Arts & Fashion
Finding freedom
An abandoned village in Portugal has become a sustainable sanctuary for inner transformation.
15 June 2025
This article first appeared in our Organic September 2025 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Moving to Portugal to develop an abandoned village seemed, from the outside, like a radical escape: a leap towards freedom.
What I discovered is that you don’t create freedom simply by changing your environment.
You can trade cities for mountains, schedules for open skies – but unless you transform from within, the same patterns follow you.
This move became an initiation. Nature stripped away the noise, the roles and the distractions I had carefully built my life around.
Away from the constant rush of Amsterdam, hidden parts of myself began to surface: the pain, the blockages, the masks I had learned to wear.
What I thought would be a move into freedom became a journey home to myself.
Through confusion and reflection, I began to see life as an intricate web of interconnection that teaches us not through theories but through experiences.
Every challenge, heartbreak and moment of clarity became a teacher.
My own transformation has become the foundation of a new vision: a way of living, working and creating that is deeply aligned with the heart.
When we first arrived, I called Freedom Ville ‘a healing home for the open-hearted’.
I imagined a place where people could reconnect with themselves and each other, where nature and community would restore what modern life has fragmented.
But the land had other plans for me.
Before I could create a culture of connection, I had to confront my own disconnection.
Before I could hold space for others, I had to learn to hold space for myself.
This has shaped everything about how Freedom Ville has evolved.
Unlike businesses I built in the past — driven by opportunity, growth and performance — this vision emerged from a deeper calling: a desire to live in alignment with my soul, to create something meaningful, sustainable and regenerative.
Freedom Ville is not just a retreat centre. It is a living ecosystem where creativity, consciousness and courage meet. A playground where facilitators, artists and changemakers come together to design experiences that go beyond ‘feeling good’ – experiences that are real, raw and transformative.
Set across 14 hectares of pristine Portuguese land, Freedom Ville accommodates 20-40 people and offers a canvas for immersive retreats and creative collaboration.
Nine apartments, three tiny houses, five hotel rooms, a natural rock pool, spa facilities, a whale-shaped pool, a 113m² geodesic dome for deep transformation and endless walking trails invite guests to breathe, move, create and simply be.
Beyond its physical beauty, Freedom Ville is an invitation to return to what we have forgotten.
To slow down enough to notice nature’s rhythms.
To unlearn the illusion of control and rediscover flow.
To play, to create, to connect – with ourselves, each other and the living world.
Before Portugal, I spent over a decade creating cultural spaces and experiences in Amsterdam, from cafés and creative hotels to large-scale events and festivals.
But somewhere along the way I noticed a deep imbalance – a lack of purpose beyond the pleasure and fun of the hedonistic capital-city lifestyle.
I started to be bothered by a business model that is rooted in substances that keep us numb – that promote losing ourselves more than finding what we truly need in order to find happiness beneath the surface.
I started to see that in a world that is hyper-connected with social overload both on and offline, we – as humans – seem to be more disconnected than ever.
Yet deep inside we are craving a deeper level of connection; one that is rooted in raw authenticity, and feeling fully instead of feeling repressed.
This vision is about bridging those worlds – connecting the cities to the countryside, the corporates to the community life – and helping individuals and teams realign their purpose.
Freedom Ville is a place where facilitators co-create out-of-the-box programmes that dissolve hierarchies and foster authentic connection.
It’s where community, art and business meet nature – not to compete, but to collaborate.
Shifting from productivity to creativity, from control to trust, from burnout to regeneration.
Real innovation doesn’t start with technology; it begins with real connection: to ourselves, our creativity and the natural world.
Freedom Ville is calling in facilitators, creators and visionaries; those who want to craft immersive experiences that move people – not just through healing retreats, but through journeys that provoke, inspire and transform.
We can create a new culture that values presence over performance, collaboration over competition and purpose over profit.
A network of changemakers who dare to dream, play and create together.
A movement rooted in remembrance – of who we are, and of our place in this interconnected whole.
An abandoned village in Portugal has become a sustainable sanctuary for inner transformation.
Biologist Neel Zaver shares three projects in Costa Rica that offer hope in a time of crisis
Jarvis Smith on the break of a lifetime sailing the Ionian Islands.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Weekly ethical news, offers, comps and a free digital mag (quarterly) – what’s not to love?
