Our mission
Oyasin is a heart-based leadership company that guides entrepreneurs, executives and leaders through deep healing and transformation with the sacred medicine.
Our vision
We believe that by bringing deep healing to the leaders of this world, their heart-based decisions will positively impact our people, and our planet.
By opening our leaders' hearts, they themselves, their families and employees become happier, more loving, and more connected.
Once people's hearts are opened, they start to truly connect to mother earth.
The energy of service is awakened in their hearts:
the calling to do something meaningful, to give back with the sole purpose of helping others and our planet.
Oyasin Meaning
Oyasin is inspired by the prayer 'Aho Mitakuye Oyasin'
from the Lakota tribe.
Its meaning 'we are all related' captures the transformation journey of our participants.
It honours our connection with source, and mother earth.
Oyasin symbolizes the feeling of family that our participants experience: of brothers and sisters sharing the same path.
Without hierarchy, learning together, and healing together.
At Oyasin we guide with many medicines.
Yet the main medicine we work with,
is love.
Our superpower is making people feel so safe and seen, that they feel empowered to break through and heal oftentimes many generations of pain and suffering.
It's all about energy.
We share those practices that have personally helped us on our journeys.
Thank you for your trust.
I'm honoured to guide you on this journey.
With love,
Moniek van Erven
Founder Oyasin
About Mo
Originally from The Netherlands, Moniek van Erven ("Mo") has tapped into 20 years of experience in the personal development, medicine and spirituality to develop Oyasin.
A student of medicine, and a student of life, she is living her life purpose by running Oyasin; guiding leaders from across the world to deep healing and transformation through group and private retreats, ceremonies, as well as 1-on-1 mentorship.
Previously being a serial entrepreneur herself, having launched and run companies in India, South Africa, Netherlands, Portugal and Mexico, as well as holding various Director roles in consultancy, she understands the world of entrepreneurs and leaders very well. It's a world she has since left behind to go on a very different journey.
As a medicine guide she been initiated in serving the medicine of cacao by a family of healers in Guatemala following the Mayan Cosmovision. She also serves the medicine of mushrooms, and was trained by mushroom healers in the mountains in Mexico: the global heart of the mushrooms. She's honoured to support indigenous healers from various lineages; she walks the path alongside them while simultaneously being the bridge between them and the Western world. She walks the path of hikuri (peyote) with the mara'akames in Mexico. Most recently she has been initiated by the Aj Q'ij into healing with fire ceremonies (only fire) in Guatemala.
Mo is an ocean lover, and a freediver. She spends as much time as she can in the ocean.
As a meditation student and teacher she has a decade of silent retreat experience (Zen, Vipassana & Hridaya), two decades of yoga experience, and she has studied and experienced many Eastern and Western healing modalities.
She devotes her time and energy to try to walk this path with integrity, and purity of intention. Continuously learning, and continuously shedding layers.
Translating the messages of the medicine to others was the birth of Oyasin.
Many leaders have expressed that they seek refuge in Mo for her ability to guide profound breakthroughs and transformation through her heart-opening and powerful energy, ability to intuitively 'see' things that are hidden, and deep devotion to and love for guiding.
Her main medicine is love: guiding her clients through their deepest healing processes through helping them with opening their own hearts, while forming a bond and connection that lasts.
Why Oyasin?
Holistic deep-dive
While there’s no such thing as a quick fix, at Oyasin we believe that deep-diving into a number of transformation practicing will yield the best results. While plant medicine is an important element, this isn’t ‘just’ a plant medicine retreat; it isn’t ‘just’ a leadership retreat either. We approach transformation holistically and we take a deep-dive into those practices that were powerful allies on our path of transformation, including connection with nature and truth, shamanic and voice practices.
Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember:
you are the medicine.”
Maria Sabina
Mexican curandera
Breaking patterns
Many of you have experienced personal transformation retreats, yoga, meditation, and you might have experimented with plant medicine, in a ceremonial or recreational setting.
Yet, while these might have given you ‘glimpses of enlightenment’, perhaps even momentary feelings of peace, and increased wisdom, you still often struggle to apply them, and to maintain them, in your day-to-day life.
If you were lucky enough to have encountered a medicine that has been able to elevate you to the 'top of the mountain' where you’ve experienced the ultimate reality, and oneness, you also know that that - however pleasant and meaningful the experience- doesn't necessarily equal lasting transformation.
The real change lies not in those words spoken by you upon your return, nor in the wisdom you have gained. It doesn't lie in the theoretical and scientific knowledge you've gathered about the medicine, or in the stories around your experience that you share afterwards.
The transformation is demonstrated by your actions and behaviour after the journey. Wisdom without the right tools to apply it, makes you remain the way you are - repeating the same patterns, taking the same actions, making the same choices, recycling the same emotions, experiencing the same pain, staying stuck in your current reality.
It's for this reason that we dedicate so much time to the preparation and integration. Because breaking patterns takes time, effort and commitment.
Moreover, we believe that the people who can truly assess whether you have indeed transformed, are those around you: your partner, your family, your friends, your colleagues. They will witness you responding differently to the same situation: with more patience, ease, love, and awareness. They will also witness you connecting on a deeper level - with nature, as well as with yourself. So during our integration process we will always check with you: how did your loved ones respond to you when you returned? What changes have they perceived?