Roos-Veerle Krijnen is the Founder Naked Truth Retreats & Transformational Health Guide. Her first business was a yoga school, her second a Retreat center in the heart of Amsterdam and now her 3rd is Naked Truth Retreats, where she offer new leading movements in overall wellbeing through working with psychedelics (truffles are legal in the Netherlands), sacred sexuality and many other body oriented practices. Also, she offers transformational 1-on-1 trajectories for other coaches, influences, leaders, etc. Her work is about aligning with nature, your naked truth.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
I grew up in the country side of The Netherlands. My mother, who had her own clinic at home as a psychologist, was a big inspiration to me. I studied Applied Psychology myself, but entered a different path after finishing my studies. I traveled the world for 2,5 years, mainly being emerged in nature, practicing and teaching yoga around the world. In those years I dropped more into the wisdom of my own body. My mother became less imported as a guide in life, because my own wisdom from within got more accessible. After those 2,5 years I never entered the corporate world or the general healthcare system in the Netherlands, I started a yoga school for myself. What is characteristic about me is that I have always been a pioneer on my own. Leading from my own instructions within, following my truth.
Was there any turning point in your life that changed your journey? If so, what was it? Please tell us the backstory behind it.
My turning point was through practicing tantra hatha yoga in Thailand in 2013. Coming out of a system where we have been trained to use our mind, made a whole new world slowly open up for me while entering the wisdom of my body. Through yoga my unhealthy relationship with food and my own body image started to change towards a more loving and healthy connection. And because this was a Tantric yoga school, also the sexual teaching of tantra was accessible. For the first time I got more educated around my body and sexuality. I started to welcome a part of me that had not been spoken about at all when growing up in my Dutch family.
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea that made you start this brand? How did such a unique idea strike you, and what motivated you to “YES, go for it?”
My first business was ‘Yoga with Roos’ where I taught yoga classes and even if I was 26 years old, people twice my age started to ask me as their life-coach. My second business was a retreat center in the heart of Amsterdam that I was running together with one of my best friends ‘Roots & Wings’. I offered a transformation Roots & Wings program, transformational coaching trajectories, women circles, breathwork workshops, cacao ceremonies, yoga classes, getting a team of teachers together and running Psychedelic Retreats. All to let people connect to their True Nature and let them drop into their body. Because most of my clients are high achievers and very clever with their minds. And to balance that, they need often to be more connected to feeling their body wisdom.
After coaching people for 7 years and running those two businesses. I again needed to let this die, so something new could arise: Naked Truth Retreats. Working with psychedelics, people, their subconscious mind, stored trauma in the body, dis-ease in the body and mind, I came across the sexual energy that is our creative life force often with my clients.
I have supported women through purify extremes like rape, incest, not feeling save in their body. To also increase pleasure in the body, purifying shame and guilt that has been stored in their bodies. Just allowing women to be, also with their sexual power, that of life itself.
So after my whole journey with not being able to trust men, not feeling safe and free in my own body. Practicing tantra and the temple arts. I just saw that what I have been offering in my work was all leading up to a workspace that was more inclusive of all of life! And that meant to also include this can of worms: To include working with the sexual energy that lays (dormant) in all our bodies. Something that is still made wrong, ashamed, hidden around the world. But it is also the most powerful force in this universe. And it connects us directly to our Naked Truth. And Naked Truth is the same as the pure love frequency that nature exists off. A frequency that we human beings can align with or not. And that shows in our health, how aligned we are with nature in a frequency of purity. But when we align with this force, in my opinion there is nothing pure love can’t heal.
And that’s why I needed to birth my 3rd business: Naked Truth. How scary it is for me, because I need to navigate quite some impurities and projection around this topic. But he, it’s my truth at this moment, and if I would allow myself to take a stand for this point of view, I would probably get sick myself).
Tell us something about your initiative or current role. What is it about, and what impact are you trying to make?
I am in service of nature. Nature decides.
“If I don’t need to do anything, or be anything. And my needs are just provided for”.
From that place I allow myself to be. That’s the frequency of the role I and my surroundings allow myself to live.
Everyone has their own set of challenges when starting an entrepreneurial journey. Still, the most essential part for others to learn is how you deal with those. Would you like to share with us your challenges and your coping mechanisms?
For me money was difficult to ask for when I started in 2015. To acknowledge worth and to ask for my financial needs. For me there came a big shift when we needed to pay rent of €4000,- per month for the physical location of Roots & Wings plus all costs that were made during the startup phase. That made me rise to want to provide for Roots & Wings and for my ex-business partner and me.
