Elke van den Neucker as spaceholder

A rare gift for holding space

I met Elke during a psychedelic retreat in the Netherlands that she guided 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 holding the retreat and making the journey feel safe. But during the days we spent together, I slowly realised that she brings something much more personal and difficult to describe into this work.

There is a very special quality in the way she is with people.

She does not seem to enter your experience in order to direct it or explain it for you. She listens, observes, feels what is happening and somehow seems to know when a moment needs 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 kind of “master quality.”

I do not mean “master” as someone standing above you or claiming to know what your experience means. Almost the opposite.

For me, it is the rare ability to be fully present without taking over the space.

Elke has that quality.

There is strength in her presence, but also warmth, friendliness, playfulness and something very open and alive. During the psychedelic journey, I experienced this especially strongly. Moments can unfold almost like waves. Something from the past appears, then something completely present, and sometimes something that feels as if it already belongs to a future version of yourself.

Elke seemed to have a very fine sensitivity for these movements.

Sometimes her presence, a sound, a gesture or a few words seemed to gently strengthen what was unfolding. At other moments she seemed to understand that nothing needed to be added at all.

I have come to think of this as a kind of active waiting.

Being fully there, while knowing when to enter an experience and when not to disturb it.

At moments this reminded me personally of something I associate with C. G. Jung. This is his openness toward symbols, dreams, active imagination and what he called the numinous: experiences that cannot always be understood by analysing them immediately.

I am not comparing the methods themselves. It is more the underlying respect for an experience that may carry meaning before we are able to put that meaning into words.

That is something I deeply appreciated in Elke.

She allowed emotional, symbolic, physical and even transcendent experiences to exist without immediately reducing them to one interpretation.

Together with Ronald, she helped create an atmosphere in which vulnerability, humour, silence, imagination, therapeutic work and something more mysterious could coexist.

For me, healing in those moments did not feel like something being “done” to me.

It felt more like something being given the right conditions to emerge.

And perhaps this is Elke’s greatest gift as a guide:

she can touch the soul of an experience without trying to possess or define it.

Some of what happened during that retreat is still unfolding and integrating for me months later. Elke remains an important part of that memory and of what made those days meaningful.

Thank you, dear Elke, for your presence, your warmth, your courage and the powerful spirit you share with people.

Meeting you truly felt like one of those unexpected gifts from the universe.

A grateful retreat participant