age of 25 I had, a huge mystical experience, lasting 10 days non stop.Which I recognized later as a huge Kundalini experience (in an untrained body). At the time it felt a little crazy, so I sought out medical experts, who reassured me I’d had a peak experience. It changed the way I looked at life, my interests, and deeply affected my spiritual development.
This path is an ongoing one, led by this impersonal inner wisdom, always treading new territory.
After a lot of sifting and sorting, I now share in my work what has truly worked for me- offering a highway of healing and change.
I have studied a lot of different modalities and done many trainings in my life.
I would love to work with you and help you find the freedom that I enjoy these days.
Some of my credentials
Certified Journey Practitioner
Certified Leadership &
Conscious Coaching
Certified Clinical Trauma & Grief Professional
Certified Somatic Experiencing MBSR
Graduates of the Inner MBA program are the innovative business builders of our collective future.
Today’s most innovative CEOs, founders and executives are well aware that training in empathy, mindfulness, compassion, and other tools of consciousness increase productivity, engagement, and the bottom line. Not only do investing in these skills increase each of these metrics of success, they also decrease employee turnover, drama at work, and profit loss due to disengagement.
Neuro-Somatic Mindfulness
A journey of healing in which we learn to be with our experience (physical and sensory) in a non-judgemental and self-compassionate way, allowing our body to heal and release trauma.
Care Farms for the Netherlands
A beautiful and inspiring film (27 minutes). It tells the story of an innovative program that combines agriculture with social care for the mentally challenged. It began in 1998 with a handful of farms and only a few clients, today there are more than 1,020 farms participating and over 10,000 clients. In an era of government cutbacks in assistance to our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, this pragmatic program offers a new hopeful vision.
“It will inspire us to create communities like those in Holland.”
Robert Whitaker
Author of Anatomy of an Epidemic
Part of my income goes directly to support developing the Care Farms ideas in the US. To help make this an American reality as well!