According to my guest today, Maarten Van Opstal, true healing means liberating yourself from any burden. While on his own path to healing, he wondered whether this burden had any connection to his long family line. While it seems obvious that we have inherited our ancestors’ genes, it might also be true that we are carrying their stories, their dramas, their talents, and their energies. Let’s hear what he has to
say. My name is Torsten Lueddecke, and this is the Wisdom Qigong Uncovered podcast. Maarten is quite well known in the community because he’s been very active running various activities, helping many people through difficult times. I think it was during COVID when we had a lot of things happening on your Qi channel, where you were sharing Qi lectures from various teachers with people, and that’s why a lot of
people know you. I thought today we start a little bit with your own personal story and then move to a question that you raised in our pre conversation and that is something like, you know, if somebody heals after the healing, what is a perfect life to them? So I suggest we start with you, I’ll just start with your personal story and then we kind of move into that,
into that question. Starting with my personal story. So maybe in the last, the last part of what you said, what is a perfect life for me? You know, I’m 57 at this moment, so I feel I’m getting closer to the completion of the first life, and this for me is the perfect life. I mean when I get to 60 years of living, then I will have completed according
to what Chinese say, a one life cycle, complete life cycle. So if you think back about, how about these different years? So let’s say 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and before 10 and even before birth, it’s much, it’s too much to share. But each different time zone, let’s say time part has a specific meaning to everyone’s life. So everyone can relate to the 20 year old person, 30
year old person and so on. So at this moment what comes together in my life, let’s say is living partly in Italy, which is as you mentioned before we started. Do you enjoy living there? I’m living my dream in a way. Since I was 5 years old, I was the child who climbed everything. Even when I was 2, they had to pick me off the beach because I
was climbing something there. I’ve always been climbing mountains, anything that involves natural living. So, when I say that now, at this moment, I feel like I’ve realized something: together with my wife and our dog, we live very close to the wilderness. It’s a very unknown area of Italy, right near Switzerland. This area is called Valgrande, which means “great valley” or something like that. It’s very rough, very tough,
and I prefer that side. When I look outside my window, I see the picturesque city of Stresa, which is a bit old-fashioned but also very modern in its Italian style of living. So, on one hand, my dream is to live in a place that is connected to nature. The other side is to be active, which means I can practice my body. This is very close to becoming Qigong.
Also, if I have friends, I can go to the more social parts. I also like social life. My life has been full of social activities, but I’ve been deprived of them due to illness. My dream is to go back to a place where I can do this. So I’m also living partly in Belgium. This is where I do most of my sharing of my experience, teaching my work.
So this is in a short, short way to tell where it come to this moment is to be able to have the mental, emotional and physical, of course, capacity, capability to realize this at this moment. So a healing story, you know, my whole life has been full of healing, has been full of working. And it’s only recent, really recent. The last few months, I feel great gratitude from
the heart, and I feel, you know, when you talk about spleen or talk about body, everything comes back to the body. For the first time since a very long time, maybe childhood, I feel like I’m home in my body. So regardless of the damage, the things that have been happening due to medical stuff, the desires I have to continue to live, even with kidney failure, it doesn’t matter
right now. It’s just being grateful, feeling the gratitude, feeling a deeper peace within. So yeah, healing exists as it is on my personal part, and being able to share that with others makes it meaningful. Meaningful. Okay, that’s it. Yes. So you spoke about the kidney failure that you were experiencing. Is that kind of the main issue you had to deal with in your life, or are there other
things, and how did you go about solving these issues with Zhineng Qigong? Okay, so there’s actually two aspects or two questions in one. One is what is the, let’s say, the foundation of my physical life? And due to, or let’s say my personal study, I have, I have gone backwards in my life and even generations back, even two, three, four generations back. So again, as a child, I
was already interested in, what about my parents, about my grandparents, about their parents. And I was the youngest in both my families as a child, and also the 60th grandchild in the two bloodlines coming together. So this is a large family. So this made me always looking backwards or up to the people before me. So this came after, not only before, also after I was diagnosed with kidney
failure. I became even more interested in the, let’s say, genes, you know, genetic DNA, also in the epigenetics. So it means what influences one’s health, you know, one’s physical health. But to be honest, the physical health is just—it is, you know, like you have a body, your feet are maybe size 45, 44, your eyes have a color, you have a certain way of moving, and often you are
referred to as, you act exactly like your grandfather or your grandmother or the aunt of so much. This means we receive the body from our ancestors genetically. This we cannot change. So when I rose above, let’s say, the physical aspect of kidney failure, it helped me to look beyond the disease as a medical problem. It helped me to accept a certain… no, it helped me accept my body.
