Love, peace, and joy flow naturally through self-acceptance, self-love, and gratitude
Our Mission
The world is fueled by energy through human connection. This energy emanates from our collective thoughts and emotions. The life we experience reflects our thoughts and emotions. Our mission at New Life Peñol is to create a positive energy flow, an environment where one can disconnect completely from the busy and stressful everyday life and reconnect to yourself. Here you will enter a gateway through which you can reconnect with your essence, that part of yourself that you neglected and forgot existed, with the purpose of enabling you to create new thoughts and emotions that may lead to a happier and healthier life.
We offer you routines for meditation, yoga, exercise, relaxation, massages, and lifestyle coaching on wellness and balanced nutrition in a beautiful, peaceful environment. To keep the positive feeling when you return to your home, we can offer you weekly guidance to help you stay reconnected to the New Life you experienced at Peñol.
Allow me to introduce ourselves
My name is Yut-Mie, and I think of myself as a seeker and a guide. I was born and raised on the beautiful island of Curaçao, the Dutch Caribbean. I believe that the key ingredients for a happy and healthy life are a balanced mind, body, and soul connection.
At age 19, I went to Holland and studied Japanese Language and Culture at the University of Leiden. I am generally a shy person and more of a listener than a talker. After one year of living in Holland, I gained 15 kg. When I returned home after two years, my mom called me a “white elephant”. When I heard that, I decided to make a drastic change. I started a routine of aerobics exercise and balanced eating, which helped me get back into shape within three months. That is when I fell in love with exercise and healthy eating habits. At age 26, I graduated and returned to Curaçao. I felt lost, and by some divine intervention, I got in touch with transcendental meditation and Reiki. When you start on the spiritual path, the next step is shown to you automatically. Today, 25 years later, I began questioning my life’s purpose, and more answers keep coming my way. They say that your greatest problem becomes your greatest opportunity. In my case, my parent’s health is my greatest worry in life, so I sought solutions to help them and to help me be fit and healthy when I am their age. Finding new ways to prevent disease naturally is now my passion. I believe that the key ingredients for a happy and healthy life are a balanced mind, body, and soul connection. I find balance in my life by eating healthy (plant-based) food, moving more, loving more, and stressing less. My purpose is to help people in their mid-50s and 60s live happier and healthier by adopting a balanced lifestyle.
My name is Theo, and my life motto is to enjoy life and f… the rest :-). I was born and raised in the Netherlands. There I worked in the hospitality industry for many years. I moved to Curaçao when I was 55 and made my photography hobby my work. I believe that the secret to a long life is to do what you like and never do anything that you don’t want, just to please others.
I like cooking, eating, and drinking, so it is no surprise that I love a good party and enjoy happy hours. As the Dutch saying goes: “Gezelligheid kent geen tijd” (means something like there is always time for a good time). When I arrived in Curaçao, I gave training in hospitality for a couple of years. One day a friend photographer asked me to be his second shooter at a wedding. I accepted reluctantly, but that decision marked my life in Curaçao for the next ten years. I specialized in wedding photography and model photography and became a “celebrity” on the island. Weddings, especially big ones with dinner and party, may require a photographer to be 8-12 hours on your feet, carrying heavy bags with lenses and cameras. Not an easy job when you reach 65. When I turned 67, I decided to switch gears and specialize in real estate photography, which still allows me to practice my photography hobby, but at a much slower pace. In my free time, I enjoy gardening. In the Netherlands, I had a large plot where I used to plant all kinds of fruits and vegetables. I used to make my own jam and freeze bags of all my fruits and veggies for the winter months. The Covid lockdown in 2020 on the island stimulated many, including myself, to start gardening and growing fruits and vegetables in my yard. My passion for gardening was re-awakened, and I started growing dragon fruit, pineapple, bananas, tomatoes, and green peppers on a small scale. I even appeared on local TV in my little garden. The secret to a long life is to do what you like, never do anything you don’t want just to please others, get rid of stress, and laugh a lot. My purpose in life is to be happy.
We are the opposite in many ways. But we share a common dream: living a happy and stress-free life. A New Life in Peñol is the manifestation of our dream. Inspired by our friends, Haroen and Maria Isabel of “Finca Jardin de Eden”, we started visualizing having a house with a view of the mountains and a dock where we could keep a small boat and go fishing. We began making plans to create a B&B-style wellness retreat, where couples like us can enjoy a peaceful getaway. We listed our house for sale in August 2020, and in May 2021, we got an offer. At the same time, our friends sent us pictures of a beautiful lot in Peñol, not far from their own Finca. We knew immediately that this was our place, even without seeing it in person yet. We immediately booked a flight, traveled to Peñol for the first time, and stayed there for three weeks to get a better feeling of the place and check out some other plots. At the end of our 3-week trip, we signed for our own Finca and started to make our dream for New Life Peñol a reality!
We are currently working on designing our house and the cabins for the retreat. Since our Finca inspires unity with nature (it has a mountain, a water sprout, and access to the lake), we want to primarily use natural building resources to harmonize with the natural environment. In the coming months, we will be writing more about the development of our dream.
If you have enjoyed our story so far and want to follow our progress, please visit our BLOG page here. Fill in your email and hit the subscribe button (you can unsubscribe at any moment). Your information and email address will not be shared with third parties. Your privacy is important to us and will always be respected.