Our Journey
At the start of 2024, three of us, Eveline, Freya and I, set out on a new adventure: Space2be-Human. Our initial ideas included the OnBeingHuman podcast (now called The Emergence Room), a free and paid Substack subscription with articles and reflective exercises and finally some immersive virtual and face-to-face live events. During the last 14 months, we have traversed through unexpected storms, climbed up new experiences, and paddled down enticing dead ends. All along the way, we have met great people and heard inspiring stories.
And here we are in 2025, moving toward the end of our second series of podcasts, ‘The Myth of Progress’. We have been shaped by the conversations we have had with guests and encouraged and challenged by listeners' and readers' responses;
‘You wrote something interesting in an article last month, I think, as an organisation, we would like to explore this more.'
‘This is not what I expected, I’m leaving!’
‘I’ve been enjoying the On Being Human work and love having your narrative accompany me on my dog walks…’
‘Please unsubscribe me’.
‘Thank you both for the session this week - it was a challenging and helpful session that has prompted much thought and helpful conversations with my better half.....’
‘If you intended to get us thinking, you succeeded!’
One unexpected break in our weather was an offer from a media production company, ‘Trusters Studio’, to support us in developing the podcast. With their ideas and curiosity, we are getting clearer about the next part of the journey.
The next part of our journey starts with consolidating all that is Space2be-Human. We are becoming clearer on what we mean by this.
Freya Mi Ju Busse, our creative magician, suggests that Space2be-Human is what is left at the core of humans if we strip away all elements of our lives that are related to doing what is needed to survive in the modern world, such as logic, performance, productivity and success. What remains are some of the timeless needs that all humans have shared since our species came to be.
We experience these as:
Connection & belonging
Meaning-making
Creativity & expression
Wonder
Connection & Belonging: We are social animals and have an innate need for presence, for physical touch, to be seen and heard. We want to relate to others and in turn, understand ourselves through others.
Meaning-Making: Humans have the unique capacity (or weight to carry, depending on how you see it) to question everything and try to make sense of it. We make up stories based on our experiences and dreams, our brain tries to find patterns, we try to make sense of them, believing that everything has to have a meaning.
Creativity & Expression: Our ancestors painted the walls of caves, danced around the fire, made stories and passed them down through generations. We express our inner world for the outside world to see. By doing this, we often reach a point of personal understanding. It doesn’t matter if the result is beautiful or useful, whether anyone besides the creator even understands it, or whether the process of getting there was efficient. It is the act itself that we crave.
Wonder: We feel grounded and humbled whenever we let ourselves experience awe. We begin to see ourselves in the context of something more than us. Logically, an activity like staring into the sunset doesn’t serve any purpose in the sense of survival, yet it is something that we all do in some shape or form.
These elements of the human experience capture an intrinsic need to feel alive, a hunger for something that is beyond just functionally existing. They are what remains when we stop just performing. They’re at the essence of our experience, and may have been ever since the dawn of our species.
Space2be-Humans' bold take is that as long as we make spaces for these to be met in everyday life, we will live significantly more fulfilled lives.
Our increasing experience is that when crisis inevitably hits, we can fall back into these core elements. They define us as humans when all other means of identification that we have created for ourselves –like status– fail. If we stay connected to these, we can survive even the biggest challenges in life. We are in no way saying this is easy, comfortable and pretty, it is often in the mess of our lives that we learn to lean into our connection, creativity and awe.
What does all this mean for what we offer at Space2be-Human? We are inviting you to enter some Space2Be-Human rooms:
The Emergence Room
This is the new name of our ‘free to enter’ Space2Be Human podcast, where we explore the stories that shape our lives. Although we may not be fully aware of it, everything we do, see or create in the world began first as an idea. Ideas moulded into form are stories. Even the fundamental beliefs that we hold for our own lives (such as, I need to take care of my family or humans are inherently good) were once but an idea in the mind of another human. These stories, whether we’re aware of them or not, shape how we live and behave in the world. In the Emergence Room,we will explore questions such as
When you look around the world, what do you see?
Do you think we have chosen the “best” stories to live by?