So I was only ready at a certain point when they put a needle inside my back to say, “This is a piece of kidney we’re going to take.” I knew I’d live without kidney replacement therapy. This was back in ’98. So when I was lying in the hospital, I realized my life, from my physical point, was more or less finished because I needed to do something else with
my body to keep myself alive. So it was very much physically focused, but at the same time, physically, I also realized that I cannot think, I cannot feel, experience life without my body. So the body became like something to exercise, something to train. After I received a transplant, I became very enthusiastic, very driven to go into business again. I was an organizational advisor at that moment, and I
had some successes. I went to South Africa, I went to Mozambique, I went to places where not many people go, especially not with a kidney transplant. So when I started building my physical strength again, immediately I was confronted with the mental and emotional mirror of what happened. And so being a psychologist, I had an advantage as a psychologist. My clients referred to me as, “Your business aspect is
good, but your personal aspect is much better.” So this is how I moved slowly, slowly into psychology, into sharing experiences from the energy level, emotional level, and I had big confrontations at that time with my physical health. Because medical treatment cannot help you regain your health, even if you have full health, you know, like everything at 100%. I realized that there was a big risk. So I needed
to go back to what the meaning of my life was. And so I was just talking 20, 30, 40. I was already in my 40s when I met Qigong teachers. So Zhineng Qigong has played an incredibly important part in my life. Let’s say the teachers played an important part in my life, but I already had 40 years of experience in life. So this is different than the teachers
who of course went to, to colleges at 18 or younger tradition. But nevertheless, I picked up the knowledge. I realized this was my way to go, and also I realized to integrate to awareness. So to create mind, emotion, body cannot separate. They’re always one. If you’re just talking about energy, energy is just, you know, modality, you know, like electricity. But Qi, wow, I couldn’t, I couldn’t repeat what
the teachers were saying. When Yuantong Liu was talking to me, one part was I couldn’t reproduce anything. So I said, “Oh no, I know what he’s talking about,” and then I started to try to explain, and I couldn’t. It just went all in. It was just a time to absorb Zhineng Qigong in my beginning forties and so on. We have a way you can discover Qigong. So, at
the Zhineng Qigong Student Hub, we know that understanding Qigong is very important and also that Zhineng Qigong in itself has various nuances that people can’t easily comprehend. So, we’ve approached it in the style of a video game. On this page, discover Qigong, you can select your character. So, you can either be a beginner, a practitioner, or a holistic healer or self-healer. And you click on your character, and
it takes you to these different sections. In these sections, you can explore the nuances, and when you click on a card, all of the resources pop up. We’ve made it really fun, and not many people know about it. So, if you are interested, have a look and discover Qigong. I think it’s very interesting how you describe your journey because it seems that initially, when you were confronted with
the bodily issues, you did separate your body from your mind and from your emotions. And it is like, oh, I have to do something with my body now in order to heal the body. And then later on the emotional side and the mental side came up and you dealt with them. It seems that through Yuantong Liu and Zhineng Qigong, you realize. No, it’s all one and in a
way. You know, I remember when you started the conversation, you said, this is the first time in my life where I actually. How did you put it? “Where I live fully in my body,” or something like that. I’m not sure whether I’m quoting you correctly. So it seems that, you know, after all those years, it has finally come together as one, accepting the whole. Is that fair to
say? Yes. Okay, cool. Yes. The living in the body means I have fully accepted my body. I fully accepted the curses, the blessings, everything that came with my conception. This is a part that came later. So first with Zhineng Qigong, then I met another teacher, a Taoist master from China, who lives in the United States. And one piece I couldn’t figure out, I just couldn’t figure out, and
it was the relationship I talked about before with the ancestors. Right? How the ancestors are part of our body. You know, we know from people who have lived through slavery four generations ago, they still feel what happened four generations ago. So I wasn’t used to that. I didn’t grow up in such a situation, but I had many reasons to go back and understand their lives. And not only
their lives, but what I realized is that their qualities, you know, their personal qualities of each father, mother, great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother, and so on—so 14 in total—are actually very well connected to the qualities of our energy being. This I probably have to explain further on because maybe it’s too big a subject. But it’s a big subject to replace your ancestors into an energy. I’d like to hear about it,
because what you said initially is something I think that all of us can understand. When you said, when you’re given your body, and for example, I’ve got blue eyes, they don’t come out of nowhere. They come through my ancestors. So if we take this idea, then it’s not too far fetched to say that we’re also carrying out other things from our ancestors in our, you know, in our