Now I don’t have challenges with money. I have more than enough of what I need. But I feel a next shift is coming up, as money feels not a necessity to run a business. What I mean with that, is when you look at the principles of nature, everything is freely given there. And my work is about returning back to a pure love frequency that is nature. There is no fear in a tree ‘will I have enough money to live’. Nature just sustains itself.
So currently I feel a shift coming up to align with nature. Even though I don’t know how yet and it also brings up fears around my own basic needs. But I feel very much guided and only one step at the time is needed.
While the global pandemic of COVID-19 is associated primarily with adversities, it has also brought about a true boom in startups, with successful entrepreneurship in many countries. The pandemic has impacted all of us in one way or another. Would you like to share your experience on a personal and professional level?
I hold a different point of view than the mainstream. So you’re welcome to read my words if you want to hear a different naked truth. For me pandemic has been a true gift on so many levels. Nature is never against you. To align with nature is the invitation in my opinion. So you don’t need to protect yourself from nature. Can you allow your true nature to be your guide instead of thinking you need to protect yourself because a negative image is being offered from outside through the media?
For myself and my clients it was a huge opportunity to connect with the internal truth within.
So the negative image opposed from outside didn’t have a strong grip on my choices and behavior. That’s why for me personally I choose not to have the gene therapy. To trust that my body/ my vehicle could handle covid if I got it, and yes I did get it at some point. It felt like vehicle service maintenance plus a big upgrade of my physical body. Not an easy one, but a necessary one. That supported me to choose to live from love and my own truth instead of so much fear I felt in the outside world.
In my work I use the same principles. When people have endometriosis, can’t get pregnant, have migraines, depression, anxiety, sleeping problems, other diseases in the mind or body, etc.
From my point of view, it’s not about fighting the dis-ease. But connecting and learning from the disease. When we really bring those ‘ill’ parts into loving presence, something is able to transform. The ‘lessons’ are integrated and not needed in the physical layer anymore. Life is able to flow further as the mystery it is. Not to acknowledge that this process can be quite a challenge for our scientific minds. But I will give you one tip in making this process easier, it’s when you align with the purity of (your own) nature. It allows your crystallized identity to solve and become fluid again. We can experience this as the death process. But to really live, we need to know how to die.
Your journey and your vision are very inspiring, but are there any achievements or accomplishments you would like to mention?
Letting myself die and along with that the eating disorders, sexual abuse stories, abandonment by men, despression, anxiety, etc. So more trust, love and purity can be embodied in my body than those ‘disease’ frequencies.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
Yes
Women are a growing force in the workplaces worldwide, standing shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. There are cracks in glass ceilings everywhere, with many women breaking through to carve out a space right at the top of the pyramid. What are your thoughts about women’s leadership today?
I will answer this question not through the difference in gender. But looking from a point of view in polarity that lies in all us humans; masculinity and femininity.
As a human species we are evolving to the sacred union between those two polarities within each of us and to see it reflected in the world outside of us.
If we would label the mind and being active as belonging to the masculine principle. And we label the body, being receptive to the feminine principle. Then we see that for example the jobs which are performed by the mind get more valued in money. And jobs that are fulfilled by feminine, caring nurturing qualities, creative expression (arts, music, dance) get less valued in money. But now we are living in 2023, a year where the earth’s energy becomes stronger and our bodies that are part of the earth are forced to align with the principles of nature more than 20 years ago. If we disbalance ourselves by prioritizing the masculine principle over the feminine principle (because we have been trained in our school systems that through our mind performance we achieve the best education and therefore success to survive and thrive in this world) we might slowly discover another truth.
It depends on your True nature. And for some people their nature is more masculine and for some people it’s more feminine. And it can change through the years.
If masculine and feminine qualities are both perceived as equally valuable and recognized as both necessary to live in pure love on this planet. There would be no need to change the way things are. We could all live from our own instructions within (not the instructions that our parents or society gave us). There would be healthy cooperation between humans where everybody’s needs are met.
I could elaborate on this topic much more and if there is a need, I will.
In short it all comes down to our own ability to absorb pure love into our being. That ability to absorb pure love got somewhere hijacked along the way by energies that are not from this earth. And that’s the current purification process playing itself out in front of our eyes that also shows in more women in leadership positions. It’s nature rebalancing itself.
With your grit and determination, you are making a considerable impact, breaking through, and serving as role models for many budding entrepreneurs. What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
You’re exactly where you need to be. No need to change anything. That change is already inevitable. Because you’re part of nature. And in nature the only constant is change.
Just like a tree doesn’t need to go to school learning how to grow.
You do not either.
Keep connecting with your Naked Truth within, sit in silence, spend time in nature or just don’t do anything for at least 20 minutes a day.
Allow yourself to be.
And let nature restructure itself.
