Ria Baeck likes to explore terrain where her inner senses tell her there is potential to be uncovered. Always scanning what’s new in work, collaboration and co-creation, the question: “What is the next bit of potential that is ready to take form?” is always alive in her. In that way she is a track-finder for many to follow.
Ria also loves to understand why the things are working as they do, and how. Always digging one step deeper; discovering what is essential in how we deal with complex challenges, individually and collectively. In that sense she is an illuminator who likes sharing her fresh questions and insights with others.
Ria’s 30 or so years’ professional experience and her capacity to create safe learning spaces, have made her a master support for real participatory and innovative approaches. She is known for her embodied presence and inner repose, as well as her highly developed sensing skills, crucial in designing emergent processes. She has co-initiated many gatherings, learning groups and action research projects.
She is born, raised and still lives in the Flemish countryside. She shares a house with two others, where you can find her all weekend days in the garden, tending the soil and growing organic vegetables. She has three sons and seven grandchildren.
Masters in Clinical Psychology (Leuven, Belgium), professionally trained in Art of Hosting, Systemic Constellations, Emotional Bodywork and more.
Helen Titchen Beeth, editor
So how come the book sounds like a native speaker wrote it? Helen is one of Ria’s housemates, raised and educated in England, who has been a professional translator as well as taking part in many gatherings, living Collective Presencing and holding it dear to her heart. So she was the perfect person to take every word that Ria wrote, and lovingly edit the draft text into the fluent and resonant language you will find here. She also took the bulk of the pictures which gracefully adorn the book!
Simon Grant, technologist
Simon has been engaged at the edges of the human and the technical for decades. When he came across Ria, late in 2018, the book was a series of blog posts. Wanting to read and search through it as one piece, he turned it into a single HTML file. Ria welcomed that, and Simon worked on it further, formatting it with CSS, checking carefully through all the references, making many little corrections and enhancements as he went, and collaborating in fitting it into and enhancing the website.