life and in who we are. So I think it’s a great topic and I’d love to hear more about it from you and how you see that, please. Okay, so to give you a little bit of an idea, and I give it from my. Because we started from my personal perspective as a, as a healing story. I think the, the true healing for everyone for anyone is, you
know, to liberate yourself from any burden. You know, if you still have the backpack with stones, if you feel at this moment in your life, you’re just sitting, talking, you still feel, I’m. I’m doing a lot of work. I cannot free myself, I cannot feel happy, I cannot feel without any reason to feel joyful or grateful, I always need to do something. So it always involves action, you
know, energy plus action. So we need to be able to feel yourself free. For some people, it’s very difficult because they always carry the burden. So this burden, how can we liberate ourselves from it? I spent a lot of time on the bloodline story, you know, bloodlines, ancestor genes, talking about this, and then I realized that when we, when we always would do something, we use, you know,
we use the hands. For example, is it my hand that I use, or is it the hand of my grandfather or grandmother? You know, if you always like to do physical work, there’s a good chance that the physical work comes from an ancestor who liked to work as well with their hands. Artists, for example, you know, oh, now I know, because my grandmother was also interested in painting
or something like this. So our hands, they are very related what we. To our mind. So also our mind is very what we think, how we behave, what we feel, our emotions are all related to what happened before. Before. So I don’t have children, so I’m not going to pass anything like blessings or curses to the next generation. The good thing is I don’t need to. So I
am free to do what I want to do. It means I have to solve any problem I have in my life, myself, or any good thing. Any celebration. Normally you go celebrate with your children or your family. We do it together. We have a small group. But the interesting part is, and this may be referring to the Zhineng Qigong community, there was once a teacher who said to
me, I went away. It’s a big teacher, you know, like hundreds of people go to his retreats in China. He said, once I went away from my family and I went to the Zhineng Qigong community, I realized, oh, this is my real family. This is where… Because I asked, “Why don’t you go back to your family? What happened?” It was a difficult question, and he said, well, basically,
the family story is very difficult, complicated. So when we feel liberated in our community, we feel free to be who we are. This is also all the qualities you receive and give in this community are still related to your ancestors because maybe you know, one grandmother, she had an unfortunate life or she had a great grandfather who, you know, there was war, there was famine, there was maybe
happened to them, happened something which has changed their desires the way and to be free in themselves. This was given through generational generation to the next generation. So I know this sounds very, very deep and very far-fetched, but it’s very immediate, you know, like what do you feel when you do something? If you take a decision, how do you take the decision? Is it very easy to take
the decision, or do you have to pass the board? You know, the board of invisible people that you have inside yourself, or maybe the friends that represent this quality that help you to build confidence, the trust in your life. And I realize that this trust, many people lack. They don’t have the trust because they cannot find this group or community. That’s why the community of Zhineng Qigong or
any other community you might have is very important. And to add one more thing, originally we lived in family structures, you know, like in Africa, big family structures. So everyone is being taken care of in their own, when they’re sick, when they’re healthy, when they’re young, when they’re old. This we have lost. So we need to find a way and the people around us that build this structure
for us to be able to live a, let’s say, a good life. Yes. Now, when you talk about the communities and you mentioned the Zhineng Qigong community as an example, and that this kind of takes the role of the family structure that we used to have in former times. Would you say this is because you share certain things with the community? Or is it because, you know, like
one of the characteristics of Zhineng Qigong is the idea of open heart, open mind, which means we are very accepting and it means we are, you know, open to understand you. No matter where you come from and how you are. We welcome you with an open heart. Or why would you think, you know, that the Zhineng Qigong community, in your case, plays such an important role and not,
you know, some local football club or something like that? But that’s the whole thing. It can be anything, you know, even if you live in nature, the nature becomes your community, so it has no form. But as soon as it becomes a form, it often reminds us of patterns we had in the past. Right. So we open ourselves to others or we say as a group, we say
welcome in our group. This resembles a lot about, how we were received in our own family. You know, our conception, which is the most determining moment of our life, takes place four years before we even, you know, have any, any awareness or any thinking about it. But a lot. The most important growth is between conception, in the first six months of growth, because then we get our body.
