Year: 2014

We taught a combination of qigong and massage. Women from different islands in Eastern Samar attended. We listened to their stories. A 16-year old, encouraged by her mother, talked about her experiences.

The restaurant was one of the buildings spared by the typhoon. There was a sound system, chairs, toilet facilities and air-conditioning. We had one class here. About 40 women from different islands attended.

Dear Friends,

The geographic trajectory of my recent journey to the islands of Leyte and Eastern Samar in Central Philippines is easy to follow: a flight on Sunday afternoon February 2 from Manila south to Tacloban City, Leyte, one of the most devastated areas in the country. On arriving at the airport in Tacloban City, we took a rental van past the famous San Juanico Bridge to Guiuan, a town in Eastern Samar. It was a 3-hour journey through beautiful but desolate landscape, the sea and islands to the right, mountains to the left, and coconut boles that had lost their fruits and leaves dotting the scene. The last hour of the trip at sunset was over pitted and cratered roads, a white-knuckle route made scarier by a race-car wannabe for a driver, tricycles (motorbikes with a sidecar, which are called tuktuks in Thailand and cyclos in Vietnam) and chickens and dogs and people crossing our path in the darkness.

From what I have seen, the destruction – physical, material, psychological and spiritual – was unimaginable. Photos can suggest but not capture the extent and depth of it or its direction. How do you draw a map of psychic damage and injury? We were speechless as we passed tent cities, corrugated iron shanties, heaps of garbage and debris, steel and wooden frames bent like match sticks, posts snapped
in two, uprooted trees, cars sitting on top of rooftops, endless assortment of detritus. I haven’t seen anything like it in my 73 years on the planet. Estimates could be drawn for the wreckage of buildings and assets, but who can arrive at the cost to the human psyche? How about the damage to the children?

From Guiuan, Eastern Samar, we rented and crowded into a small pump boat to take us to Victory Island 45 minutes away on a calm blue sea. “We” refers to Annie, Ellen, MariCris, Sonia and me. Annie, Ellen and MariCris are INAM Philippines staff and acupuncturists. They did acupuncture. I, an INAM consultant and visiting professor, led qigong and massage exercises. Sonia, a yoga teacher and raw food chef and a volunteer, taught basic yoga to the children. INAM organized the February mission after a first one in January.

When, on a bathroom break between Tacloban City, Leyte and Guiuan, Eastern Samar, I asked a storekeeper if she had bananas to sell, she said they had all been blown away by the wind. The reconstruction is going to take years. Five years is the minimum period before the coconuts bear fruits again, if at all. Meantime, where will the people find the food to eat? It takes about 6 months for rice to be harvested. Vegetables take at least a month, pigs and chickens at least 2 – 3 months. The land has been salted over by the sea – will that be a problem to agriculture? International and local rescue and relief operations are ongoing. The recovery has already started. We saw a group of fishermen building boats at Barangay 89-90 in Tacloban City. But how long will it take just to clear the debris and heal the people of the trauma from the typhoon? Haiyan (called Yolanda in the Philippines it possibly means sea – hai — voice — yan — ) packed 190-mile winds for several days. Somebody described the experience as like being in a giant washing machine: getting churned this way in the beginning and that way next, and then being squeezed and turned the other way, and then being washed again and again with the repeat cycle on. Well, add the vicious and relentless winds to the mix. The picture reminded me of the senseless suffering of an innocent child. Why? How do you explain the existence of such existential horror? All it suggested was not only the indifferent universe of Camus (in the Plague) and Dostoyevsky (in Brothers Karamasov) but an angry and merciless god or the trial of Job in the Old Testament.

The horror recalled an early childhood time back in the mid-1940s when a typhoon broke. My family and I (father, mother and 2 children) lived in a 10 feet x 10 feet one-story house standing a foot above the ground in my hometown of Bamban, Tarlac. The wind blew and whistled for hours. Afraid we would be drowned, an uncle “evacuated” us to his house next door that had a second floor and was definitely more solid than where we lived. The memory has remained with me until now.

We stopped for 2 nights at Guiuan to teach and share Qigong, meditation and massage techniques. You’ll probably not see our next stop, Victory Island, on the map because it is just a dot in the sea. Go now, said an area resident, while it is still there. The unpredictability of the weather made us anxious: in the region people talked about the amihan or the habagat, winds that descended even during calm days and nights. There was also a tropical depression the day before we departed Manila, strong enough to be called a typhoon; luckily, it left just when we arrived in Tacloban City.

