“Experience a rare living burial
unearthing
a deeper sense of aliveness.”
by artist Eva Bartels
(b)Earth story
About Eva Bartels, the artist and guide of Emerge Method.
Eva Bartels is an award winning artist, ritualist, and the creator of Emerge Method, a contemporary rite of renewal where art and ceremony converge. Her work is rooted in the body, the earth, and the unseen. She created and shaped this experience by years of embodied research, group practice, and a relentless pursuit of renewal by transforming grief into gratitude.
Originally a painter and performance artist, Eva was drawn beyond the canvas into psycho-magic, where symbolic actions bypass the rational mind to awaken transformation. This path led her away from the stage and into the earth itself. Through repeated burials—enveloped in soil, stripped of sight and sound—she surrendered to forces beyond the self, birthing Emergence Ritual as an act of returning, shedding, and becoming.
She has carried this ritual across the world, adapting it to the land, flora and fauna and its people. In times of upheaval, she sees resilience and renewal as necessities, believing true belonging is remembered, not found. Based in Amsterdam yet nomadic, she continues to offer Emerge method to a growing global community, embracing the fertile, womblike power of the soil and creating a loving relationship between humans and the living world around us.
“In every burial, I see how far we have drifted
from the natural rhythm of birth and decay,
the gentle ecosystem of transformation.
And I see how, by returning to the earth,
we can remember it again.Transforming sadness and loss into hope and gratitude for life.”
-Eva Bartels
(b)Earth story
In 2022, I became pregnant for the first time.
Something was growing inside me
A new life, a new rhythm.
I felt blessed, as a woman and as a living being, to hold and nurture life within me.
But life decided differently.
I had to let go. First of the spirit and the future I had started to imagine,
then of the small seed that had been growing inside my body.
The letting go became a deeply physical, almost animalistic experience.
My body knew what to do.
I witnessed it with both fascination and sorrow.
Afterwards, I realised how little space our Western world offers for such experiences
for grief, for bodily transformation,
for the quiet revolutions that happen inside a woman.
Many of these passages remain unseen, unheard, unspoken.
I spoke openly about my loss. About the pain, the confusion, and the strange relief that accompanied it.
As I did, others began to share their own stories and shame began to loosen.
Grief turned into connection. We began to hold each other through the ‘unholdable’ and I understood then that we are missing something essential:
a physical ritual for transition.
So I created my own.
To Emerge is a profound practice in being held and cared for. for being invited back into love and trust.
Dig deeper…
My First Living Burial
On the morning of my birthday,
I invited four of my closest loved ones to meet me in a forest near Amsterdam.
I asked them to bury me.
As I descended into the soil, I felt an immense sense of belonging.
The earth held me completely — as if returning me to a memory older than my body.
She took me on a deep and miraculous journey,
revealing hidden realms within my subconscious,
showing me where space and potential were waiting to be found.
An hour later, I heard music.
The voices of my loved ones approached, their hands gently excavating the soil around me.
I felt their tenderness, their song, their presence.
As I rose from the earth, I felt reborn.
I had emerged.
From Personal to Universal
That moment became the seed of what is now called The Emerge Method
the live burial ritual that has since unfolded across the world.
Through many emergences, I have come to understand that humans do not die only once.
We die many small deaths: the end of a relationship, a home, a belief, a stage of life, a dream.
Each ending asks to be honored.
Each death deserves a ritual.
Through the Emerge Method, I began to study these thresholds
learning from the soil, from fungi and roots, from the forest floor where decay feeds new life.
Nature became my teacher and guide.
In every burial, I see how far we have drifted from the natural rhythm of birth and decay
the gentle ecosystem of transformation.
And I see how, by returning to the earth,
we can remember it again.
To die into the soil is to learn to live differently.
To surrender
To be buried full of love
To Emerge full of life