That’s where, when our body is, so the whole body is already completed before we are even aware of it, and this is not just a body; it also includes the emotions. Like through Qigong, we know, or Chinese TCM, we know vital organs, emotions, elements, colors, anything that comes to our feeling body, let’s call it a feeling body. So when we are accepted by the community, it means something
can connect. Qi, you know, Qi is connection. You know, it’s just energy flowing. When it flows, oh, we feel okay. Maybe I want to spend some time with this family, with this community, but it pays off to reflect. What is the quality of this connection? I mean, not like a high or low, but I mean, what is exactly what you’re getting turned on? You know, why do I
get excited, or why do I suddenly feel so sad or angry, or to… study the deeper layers of the emotions to the vitality of our life. This is a, it’s a long work, you know, before you realize what, where do my lungs come from? What is the emotional sadness? And where did it connect? In the back, in the, in the background or backwards? Sometimes we think it’s because
of me. Most of the time, you know, we like to, to say it’s, it’s to me, it’s, I’m the one who’s going to do. But many emotions, they go back to hundreds of years. They’re still in our body. They still have the residue of what happened or famine or hunger or war. You know, that goes back maybe to the 1600s, you don’t know. This makes life spectacular, surprising,
a wonder, a miracle. The only thing we need to do is work, because that’s Qigong. We need to do the work, to go through all the emotions, to go through all the physical and emotional, and to go beyond this. If you can go beyond is always said by many teachers, go beyond, you know, like standing for two hours like this and then experience everything. But always have the
blue sky Qi feel. How many minutes can I stand like this without thinking, you know, without starting to, the ego starting to say, oh, you know, lower your arms now. So how, how much time of the two hours can we spend beyond. So this means true liberation. It’s very safe because it’s Qigong. It’s not dangerous to the body because it’s not dangerous to the psyche even. Because when
we want to stop, we will stop. When we think it’s dangerous, when it’s painful, we will stop. At least with Qigong training, we can say pain that is good, pain that’s not good, you know. So through the Qigong energy, Qi, through the relationships we have with, around, and within, flowing or not flowing or opening, we realize something very special. And that is that, without even really knowing why,
suddenly the emotions start changing into a positive one. Even the sadness, you know, crying with a smile, a little bit of anger is good because it motivates us. Are you getting more anger? Okay, do a practice. It takes six hours for the body to settle down. Okay, more acceptance. So even without really knowing exactly what happened in that time, but it pays off to study. Where do you
come from? Where’s my emotion come from? Where’s my… What can I do? The reason I say it is because you can become more conscious, aware, free. The body, I cannot change, but I know now that I can change. I can do something very powerful. Yes. Now, we don’t always have the possibility to know enough about our ancestors to know that, three generations away, maybe my grandma had to
go through hardship because of a famine or something like that. For example, in my family, I can hardly go one generation or two generations backwards because I don’t have the information. So I think it’s great to explore that, and wherever you can find out something about the family that can be very useful because it might resonate. Then you see, okay, well, maybe this is where my emotion comes
from. This is why I sometimes feel like it. But again, you know, not all of us have the possibility to go very far. So what you’re suggesting here, also with Qigong exercises, and you were mentioning an exercise like Three Centers Merge, where you’re just standing for two hours and basically whatever comes up, comes up, and your emotions and so on, it is by dealing with these emotions and
being very accepting that you might also let go of things that are not your own or that you haven’t acquired in your own lifetime. Let me put it like this. They are your own because you got them from your ancestors, but you haven’t necessarily acquired them in your lifetime. They can be coming, you know, from past generations, right? Yes. So yeah, from what you say, there are two