And, do you know what stories shape your own choices in life?
If we want to welcome change in our world, it is helpful to start by diving more deeply into these fundamental stories at both the individual and collective levels.
The Emergence Room podcast is designed as a space where conversations and insights into the stories that shape our lives can safely emerge. As we speak to our guests, we follow the natural emergence of the conversation. Later, Rob and Eveline dive deeper into insights and reflections that emerged and weave them into the conversation. In this way, we hope to support listeners by inviting them into their own deeper contemplation and reflection on the theme. By offering explicit activities, we inspire our listeners to let the content sink deeper. Hoping in this way that we might help the expansion of our fundamental stories about life.
We offer ‘free entry’ articles and ‘pay to enter’ reflective activities as part of the Emergence Room.
The Dawning Room
A fundamental part of the human experience is our creative expression. Whether that be through art, music, writing, business, parenting, contribution to society or exploration of the planet, humans have an innate drive to turn their inner experience into an outer expression. The Dawning Room offers events & workshops through which individuals or teams can explore their own forms of expression or feel inspired by the creative expression of others.
Strings & Stories: This is a creative event hosted by Space2Be Human at different locations in the UK and the Netherlands. It combines poetry, storytelling, music and reflective questions to create an experience best described as contemplative entertainment. Strings & Stories is designed to inspire and stretch you. It will ask you to engage with content and stories that are sometimes uncomfortable and confrontational, designed to stretch the limits of your own thinking, feeling and being in the world.
Intellect & Intuition: This is a monthly event hosted by Eveline where the latest insights from psychology and neuroscience about the workings of the human brain are combined with creative explorations of human intuition. This event is designed to stretch your thinking and experience of what it means to be fully human. As science has been demonstrating, there may be much more to our “reality” than we ever imagined. And as creatives have advocated for years, we have access to much more potential, possibility and information than we think. If you are someone who enjoys curiously exploring your human potential in both its academic and experiential forms, this event is for you.
The Dawning Room is ‘pay to enter’.
The Escape Room
As humans of the modern world, we experience a strong push towards performance, productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. We have become human doings instead of human beings. Despite having technologies that are meant to alleviate and support our “busy-ness”, we are living faster, fuller lives than ever before. We are also more individualised and disconnected from larger communities than ever before. If that weren’t enough pressure, it is also the first time in history that our global communications have made us acutely aware of our impact on the environment and global ecosystems. The sense of urgency to “fix what we’ve broken” is unparalleled. All of this is taking its toll on our mental well-being and our overall sense of aliveness and joy.
At Space2Be-Human, we help individuals and groups remember what it feels like to be fully alive at this moment and to be fully human. We do this through deep reflection, intuitive and creative exploration, facilitated workshops and experiential coaching journeys.
The Escape Room is where you can find workshops, coaching opportunities and events that can be tailored to individual needs, such as:
Living with Purpose
This 3-hour workshop is for individuals and teams who are looking to define, hone or expand their sense of purpose. Do you know what fundamental beliefs about life drive your sense of purpose? What values are you most strongly aligned to? Do you know that teams where individuals can bring their sense of value and purpose to the collective outperform others?
This workshop will challenge and stretch you. It will ask you to dive deep and then dive even deeper. By introducing different perspectives through which you might look at purpose, you will be invited to widen the lens through which you’ve defined your own drive and action in life. Using a combination of coaching, facilitated group conversation and creative reflection, you will feel both supported and challenged as you expand your sense of purpose in the world.
Coaching
First steps are often hard and delicate. Sometimes we are not ready to open ourselves up in front of others. For those who want to walk the journey tenderly, we offer one-to-one coaching that brings together elements of psychology, ecology, intuition and philosophy
The Escape Room is ‘pay to enter’.
Please keep an eye and ear out for newness in the Space2be-Human offer. I know that I might be biased, but I think that those who are with me on this Space2Be-Human adventure are great at navigating routes through challenging landscapes and skilled in assessing risk so we will not get lost or end up in dangerous situations, they know what they are doing!’
I wonder if they think the same about me?
