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ClifNotes 2
May 2000

The reception in Holland was so overwhelming that we had only two days off in the first month!
We did private sessions – up to 12 hours a day - and more than 8 workshops. Our friends, Peter Rouwendaal and Alice Meijering did an incredible job of organising things.

One of the first workshops was with the Insinger Investment Bank. This was to a group of their young executives (who isn’t an executive these days?) and their main interest was how to keep working from 7am-8pm or later at night without stressing out. This was one of the most challenging workshops because they were young people who had no idea about their bodies or soul matters. Even so it must have been well received because within the next week the Managing Director asked us to do another course for others – about 15 turned up.
Other Relaxation technique workshops included one for Papageno – a very vibrant group of people who are offering Coaching to companies and individuals. They also seem to be very much on the move and expressed a lot of interest – especially in the Relaxation Techniques and they all came back for a refresher course of early morning Qigong in the grounds of one of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever seen – a former King’s palace.

Another ‘commercial’ group are teachers at ASP which is, as far as I can make out, is a quasi-government company introducing modern innovative teaching techniques and stress management for educators.
There was even an afternoon course we did for the staff of a secondary school.
All along there were interspersed sessions for private people and organised groups.

One of the one-day seminars was at Friesland Hotel – far north of Amsterdam – and at the end of the evening, Yo, the owner of the Hotel/Motel, asked if his elderly friend might have a session. I seldom ask why a person has come and I simply invited him to lie on Yo’s bed while I applied the usual non-method. He stood up after twenty minutes with a strange look on his face. The disbelief on his face was comical. “No, I don’t believe it,” he kept repeating as he probed at his legs and waved his knees about. It seems he had had seriously painful legs and buttocks for so long that his wife could not recall him ever getting out of bed without struggle. He has had no recurrence and no pains. Later Yo told us he was one of the local multi-millionaires! (I should have charged him double!!)

“Alec” is a doctor. He had been calling to Australia and he was actually on the brink of suicide through continual depression, bad family relationships and – I found out later a dramatic history of suicides reaching back into four generations.
When he had called me from Holland – he told us later – he was seriously looking for ways to kill himself although he says that there was a temporary hesitation after that initial call to me. Even so he still kept looking for a place or way to do it.
He now describes the physical healing he had when we first met and worked together as a ‘miracle’. He immediately dropped any thought of suicide, he has reconciled with his first wife and that whole family, he talks regularly with his daughter in law for the first time, his son by the second marriage is doing well. His elder son – a lawyer – and permanently on the highest drugs for depression no longer wishes to kill himself and is now on the lowest scale of drugs and his wife is happy and ticking off all the things we suggested. “Alec” intends writing a medical paper on the whole event and is also doing Qigong every day with a focus and satisfaction which is signal.
While we were there he was offered a chance to renew his contract but he chose to leave the hospital seeing it as not being the right place for him to work any more. One of his colleagues was totally intrigued by his obvious changes from ‘permanent’ depression to good humor, cheerfulness, clarity and so on and when this other doctor’s contract was also up for renewal he also chose to leave that job there.

In these quick notes there is not really enough space to give you all the details, and it is always important to remember each event is, by and large, reported only by me and others might well see things in different lights even though I try hard to report only on the feed-back from those who find changes in their lives, health or emotions. It always puts me into a feeling of tiny involvement in something far too big to talk of. What a blessing to hear from someone whose life is permanently improved. Whatever the method or concept involved.

