Stage 1 in Holland
3rd – 10th August 2025. Kasteel de Berckt, Netherlands
Stage 1 – the Initiation
The Awaken as Love Initiation is a journey open to everyone – it begins with a choice to go on an adventure that will expand you beyond the boundaries of your current existence. What will it bring to you? More awareness, more love, more inclusion, more juice to your life and more depth if you allow it.
This first stage is called “Initiation” because if you choose this then all your experiences up til now have led you to this point and you are obviously ready to step into a wider reality – in doing so you enter fresh and new, open to discovering more.
As you step into this journey you will encounter maps that help you understand the larger world and your place in it (this is beyond your imagination), tools which help you to play more fully in this world, embodied experiences which help you to anchor a new reality and finally ongoing resources which help to integrate and incorporate this into your life.
What is this Training?
Your Instructors
During this course you will be held by 3 of the Awaken as Love faculty (and a full team of assistants) – they each come from different backgrounds but all are inspired to facilitate the evolution of humanity.
Afke Reijenga
Instructor
Afke is the blueprint for authentic pleasure. She loves to play, flirt and seduce. Wherever she goes she creates a vortex of love, joy, truth and light. Afke is renowned for her vivid and joyful style of yoga. Praised for the way that she brings back sacred sexuality into society. She fuses joy, love and depth. Started her international career as a model, movie-star and muse. Meanwhile, she studied, Taoistic arts, healing love, sexual kung fu and jade egg practice, conscious breath, NLP and hypnosis.
Now works as a sacred sexuality coach, organises wild woman trainings and is a facilitator at yoga and tantra events. Afke loves to empower woman and men to find their own wildness and to guide them to more pleasure and self love. During the last year her work went more online, where she created quite a following and she has been teaching at major festivals like: ISTA, One World Tantra, Shadows and Light festival. Next to love and eros as a healing medicine, she loves to work with plant medicine as a way to connect to love and the divine. Check Afke on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/afkereijenga/
James Stevenson
Founder & Lead Instructor
James’s passion is to help call forth our human potential and our soul. His weave brings together more than 20 years of experience in techniques, practices, and information from the cutting edge of Neuroscience, Tantra, Biodanza, Shamanic & Energy Work, Integral theory, and Taoist practices to create a spirituality that is rooted in the body. His evolutionary approach is to work on all lines, levels, states, and parts of ourselves in bringing forth our fullest potential.
His work in meditation and tantra work draws on many different traditions and paths he has studied from Kashmir Shaivism, Baul mysticism, Advaita Vedanta, Vajrayana Buddhism, Integral systems, and Neo-tantra. His shamanic work includes being Vision Quest rites of passage guide, holding Sweatlodge Ceremonies as well as Sacred Cacao Rituals. He has been dancing Biodanza since 2003 and now works as a teacher and a didactic teacher (qualified to teach other teachers in Biodanza Schools). www.jamesstevenson.life
Taina Ixchel Jorda-Cid
Instructor
Taína Ixchel is a powerful catalyst for transformation, a Shamanic and Tantric Power Priestess who awakens authenticity and limitless possibility in every soul she meets. An International Teacher, Holistic Coach, and Awaken As Love Facilitator (awakenaslove.com), Taína is devoted to guiding individuals on profound journeys of self-discovery, inspiring them to deepen connections with themselves and others and live lives thriving with purpose and potential.
With a Master’s degree and over 18 years of practicing Tantra, Taína is guided by her experience as an International Tantra Teacher and certified Energetic Relationship Practitioner, Holistic Health and Wellness Coach, and Theta Healing Practitioner. Her initiation into esoteric teachings by an Enlightened Master affirmed her destiny: to “teach this Love.” In addition to teaching and mentoring around the world, Taína offers transformational life coaching virtually, fostering deep healing and empowering clients to claim their fullest selves.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
In fact it is not the next level of consciousness but the one after that which integrates the previous ones which will facilitate real change.
What will I get from this training?
This certificated course will give you practical tools, maps and experiences to be able to embody a deeper understanding of reality, and how to that to engage more fully and live more of your potential.
Supporting this are presence and insights from international facilitators during the week long process, sharing groups to help you connect and express your experience and a 60-page guidebook that help with your continued unfolding.
Tantra Techniques
How can the energy of the raw animal self be raised into higher consciousness, and how can this consciousness descend into the body and manifest world? Really this is a deep intimacy with yourself, with a partner and even throughout a group.
Embodiment practices
It’s one thing to understand with the mind, and something completely different to have a knowing that comes from a deep experiencing of wisdom through the body. Being able to manifest inate creativity into the reality is a skill.