At a session in Guiuan, we listened to the women who arrived in boats from different islands. We heard about their fears and nightmares when there is a strong wind or news of another storm, what triggers their fright and sense of helplessness. Encouraged by her mother, a 16-year old girl stood up and told the gathering about her vulnerabilities and worries. She was advised by her doctor to see a psychologist. The stories were so horrendous a group of acupuncturists who came earlier reportedly had to have treatments from a psychologist because they were themselves traumatized and were haunted by “ghosts.” One question I have often asked myself, How can you relieve human suffering with an acupuncture needle? I know there are acupoints that are effective for stress, for relaxation, but how do you get people to eventually help themselves and find peace and quiet and courage and leave that painful period behind?

My own humble approach is, in addition to acupuncture, to teach Qigong, empowerment, tuina/massage, protection and meditation techniques not only to the victims but also to healers. We named the protocol “INAM TaoRen Therapi,” part of the development of a Philippine approach to healing called integratib Medisin. We combined different acupuncture points – Kiiko’s Triple Intestine near the elbow, CV 6, GV 20, LI 4, LV 3, and a few others on the extremities. The Qigong and Tuina, involving massage, sounds and visualization included activating the Jing/Well points of the hands and certain areas of the body – Lung Mu, Stomach Mu, back of the knees, Zu San Li, the Gall Bladder line — and covered the sacrum, lumbar, shoulders and spine. The massage techniques are important because they are an essential link of human connectedness. Touching, a simple gesture, is a way of reaching out. The protocol is not a complete solution, far from it in fact, but it is what we can offer for now. Eventually, the acupuncturists, the teachers and the healers (there are also psychologists there) will leave and the typhoon victim will have to fall back on her own resources … and face or exorcise her ghosts. Alone, perhaps in the middle of the night, an area resident will need accessible techniques to cope. Or, together the victims will have to support each other ultimately with methods of facing up to the traumas … methods of self-cultivation or nurturing the body, mind and spirit. So we advised them to make the practices an integral part of their lives and their culture. We trained them – I hope well enough for the short time we had — to be familiar with the methods so that they can do the practices as well as teach them to friends and relatives in their remote neighborhoods and villages. Parts of the armamentum are simple methods of breathing, healing sounds and colors, meditation, and movements of taoyin or qigong and massage to learn to let go, reestablish human connection and restore the spirit. Hopefully, the practices will provide some form of relief and strength now and closure later.

INAM Philippines is only one of the many different organizations providing healing
and therapy to the population. The INAM staff is planning to return in March. I will join them in Guiuan, Eastern Samar and Tacloban City, Leyte, and the farther island of Homonhon in early August.

Thank you for your help.

Love and Blessings from the Philippines!

Rene

PS:

I don’t have a Twitter or Facebook account. If you have the time, look up the website of INAM Philippines for more photos of the mission. Sonya Astudillo, the yoga teacher, also has photos on her facebook page. So does Maria Cristina Parungao, the INAM director.

Chi Nei Tsang internal organs massage seminar sponsored by INAM Philippines, an NGO that services
the disadvantaged population of the country. There were 8 blind/visually impaired masseurs, 7 women from Bulacan (fisherfolk), 5 acupuncturists, and several laypeople who are interested in healing and self-development. It was a 2-day seminar (from 8 to 6).

One time, I was teaching a qigong movement with the hand. I said, Start from 12 o’clock, move to 3 and then 6, up to 9 and back to 12. I realized later on, when I got a feedback, that the blind have not seen a clock, they have no idea of how it looks. They perceive time in terms of movement and light, the chirping of the birds, and the humming of the earth.

So when I taught an abdominal manipulation I asked them to put their hands over mine. What an experience!

Breakfast with Pothis, Leanna, Rene, Zoe, Rik and Emma, participants at the seminar conducted by David
Verdesi (seated at the left) in Ubud, Bali January 5 to 16. Imagine having Huevos Rancheros with fresh coconut
juice and expresso coffee Balinese style!

Nyoman, proprietor of roadside restaurant that serves grilled fish, chicken, pork spare ribs and duck, and a variety of veggie dishes — beans, water lily/kangkong — and fresh coconuts. They have a great lemon grass and wild ginger tea.


Women preparing a delicacy made from ground coconut for a family wedding.