Here’s another story. I was asked to help the owner of the largest horse stables in Holland – they have about 70 horses stabled there for training, racing and showing.
There were two horses in particular that needed attention. Sorry I can’t recall the horse’s names right now – one was called something heroic – like Horatio maybe? One was unable to run well because of lung trouble and the other had very sensitive rear legs and rump.
Even before arriving at the stables I had been getting a feeling that the horse with ‘lung’ problems was really being affected more by his offside rear hoof than by the lungs. The trainer, of course did not necessarily agree with that but I insisted we look at the hoof. About the only part of a horse I can remember correctly is the ‘frog’. It’s the softer part in the centre of the underside of the hoof. I paid attention to it and of course we couldn’t ‘see’ anything wrong there. I also made a connection with the horse in the way they relate to humans and I ‘chatted’ to him (animals ‘see’ things in graphic pictures – not as words).
The other horse, call him Horatio, had a small lump on the area (I’ve no idea what to call that) right where the pommel of the saddle would rub. I also ‘whispered’ into the horse’s ear and once again ‘chatted’ to this one.
The lung trouble apparently must have disappeared because as I understood it, the horse was later able to run properly. Horatio took a few more days but made good progress. I shall try to get an update and clear picture on these stories when we return to Holland. I can’t put my finger exactly why but I was very moved by the experience and hope to go back to that stables in the next few weeks.

Hank is a man of maybe 55 and in his entire life he has never been able to sleep on his back because of asthma and multiple other problems. After the first session he stood up and in amazement said he could breath properly. He said it felt as though a large lump had ‘popped’ out of his chest – now instead of keeping his house dark, he has started buying lots of yellow flowers, opens the curtains and is not depressed any more. After the second session he started sleeping soundly (on his back) and is happy and laughs a lot for the first time in his life.

Also an asthma case – a tiny baby was born with asthma and was already on heavy (steroid?) drugs. Perhaps it was caused by the experience of the healing but what happened is that they actually forgot to give her her drugs and found that she was breathing clearly. We have heard that from that night she has not had any sign of recurrence and although the parents are cautiously keeping her on tiny doses for safety’s sake, they anticipate she will come off even those soon.

Four times I was driven to a place called Emmer Compascuum, a chiropractic clinic, to give private sessions and a one-day workshop. It’s about two and a half-hours east from Amsterdam – near the German border. After the workshop there one of the chiropractors went outside to have a cigarette and he found he hated the taste. He hadn’t smoked up till the time we left Amsterdam (about three weeks later).

A funny story! After the sessions (at Emmer Compascuum) one lady tried to drive home. As she drove she felt a lot of warmth mostly in the (Dan Tian?) stomach area. She had to stop beside the road. She later described the feeling as though her body was so light she couldn’t feel it. She let the seat down in the car and rested. Almost immediately she felt as though she were out of her body and floating above the car. She stayed like that for about 10 minutes (it was hard to know exactly how long) then, with her body feeling so ‘bright’ and warm she drove home and slept overnight which was a rare happening for her. Next morning, no pain.

Yet another man had had painful knees for 12 years. It disappeared after the first session.

Literally not one day went by without a new story.

“Janice” was born without an anus and she could not remember even one day of her life without pain. By the time she came to see me she had been regularly on a morphine patch for the pain. She is now 41 has 2 children, has had 38 operations. Because her doctors can’t help her, they now send her to a psychiatrist whose only answer is to insist that her husband should stop comforting her when she is in pain.
She couldn’t (hadn’t ever) lie on her back. That night she slept lying on her back for the first time and when she woke up there was no pain. Her husband ridiculed her, saying, ‘of course there is still pain’. But to her, that was the first day of her life without any pain at all. She immediately made an appointment that night and this time lay on her front as I worked. About half way through the session she got agitated and said that now there was a lot of pain as though there were heavy stones deep in her buttocks and stomach. I suggested to her that it was her pain gathering together and ready to leave.
Five minutes later she almost shouted that all the pain had traveled down her legs and it felt as though it was all in her toes. At that moment she was angry and adamant that the pain would not be leaving. She fell asleep. Ten minutes later she woke up and, sure enough, the pain had gone and when she left she was walking differently, she had color in her cheeks and she was actually laughing.