System Reboot
We will be resetting the experiences and patterns in the nervous system of the body. These have framed your experience of this world since birth. Imagine how your life could be filled with more ease, clarity and pleasure!
Shamanic Initiations
We will be perfoming ceremonies that take you outside of the normal sequence of time and anchor in soul peices that have been waiting for this moment.
Integral Maps
As we learn these maps – the whole picture is revealed and we suddenly start to understand where pieces that you were partially aware of fit inside a larger picture of reality.
Wisdom Transmission
Through transmission we will be awakening our higher centres of knowing, expanding into a new operating system and accessing novelty from the cosmos.
How can this advance me working in these areas?
There are a few ways in which this training will support you in your journey as a guide, teacher or practitioner. It is an accredited course from Awaken As Love – you will recieve a certificate on completion and you can state that you have completed this training on your personal biographies.
You will also be eligible to attend the next levels – Deepening & Radicalization to eventually become an Awaken as Love Facilitator.
In addition you will be gaining direct tools that you can then use in your own workshops and practices as well as a deeper understanding about how to work with groups – and meeting a larger international network of practitioners and teachers to create and stay in on-going connection. We routinely give opportunities to Awaken as Love graduates to be part of the festivals we create.
Some of Areas Covered in this Training Are:
- Tantric Bodywork
- Individual Partnered Tantra Meditations
- Archetypal Group Rituals
- Inner Masculine & Inner Feminine Aspects
- Character armour.
- De-armouring
- Integral Maps
- The 4 Dimensions of Reality.
- States of Consciousness
- Stages of Consciousness
- Lines of Development
- Typological Mapping
- Experience of Theory U
- Shadow & Spiritual Bypassing
- Gifts of the Wound
- Difference between Ego and Identity
- Identity & Regression.
- Group Dynamics
- Teachings of the 4 Shields
- Shamanic Medicine Walk
- Mindfullness and Heartfullness
- Satori Experiences
Practical Information for Stage 1 – the Initiation
Dates: The training runs from the 3rd – 10th August 2025.
Venue: kasteel de berckt, De Berckt 1, 5991 PD Baarlo, Netherlands
Training Fee: Super-Earlybird price of just €900, Normal price is €1100 – This does not include the Food & Accommodation, and the full price depends on the option you choose (see below).
Current Full Cost with Food & Accommodation: €1380 to €1800 – depending on accommodation selected (see below).
Special Offer: Book both this Training and the Awaken as Love Tantra Festival together to get 10% discount off the training!
The Venue
The venue for the training and tantra festival (beforehand) is at Kasteel de Berckt. The “Berckt Castle” is a large estate, it has had many different owners since 1279, having previously been a monastery for over 100 years, with a centuries-old castle, canals, gardens and a farm. Much of the original stonework can be seen throughout the labyrinth of halls.
Goats, chickens, peacocks and cats made it their home. There is a small petting zoo and a hen house. The Berckt Castle also has a its very own Castle Cat: Lana.
For the modern minded there is also free and good Wifi at the Castle.
Ticket without Accommodation
€1300 Sale €1100 per person
For those staying nearby we have a ticket without accommodation but including 3 meals a day. Agreement is to arrive in morning in time.
Camping
€1580 Sale €1380 per person
Sleep out under the stars in your own tent in the beautiful landscapes of Kasteel de Berckt Bring your own camping gear & bedding with access to hot showers and toilets, wifi and 3 meals a day.
Camper Van/Motorhome
€1600 Sale €1400 per person
Sleep out under the stars in your own campervan on the beautiful landscapes of Kasteel de Berckt Bring your own Campervan & bedding with access to hot showers and toilets, wifi and 3 meals a day.
Shared Room
€1650 Sale €1450 per person
Make life easy with an inside shared room in the Castle – shared with 2-3 others of the same gender in single beds, no need to bring anything, all bedding provided with access to hot showers and toilets, wifi and 3 meals a day.
Double Room
€1740 Sale €1540 per person
Make life easy with an inside double room in the Castle – shared with one others of the same gender in single beds, or as a couple in a King Bed – no need to bring anything, all bedding provided with access to hot showers and toilets, wifi and 3 meals a day.
Single Room
€2000 Sale €1800 per person
Make life easy with a room all to yourself in the Castle with a King Bed – no need to bring anything, all bedding provided with access to hot showers and toilets, wifi and 3 meals a day.
Meals
3 Meals a day are inclusive of the accommodation price and fully vegetarian although we do consume dairy products and eggs. We use organic vegetables, pulses/legumes, grains and oils as often as possible. If you have special dietary needs then please mention this in the additional information area of the booking form so we can accommodate your needs as best as possible. Coffees and teas area available throughout the day.
So what are you waiting for?
You can grab the best prices and the accommodation choices you want now before it changes.