Besakih Mother Temple on the south slope of Mount Ugung. Pura Besakih is the holiest and largest Hindu temple in all of Bali. We made a pilgrimage on my last day on the island, organized by the shaman Sonya (fifth from the left). We were led by a Hindu priest whose presence was nothing short of overwhelming. He solemnized rituals for us on the different levels of the temple complex. He gave me his personal blessing for my healing work.

(Click on the thumbnail pictures to enlarge.)

January 12, 2014, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Dear Friends,

I arrived here in Bali from Manila very early morning of January 4. I mean at 2 am. After Immigration, baggage claim and customs, it was 3 am and by the time I got home it was 4.

The training started the next day. A long introductory meditation by David Verdesi on samsara, emptiness, spontaneity, taboos and the Self. You can read about him in my website in the essay “Thunder Path in Huangshan.” He is a phenomenal teacher and a great friend.

The seminar finishes on January 16. I am scheduled to leave on the 18th. But I thought of staying longer, perhaps until the end of the month. I am supposed to teach seminars sponsored by INAM Philippines again. No date has been set yet although I have been thinking of February 8, 9 and 10. One day for Chi Nei Tsang Internal organs review, one day for Tai chi review and one day of qigong empowerment for the INAM acupuncture staff. These are preliminary and introductory seminars. We will have more and longer seminars in August and September involving the visually impaired, battered/stressed women, homeless “street kids,” Tai chi chuan practitioners, and therapists, acupuncturists and healers.

We will send out requests for donations in a month or two to support these seminars. How and where to house the participants, feed them, and bring them to the venue are questions INAM is addressing right now.

The first week of David’s seminar is done and now we’re starting the second phase: a training with mirrors (one for each of us) and candles, with David Verdesi starting the session with chanting and invocation with a ritual phurba in the darkness. It was quite hypnotic and mystical and shamanic.

To me, the training is a great departure from earlier seminars that, more or less, dealt with the development of power. Well, they had aspects of self-cultivation and spirituality, but they were essentially focused on
developing abilities. This time around David is zeroing in on consciousness and the Self and freeing the Mind from cultural, moral and religious restraints, many of them self-inflicted, and taboos.

There is also something else that’s different in the seminars. David is not charging tuition. Payment is on a voluntary basis. He is also taking in students as long a they are interested to learn. There is apparently no prior screening. A woman from Australia whom we met at a restaurant joined the group. An Italian woman who teaches yoga and Pilates joined us, too.

I have just bought a copy of and seen the Emmy Award-winning “The Ring of Fire” DVDs of Laurence and Lorne Blair. If there’s anything as a must-see travelogue, this is it. The narrative is moving and touching, it is difficult to find one like it. The brothers brought to the world the unbelievable Magus of Java film clip, now a part of youtube.com and seen by thousands of viewers. The Ring of Fire they refer to includes countries and places that are volcanic – from Hawaii to Indonesia, Japan to my country the Philippines. There are several active volcanoes on the island where I lived for 30 years – Mayon, Pinatubo and Taal. Mayon is one of the most beautiful volcanoes in the world. Taal is probably the most picturesque of the three: it is a lake within a volcano within a lake within a volcano. You can see some of the photos in my website blog, too. Pinatubo was arguably the most destructive: its lahar buried towns (like my hometown Bamban) around a 100-mile perimeter and belched ashes into the atmosphere that drifted as far as California to the west. It is now a place of desolation, its inferno somehow, in the meantime, tamed to sulphuric landscape.

What is it in Bali that draws seekers and pilgrims (and bums, tourists, and explorers) to her? Down the street and in temples (5000 according to one statistic), you’ll see tourists with their flip-flops, New Age clothes, pendants and tattoos along with pilgrims in native garb. No, I did not see any notices of channeling or promises of ascension and rapture anywhere. There are yoga studios, vegie and detox retreats, Tai chi training and massage centers, Tarot cards and astrology readers. There is the Falun Gong advert inviting everybody to a free lesson.

During my first visit here, I had just come from Java where I saw the famous Magus, John Chang. I had first read about him in a book “The Magus of Java — the Training of a Taoist Immortal” by Kostas Danaos when I was teaching in Amsterdam about 13 years ago. The author said that the Magus could burn paper, move objects, emit electricity from his body. Five years later, I was in Istanbul as the guest of David and I heard him talking to somebody on the phone. “Shifu, Shifu,” David was saying. I asked him, “Who is that?” David said, “The Magus.” “I want to see him,” I said.