The next two stories are completely out of sequence but I can’t wait: Here in Germany my friends, Gudrun, Yurgen, Corula and Rudi are such wonderful people. But the point of the story is, for the very first time I have driven on the autobahn! Something every driver ought to do at least once in their lifetime! When Yurgen was driving us he was driving at 180-190kph and there were cars passing us as though we hadn’t left home! The next story is mainly for my Grandson, Justin. Yesterday Yurgen and Rudi offered to go for a ride. Of course, not your normal push bikes! No, not even normal motorbikes! But on Harley Davidson’s! Cruising the back roads of Southern Germany was a real rush! And that particular Harley warble sound as the throttle is opened. But I know Harley’s are not just Harley’s they have names like, Silver Cloud (or is that the name for a Rolls Royce?). I found that Yurgen’s Harley is a 1957 Flat Top and I’ll have to ask Rudi what model his is.

Talking of bikes! The Dutch seem to have an overwhelming passion for bikes! Everywhere. It is true that the entire land is as flat as a billiard table but there must be more bikes per square yard of tarmac than there are patches on a Dutchman’s trousers! (in joke!) In Amsterdam you have to watch out for Kamikaze riders at every street corner and path. They come at you from every-which-way. Then the trams are on almost every road and the taxis and buses drive either on the tramlines or skipping from tramline to narrow road, shared with ‘normal’ (huh!) traffic. To cross the road safely on foot you need to have a rubberneck and a bigger portion of good luck than in, say New York! In defence of all this, there are thousands of kilometers of bike trails especially set aside for bikes – through the forest, out of the city and even in the parks. Of course that sounds fine but small motorbikes and scooters are allowed or suffered to ride on the bike trails as well so even there, there is no relief from the constant neck craning. I was disappointed to see most of the bikes there were all of the Granny style. Upright handlebars, back-pedal brakes and fat tyres. Not too many stylish or racing bikes. Alice said that there was a constant threat of having your bike stolen so no-one would leave a nice one on the street to attract problems – it seems that each year the canals are dredged and thousands of abandoned bikes turn up.

Towards the end of our stay we had a few days off. On Easter Monday, Alice and Peter and their two boys, Reuben and Hill and us went for a bike ride into the tulip fields. It was exactly the right week to do that as the almost entire landscape was filled with rows upon countless rows of flowers in full bloom. It seems that the reason you see the flowers fully open is that the main sales are for bulbs which are exported all over the world. There are still around 900 windmills in Holland although we were told only a few hundred are still working. It was almost too classic to see that typical Dutch windmill lazily catching the warm breeze. In contrast there are wind farms at almost every compass point. The modern windmill is definitely not romantic and there is resistance to the spiky blades scattering the landscape. One area we passed a few times has maybe up to one hundred of these things standing with their feet on the edge of a huge man-made lake. Still, we learnt that without continuous pumping the land would once again revert to the seabed it was claimed from. Peter told us that their apartment on the third floor would be just above water level if the dykes didn’t hold and we heard that there might be only 50 more years left of holding back the sea – especially with global warming bringing the sea levels higher than the Dutch could maintain.

Oh! The canals! Yes, we gave in and did a tourist trip round the Amsterdam canals. The city was the place where much of the world-wide trading was done in the last few centuries and so the houses that were pointed out to us varied from expensive and solid to smaller places with sloping walls, out-of-square windows and all the ancient aspects of early disregard for building according to alignment of the spirit level. Also at one time your house taxes were based on the square metres at ground level, so, naturally, clever people built houses which had extended first floor rooms (i.e. second floor in the USA). On the same principle I learnt years ago why the English built houses with such tiny windows. Their taxes in Elizabethan days were based on the amount of glass used in the windows.

There are big parks for doing our Qigong here and, Lo! and behold! parrots (just like in Australia) which escaped from aviaries a long time ago and fly all over the place. It is also the migrating season when the birds fly in from exotic places like Africa etc. Bird lovers go out into the fields and mark the nests to protect the endangered number of birds and the government pays the farmers some amount per nest to leave the nests alone.

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