Meet our coaches & guides
Founded by Lars and Tanja Faber in 2005. In the meantime, we have grown into a large organization with a team of 80 guides and 6 ceremonial leaders. All of them have been trained in the (international) Soul Coach training. They are experienced and beautiful people with a warm, open heart and wide-ranging capacities in the field of personal development, therapy and spirituality.
(Scroll down to meet more of our ceremony leaders and guides)
We work with a team of experienced and dedicated guides, ensuring a safe environment and loving support during your voyage & processes.
Tanja Faber-Baetsen
Founder, teacher & coach
Loving, Warm & Dedicated
Together with Lars, Tanja founded The Sacred Voyage and its setting. Most of her time is now spent training Soul Coaches (Dutch & international) & Heartdancing® facilitators (Dutch). She also trains breathwork coaches together with Lars. In 2022 she founded Sacred Lotus en is developing a new training especially for women. Dancing is her passion which she discoverd in a plant medicine voyage in 2006. Tanja is educated at university and has been taking part in workshops and trainings in the field of personal development for years. These include: Focusing, Intuitive Development, Voice Dialogue, EFT, Queen’s Code (Dallas), Tantra, different forms of breathwork, Sacred Breath, Wheel of Consent, Heart Connection, Full body dearmouring, Womens work, Kundalini Touch and (Tantric) Dance. Many participants consider Tanja to be very loving, authentic, genuinely engaged and highly experienced.
Lars Faber
Founder, teacher
Experienced, Sensitive & Wise
Lars is the pioneer and founder of The Sacred Voyage. Musician and music lover in heart and soul. Incredibly experienced voyager in all possible states of consciousness, and therefore, a reliable and experienced guide in light and dark dimensions alike. Lars is both mentally and emotionally clearly and acutely empathic. Educated in human resource management and as Voice Dialogue facilitator. Broad personal development through numerous trainings and workshops. Many voyagers have experienced Lars as a teacher, guide and rock, who has supported many people and assisted them in embarking on new paths in their lives. He has just written his 13th book, a fairytale book for relationships (Dutch). He trains breathwork coaches Wounded Healer in his own company The Breathwork Coach which was founded in 2020. His youtube channel has over 19k subscribers. At the moment he is working on an international youtube channel.
Thijs Maassen
(Individual) guide
Warm & Present
When Thijs first joined a retreat at The Sacred Voyage he fell in love immediately with our organization. He remembered for the first time who he is behind the mask he had build during puberty. The plant medicines helped him to live from the heart which makes him feel much more rich from inside. His gratitude is immense. His passion is to learn to meet him self deeper and deeper. He wants to maximize his potential and to guide others in this process as well. Thijs loves to dance and is ceremonial leader to be.
As a physiotherapist on a haptonomic basis and haptotherapist in training he daily guides people to get in touch with their feelings. Exactly like the work at the Sacred Voyage. Thijs is experienced as a powerful, playful, warm and open presence. Since 2015 part of the Sacred Voyage tribe.
Emmie Buermans
Cook, guide
Open minded & relaxed
Emmie has travelled a lot and participated in ceremonies in several countries. After a retreat at the Sacred Voyage she was called by the mother plant to guide. She is seen as open minded, relaxed and down to earth. She listens well, is a good space holder and likes to play an instrument. Preferably she guides in ceremonies with life music. Haar passions are being in nature, creativity and magic. The diversity of humans and all their quircks is what fascinates her. According to her, all is already present. She once experienced this in a Voyage. It is the challenge to stay in your own center and be present in all that there is. Besides guiding she loves to cook as well. At retreats she is often to be found in the kitchen as the cook. Emmie works with her favorite ingredient: love!
Linda van Linder
Email team & guide
Warm & soft energy, open
After many unsuccessful attempts to get rid of her physical and mental complaints in regular health care, plant medicines came her way in 2015. Starting this path with big questions like “why am I here” and “who am I really”, it became a journey to what she is, rather than who she is. During the first years of her path, she kept The Sacred Voyage in mind, but at the same time she avoided it because she was not yet ready for the lessons The Sacred Voyage was going to teach her. A regular part of every weekend, Heartdancing, was a big threshold she had to overcome. In 2019 she decided she was ready for this. Immediately upon entering The Sacred Temple she felt she belonged here and only three months later she started the Year Training. Heartdancing became her favorite part of the weekends. Partly because of this, she managed to see and show herself again. Together with Petra she is now the "mail team" and she looks forward to every retreat where she can guide and where she makes everyone feel welcome and seen with her soft energy and smile.