things, you know, first of all, resonating that word I remember. Second is to go back, not to blame your ancestors. You know, this is the opposite. But it often happens that we, if we’re not aware, you know, unconsciously we start to blame, maybe not even your ancestor. Maybe you start blaming a neighbor or somebody passing in the street instantly. This is also related to where do you come
from? What is my bloodline? Also, you said, I don’t know my generation before, so how can I connect? So some people, this, there’s, you know, you have methods, techniques. Qigong is just a technique. You go back to the ancestor, meditate on the, on your ancestor that you didn’t know. Not everybody, not everybody. fourteen, you know, seven on your, on your father’s side, seven on your mother’s side. Maybe
you were present when you had your conception. I mean present in the, in your, in your bloodline. Maybe didn’t the genes didn’t express themselves through all of them. Probably just nine or at least two, you know, at least two because the two bloodlines come together. So when you say I don’t know them, at least you can use a technique to go back. I remember very well when I
was in China. I was in Maishan with Master Liu. We did a meditation on this, even going back before you were born, before conception. So it means a lot, it means a lot to Chinese traditional knowledge. They say honor your ancestors. Maybe you’ve heard this before, you know, especially Taoist, they say honor your ancestors. By honoring, what is the meaning? You know, like, do we, do we go
out and go to the grave, or do we go out to do a ceremony? Yeah, maybe for you that’s working. I don’t know. For me, I use a very simple method. Just use my Qigong knowledge, and then went past, I passed. Either each ancestor went back to a great grandmother, great grandfather, whatever their in-laws, you know, how they were married. And I came up with a number of
ancestors that I was sure they were playing some role in my life, either through blessing or maybe less positive. But, you know, it’s just energy, it doesn’t make any difference. So your, what you say resonate is very important. If it, if it resonates, it means you still have the connection, you still have the energy. So even if you’re living now, you might be experiencing something that happened then,
which is the resume which resonates within your life. So this is very important because when you have this feeling, when you bring it back to the core, it’s just energy. So how much energy time do I spend on living my life for my ancestors or free myself from something that happened in the past? This only anyone for himself or herself can answer. Through Qigong learned one important lesson
is to take full ownership. You know, ownership you can, you cannot blame, you cannot be feel. If you feel guilty all the time, which is not. What is the. What is the use of feeling guilty all the time? What’s the use of feeling shame, ashamed? It’s just not feeling free. But no one is going to tell you how to liberate yourself from this. So this is taking full
ownership to the core, to the deepest practice. How many hours do I need practice to go back to my owning my life? Yes, that was a very interesting talk, Maarten. I think we went on quite a journey, and I think it’s the first time that, you know, I actually had a guest here using these ideas of what the influence of my ancestors is on me, on my life,
and who I am. So that was very, very valuable, and I’m sure our audience has enjoyed it a lot. So, I’d like to thank you, Maarten, for being our guest today. And yes, and I wish you that you, you know, continue creating this beautiful life you have in Italy right now with your wife and your dog. And I’m sure we’ll stay in touch and maybe there’s an opportunity
for another podcast very soon. Thank you very much, Torsten, and have a good day. Thank you. We trust you enjoyed this conversation and we invite you to subscribe to our podcast so we can stay in touch and notify you of future episodes. We will end today’s episode with the Eight Verses Meditation performed by Zhineng Qigong teacher Katrien Hendrickx. Enjoy. To get your free ebook on the Eight Verses
Meditation, please check the show notes below.
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