Lotusflowers

 According to the over five-thousand year old Chinese medicine, our body consists of meridians, passages, or rivers. It is like our whole body is split into parts, a beautiful and super-complex puzzle of flowing and moving parts.  The meridians start at the top of our fingers, in our face and at the end of our toes. This is how the meridians connect with our environment, the earth and heaven.  Each meridian has its own function, is related to its organs and other parts of the body.  By practicing Healing Qigong we move our whole body in a special way. This special and natural way moves all meridians and invites them to open up. In our lives, we encounter all sorts of situations which challenge us, teach us and sometimes hurt us. All these experiences we are not able to digest, or heal from, we carry around. In our memories, in our mind and also in our body. We store all sorts of experiences in our body, until the time comes to heal them en let them free. I think huma...

  When I was born, my mind was clear, a tabula rasa some might say.But before we travel deeper into the workings of the mind, we need to go on a little energy side track.  I have this idea I carry a lot of information with me into this life. Information from my former lives, biological family, and other places. That specific information is stored in my energy field and my cells.  The mind is a different place.My mind is made up of thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts. Sometimes images, smells, and sounds, but mostly it is a wordy experience in my head. A mind is useful, we need a mind to be able to communicate with each other. We need a mind to connect with others. We simply need a mind to survive. In the first years of my life, my mind fills itself with information from the world around me. My senses pick up pieces of information. And my mind makes sense of it (or not), and stores the inform...

Balance means being in harmony with our environment. How we are inside reflects how things are around us and vice versa. Here in the West, we find it hard to believe we are one with our environment. Individualistic, separate, and dualistic are our favorite ways to think.  But in many ancient cultures, our belief system was different. We were believed to be one with nature, humans, and animals surrounding us, one in one great energy field, living together in a balanced way. Today we still find these beliefs in shamanistic practices. Taoism also stems from shamanistic practices and beliefs.  In the story below we see a beautiful and inspiring example of Taoism. This story was told by C. Jung who heard it from R. Wilhelm, the great translator of the I Tjing and writer of The Secret of the Golden Flower.  As a missionary in China Wilhelm witnessed an event that took place during a drought lasting for months in a Chinese village he was visiting. This story dates back to the be...

I must have been 14 or 15 years old, my world consisted of going to school, hanging with friends, and a lot of horseback riding. I had no clue about qigong, China, healing, Qi, or martial arts.  Even so, I had no clue about paranormal abilities, not even my own. My world was pretty small at that time growing up in a little town nearby the sea in Holland. One of my best friends had to go to the hospital to have the pins removed from her leg. She was born with a crippled leg. The doctors had broken the leg and put pins in it, to straighten the ankle and lower leg, so she would eventually be able to walk better.  My friend was not amused by this procedure and was very uncomfortable. I was there to support her and hold her hand. While we were waiting for the new X-rays to arrive an older woman walked in the room. She must have been 65 or so, but she looked very vital and worldly, she was very calm. I liked her immediately and that is why I was paying attention to her.  S...

Yesterday was lesson two of my Stone Medicine and Chinese Medicine classes. In this lesson, we did a beautiful meditation with stones, learned about the five elements, diagnostics, and much more. Great! In the lesson, we discussed and meditated with the chevron amethyst. It's a stone that helps you focus during meditation and helps you ground (where needed). It's my favorite stone at the moment: the chevron amethyst. You can see it has stripes. A piece of purple crystal, just like a regular amethyst, but with bands of white quartz or feldspar. The photo shows tumbled stones. The rough pieces are pure, while the rounder and more lustrous stones have an extra sheen added during the processing. The rough pieces are my favorite; I feel the stone's energy a little more strongly in them than with the others. But of course, taste is personal. The Chevron Amethyst According to Chinese Medicine As mentioned, the Chevron Amethyst is a more potent amethyst, meaning it can work slightl...