Sijtje Jansen
Ceremonial leader
Sensitive & joyful
Since her first experience with plant medicine 7 years ago, Sijtje has taken a journey towards being true to herself and enjoying life. Thanks to this she takes all the freedoms she has acquired with her in her work and in the ceremonies. This is reflected in her warm and careful guidance, enriched with sensitivity and playfulness.
She has a background in creative therapy and coaching with horses and also provides personal guidance. Her passions are dancing, making theater and everything to do with animals and nature. For Sijtje, working with medicine plants strengthens the connection between humans, animals and nature and teaches her to live peacefully with herself and the world around her. She lives in a beautiful quiet place in nature. Sijtje guides group ceremonies and one on one sessions at the Sacred Voyage.
Mona van Gemert
Ceremonial leader
Intuitive, pure and open
Mona can be described as a woman with an open mind and open heart in search of her truth. She combines softness with strength, clarity with warm commitment and sensitivity with determination. Mona has been looking for who she is for a long time and has seen through and released many survival strategies in that search. Through this life experience, she is able to understand and help many people with similar themes to face their fears. Her encouragement and reflection help many travelers to take it a step deeper.
She is trained as a mindfulness trainer and (breath) coach and has years of experience with consciousness training, Being orientation and tantra. Her heart lies in guiding people who want to grow spiritually and get to know themselves deeply. You could call her a spiritual life coach. Travelers feel really seen by her and experience her as a radiant wise angel. She feels born to do this fulfilling and rewarding work.
Katinka Holzhauer
Guide, cook and Heartdancing® facilitator
Play full and engaged
Katinka loves to dance! She rediscovered dancing during a 6 day Summer retreat years ago. It felt libereting to communicate with her body and inner world again.
She healed from breast cancer, which made her realize that she needed to change her habits and patterns. Through her illness she found the path of Heartdancing®, breathwork and plant medicines.
It is beautiful, sad, intense ánd liberating to discover the treasures and pains in our body. It has an immense wisdom. She loves to guide others in finding these treasures inside.
As a Heartdancing® facilitator Katinka shares her joyfulness and playfulness through the dance. She loves to cook and is sometimes a cook in our retreats as well. In daily work she guards safety in a big organization, and also in retreats safety has her full attention so everyone can dive in safely. She is a proud mother of a beautiful and musical daughter.
Petra van Bekkum
Ceremonial leader
Big heart & dedicated
The first Voyages with The Sacred Voyage was during the Summer retreat of 2017. After this retreat she became aware of beautiful insights of life. Twenty years ago she started her training in natural health and nutrition to heal her physical body and became a cook and therapist. This led automatically to her desire to explore the spiritual depths of life. After the year’s training 'The Rebirth of the Soul’ of The Sacred Voyage she felt definitely reborn and enjoys life more than ever. Being able to play in life, allowing herself to make mistakes and to be compassionate towards herself and people have seen the light. The creation of the field of safety and immense compassion during the retreats reminds her of the magnificence of life.
Tjeerd van Bekkum
Brewer, workshop facilitator
Open & Playful
As a participant at a 6 day retreat years ago, it became clear that Tjeerd is passionate about our organization. He changed his (work) life completely after this retreat. He likes to support and guide and he is one of our brewers. One of Tjeerd's great strengths is his energy to facilitate and organize retreats in a safe, honest and correct manner. He is positive and playful. He brings peace where necessary and also airiness and light. Tjeerd is a stable rock in the team who is always there for the other. He lives from his heart and loves people. He is very experienced in guiding lovingly. All is welcome.
Tjeerd has his own company together with his life partner Petra in which they guide people / couples in their relationship.
Frans Boelen
Grounded & present
Frans is someone whose calmness and humour will quickly put you at ease. Despite being born in Amsterdam, Frans traded his place of residence in Amsterdam for the nature of the Veluwe in 2012. Voyagers experience Frans as a father figure, a shoulder to cry on and a rock in difficult times. Without wasting words, Frans is warm and present with his big heart. After years of experience with emotional body work, breathing work (in Poona and Venwoude, among other places) and various Ayahuasca voyages, it became time for Frans to guide other people in their processes. He completed the course to become a breathing coach in 2015 and has been guiding Dutch and international Ayahuasca retreats with tremendous passion and pleasure since 2014.