A year later, in January 2006, David sent me an e-mail. “Come to Java,” it said. I took the next plane. It brought me to Frankfurt, Singapore and finally Indonesia, where I was picked up at the airport by David and Wedha, a friend. The next day David took me to see the Magus. David asked him to do a little demonstration for me. The Magus put up his right arm and said, “Touch me.” I felt this strong, shocking current of electricity. “That’s 5% of my power,” he said. He did a few other demos for me. He also gave me a successful, but painful, treatment for a rotator cuff injury that nothing – acupuncture, herbs, massage, qigong, laser – could correct. Western medicine required surgery, and even that did not guarantee success. You can read about it in the essay “Thunder Path in Huangshan,” in the Writings section of my website. Many readers of my website have asked me, “Where is David? Where is the Magus?” David has a website; he lives in Bali. The Magus is somewhere in Java.

Wedha, the nephew of the Magus, invited me to Bali to meet an old shaman who could transform himself into a monkey. A skeptic, I wanted to see this incredible phenomenon since a friend told me about seeing a shaman change into an eagle right before his eyes. When Wedha called him, he was told the old man was away.
Wedha took me to meet his relatives, a couple, instead. They lived in a huge compound. At the time they were building a library and museum for their antique collection of batik and other Indonesian arts. They were swimming in their pool when we arrived. We were introduced to each other. The man emerged from the water, shook my hand, and said, “Mr. Navarro, it would be an honor to have you stay with us.” I was supposed to stay in a hotel by the beach, but this was a surprisingly generous offer I could not refuse. I stayed with them for a week. They gave me the use of a car and a driver and a house. Wedha was told to sleep in a couch in the library. I said, “He can stay with me.” They’ve invited me to visit a few times but it was not meant to be.

In January 2012 I was here for the second time to train with David. I wrote about it in my website blog. David took me to see an old shaman, 92 at the time. David was initiated into the fold by the shaman himself. David also took me and others to see a Hindu priest of the fire tradition. One day if I can find them, I’ll post photos of myself receiving a fire treatment. It was elaborate but essentially passing a hot burning chisel over my tongue 9 times in one round; 3 rounds were required in one night. A total of 3 nights. It was considered in the lineage as a ritual of purification, healing and cleansing. Seems absurd from a western viewpoint, but in a world of correspondences, it makes sense: the tongue is the opening and extension of the heart. And what else is more cleansing than fire?

Yesterday, David talked about the taboos, many programmed by religion and culture, some self-imposed, attachments that limit the freedom of the Self to grow and explore. There are people and institutions and morals that try to fit us into a box. What/who is the Self? It’s too long and complicated to summarize here. The essence of it is the Self we or others perceive is often not the real Self. It is just a collection of ideas, memories, experiences. He talked about masters who were basically outcasts, extraordinary people who did not conform.

Last week David took me along to see a couple, healers who have a very interesting history. He brought a Russian whose lumbar spine was shattered from an accident. The man cannot walk, is on wheelchair, has had 3 surgeries and wanted to get healed by the couple. The Balinese healers look like ordinary people. The wife is a devotee of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. I have been one myself since the early 1960s when I studied a Buddhist Shaolin Kung-Fu set called “Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy” with an old Chinese master. One day Guanyin (“she who hears everything”) visited her and touched her big toe. From that time on she had this “electricity” she could not control. Was it kundalini? Perhaps yin-yang gong? Then 3 years ago, with this energy under control, she began to do healing. Her husband was of course jealous of her abilities. She prayed that Guanyin would grant her husband this “power,” too. Now they are doing healing together. I have seen only a few people like them with this strong current, one of them in Java (The Magus), two or three in China (the hermits of Huangshan) and of course David. The current runs and feels like electricity, but it is not. David said it is like radio waves. Water that was infused with it acquired an element that made it sweet.

I was privileged to receive treatment with this “yin-yang gong,” so called because it is supposed to marry the positive and negative in the dantian/field of pills. The couple also allowed me to observe their work and to assist them with the Russian patient in the next few days.

A tantric master, a friend of David, who spent 15 years in total isolation in the mountains has been invited to join us for a few days to share his healing work. That means not only additional materials but also additional hours. David said we may have to stay up past midnight. I guess that’s going to radically limit our night life. Not that I have one.

David promised to take us to see more healers. And of course the mysterious Coconut Man, the master who one day discovered his “powers” when a coconut fell on his head!

Love and Blessings from Bali,

Rene