Years before I got to know about Chi Neng Qigong I had made some failed attempts to meditate. Martial arts suited me better. I practiced Shaolin Kempo for a few years around the age of twenty.
Sitting and thinking of nothing proved quite hard to do.
I had open heart surgery at the age of 14; a hole in the wall between my heart chambers was filled up. – A patent foramen ovale (PFO) is a hole in the heart that didn’t close the way it should after birth –
However, at the age of 35, I started having serious problems with increased heart rates. I had a few cardioversions and an ablation and also took almost all types of beta blockers. Each intervention had the desired effect for a very temporary period only, the problem kept returning within about six months. With that the side effects of the medicationmade me feel even worse. As soon as some stress occured in my life, I was knocked out and I could hardly move around.
On July 10, 2012, I took my first lesson with my first teacher: André de Fretes. André told me that he had been cured of his migraine by practicing Chi Neng Qigong and advised me to take a lesson with him.
The exercises felt real pleasant and relaxing so I started training with André weekly. The increasing heart rates quickly lesssened; from 3 times a week to about once a month.
Unfortunately, after a year André started teaching less and less often and at the end of 2013 he stopped teaching altogether because he wanted to focus on supporting several seriously ill older members of his family with Chi Neng Qigong.
However, I continued to practice on my own with the help of instructional CDs and DVDs from the Chi Neng Institute. I kept getting better and at some point I considered myself ‘cured’and stopped practicing – big misdtake!
In 2014 I took on a demanding second job. At the end of that year I was back to square one as far as the increasing heart rate disorder was concerned. This is when I made upo my mind and considered my options: I could go back to the doctors and cardiologists knowing I would be a heart-patient the rest of my life, but I could also start practicing Qigong again and see if it could take me even further than it took me before. That is why I started training seriously at home again. The heart rates soon diminished again. This time I was determined to go for a full cure and I realised the best way to insure I would keep on practicing was to become a Qigong teacher. That was the best choice I ever made in my life!
Chi Neng Qigong instructor training
Early 2015 I started my Qigong instructor training by attending the Chi Neng winter school from January 29 to February 1 under the guidance of Hanneke van der Kam. After that I started my lift chi up gong – practicing a single Qigong exercise for 100 days every day. This way the exercise is imprinted into each cell of your body and mind, as it were – Qigong masters call this ‘acquiring a good habit’)
On May 13 I had practiced for 100 days and the heart complaints had stayed away for that entire period. This strengthened me in my quest to become a ChiNeng Qigong instructor, knowing I was on the right track.
I attended my second workshop from May 29 to 31, 2015 with Frank Lageweg and then did a 3 centers merge gong (Zhan Zhuang)
and from June 13 I also started doing Sway La Chi alongside the standing meditation. I love to train a lot and soon I was training for about an hour and a half every day. On September 8, the 3 centers merge gong was over. I had been extending the exercise during the last weeks of the gong and on the last day I did it for an hour. 11 days later the Sway La Chi gong was fulfilled.
During this period I read the book by Kean Hin Ooi (ChiNeng Qigong; the science and practice) and strangely enough I kept coming across passages at the right time that answered certain questions and removed any doubts. During a severe setback I read the same day that reaching the next level can be accompanied by setbacks, pain and other complaints. This information made pushing on much easier.
After the 3 Centers Merge gong I started doing the lift Chi up exercise again. Now I did this exercise more and more slowly until I managed to stretch it to 45 minutes.
In October I did the workshop with Chinese teacher Li Hongshi; which was a revelation. Li Hongshi knows how to teach and explain the level 1 exercises down to the smallest detail.
Teachers say it is impossible to perform the movements of Chi Neng exercises incorrectly but on the other hand you can perfect the movements endlessly.
After the 4-day workshop with Li Hongshi, I started with the gong for wall squats. That was especially difficult in the beginning. I slowly worked my way up to 50 wall squats a day, but it took a long time before I managed to touch the ground with my fingers and really started with the gong.
My heart rhythm disorder has not been cured, and that is not possible since it is caused by scar tissue from the heart surgery. But I have managed to accept my condition, function completely normally even in periods when my heart beats too fast and don’t use any medication. – my doctors comply with thtat! – During my internship day on June 24, I had an attack that would have knocked me out a year earlier. Now I got through that day without any significant problems. It was not 100% pleasant, but it is still a difference of day and night.
Little miracles
During the first 100 days of Lift Qi up, Pour Qi down I experienced something that is worth mentioning: my father had had a series of TIAs a few weeks earlier (A TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack) is a temporary blockage of a blood vessel in the brain) as a result of which he had developed aphasia (language and speech impairment as a result of a brain injury), he could hardly speak and his short-term memory was severely affected. During an exercise I focused my attention on him, kept him in mind in his little house in the polder of the Zeeland island of Tholen and consciously sent Qi his way. At the moment I finished my exercise the phone rang; it was my father calling me! I was stunned and flabbergasted – this was miraculous. He said that he felt a strong urge to call me. Somehow he had managed to remember and dial my number and how he suddenly could speak so much better is still a mystery to me. Was it the Qi I had send?