Is there a conflict between having a clear intention and accepting life just the way it is, or do both go hand in hand together? Our guest today, Wabke Bouman, is sharing her insights with us. My name is Torsten Lueddecke, and this is the Wisdom Qigong podcast. Wabke is a well-known Zhineng Qigong teacher and Hunyuan Qi therapist in the Netherlands. When I asked her what she would like to
talk about, she said, “Well, let’s start with intention.” And I’ve got some thoughts on that. So maybe, Wabke, you would like to share, you know, what your thinking is.Yes, thank you, Torsten. Thank you for inviting me here. Yeah, so you asked me, “What angle can we take on this podcast today?” I’ve been thinking about it, and I thought, “Well, when Zhineng Qigong came my way—because that’s how it
happened…” I was already involved in meditation for about 15 years. I think I practiced it quite intensively. I still practice it, and then Zhineng Qigong came my way. I had been working with someone who was teaching this meditation method, and later on, I was searching, like, “Okay, how can I share this, what I already learned?” And in that searching for how I could share, Zhineng Qigong came my
way. And in Zhineng Qigong, we often say, “Okay, it’s very important to have your intention, to have intention for your practice, for your life, for your projects, for everything.” Ever since I started with it, I felt like a “yes” for it, and at the same time a bit of a doubt, like, “Yeah, how does it work? Does it really work like that?” And when I now look at
this subject, I think it’s both. It’s both good to have an intention, like with an intention. And when it’s really coming from the inside and everything in you decides, “Okay, this is the direction that I want to go in with my life or with my practice,” things open. It’s like a communication with the universe, with life itself, and at the same time, it’s also this opening. Also, in
this opening, it’s letting go, it’s submission, it’s letting, inviting, actually, life, like, “Okay, where does life want to lead me?” So it seems like it’s opposite to each other. It’s like, “Okay, I want to have this direction,” or “I open up to where does life want to take me?” But more and more, I think it’s both—setting this direction, this intention, and opening up. Or, like I heard from
another podcast, a submission. Submission to life, and really also acceptance of everything that’s already here. I understand that, and I think it has a lot to do with how narrow we define intention. If we have a very narrow, concrete intention, we might actually be closing ourselves up to new opportunities and to other ways of getting there. But often now, what we describe as our intention, there is often
an underlying intention that is much broader. So maybe this would kind of resolve the puzzle here—that you can still have your intention, but it might be much broader and underlying than what you initially have formulated. So, for example, if I say my intention is to get to Rome, maybe what I’m really saying is my intention is to get exposed to a new culture and see historical sites. Now,
if I go on the website and look for flights to Rome and I discover there’s a great flight to Cairo, I might just change my plan and go to Cairo because my underlying intention of exploring a new culture is still being met. And I think you’re making a very important point because if we define our intention too narrowly or close down, or don’t see what life brings up
as opportunities, we might actually be missing out and we might be struggling because we are, you know, attached to some very narrow-minded idea rather than the broader underlying force that drives us. Is that kind of, you know, does that kind of make sense to what you’re saying? Yeah, it does. It also reminds me of, for instance, in healing retreats where people come who really have different illnesses. And
often we start actually with, “Okay, what’s your intention for this retreat and for your life?” And people, most of the time, when you’re ill, it’s very logical. They write down, “I want to be healthy again.” That is, of course, very logical to have this intention. And it’s also a good intention. At the same time, it’s important to open up to the richness that sickness can actually also give.
It’s not only like, “Okay, we have to be healthy,” it’s more like, “Okay, can we embrace the richness of life?” And the richness of life is in health, and also, but maybe we get sick and we can learn different qualities within ourselves sometimes. For instance, my mom, she broke her arm a couple of weeks ago, which, of course, she was not happy about. And at the same time,
now that she’s recovering, she tells me, “Well, I learned really that there were so many people who were helping me out, people that I hardly know, that I only know from, yeah, hello in there when you go to the fitness or anything and bye, and have a short chat, but that’s it.” They were helping, like, “Okay, we’ll pick you up,” and things like that. So the break, the
broken arm, was of course not so nice, and of course she also had her intention on recovering again as soon as possible, also made use of Qigong there. And at the same time, accepting what is here at the moment, and embracing, like, “Oh wow! This does enrich me with quite a different experience.” So we have this intention of health, for instance, most of the time a positive intention
that we have, but when we define it too small, we do not open up to the richness of all other possibilities. And I think there’s also the risk that we are still thinking of, “Oh, I’m not doing it well, I’m not good enough, I should be healthy already,” things like that. While with your intention, you put the information there, and then you set out on this journey to
manifest it and have time to develop it, including everything that comes up. And not only like a goal, like, “Okay, when I’m healthy again, then my life is fulfilled,” but till then I’m still not well satisfied or I cannot embrace life so much. I think this is a very important lesson here, Wabke, because how often do we do this, even subconsciously? A bit like, “If I have that,
then I will be happy.” I mean, that is the underlying thought, right? Right. If I have that car, that house, that wife, then I will be happy. Or if I have overcome my illness, then I will be happy. If I get my salary raise, then I will be happy. And what you are promoting here is to say it’s all good and fine to have an intention now to
find a great wife, but along the way, there are so many learnings and so many things to be grateful for, and so many things to enjoy. Even with the example of your mother, which I think is a wonderful example, because during the time while her arm is broken, she is receiving so much care, interest, and support, which is a very heartwarming thing and which will make her happy.
Now, does that mean she wants to run around with a broken arm for the rest of her life? No, of course not. Right. So she can have this intention of healing the arm, but it should not be at the expense of not seeing and enjoying everything else that is happening in her life. And I’ve got an example like this in my family at the moment, where somebody else
is actually exposed to a very serious health challenge, and it kind of doesn’t allow her to see any of the other beautiful things happening in her life at that moment. Because there’s always the thought of, “Yes, but now this, and this is not okay, and I need to solve it.” So all the beautiful things, all the wonderful things happening in her life, she just doesn’t see it anymore.
And that is. Yeah. So I’m glad you make this point because you can have a serious illness or something like that, and yet there are beautiful things happening in your life and yet you can enjoy them, and yet you can have your intention for perfect recovery at the same time. But it doesn’t mean it is only about that, that fulfilled intention. And I think that is the point
you are making here, right? Yes, true, true. And I also think that when you do open up to what is there, what the positive qualities that are already in your life, then you’re also opening up the Qi field, and the possibilities can enhance. There are more possibilities that arise because you open up. As long as we are setting our intention but are not opening up, we do not
see the opportunities. That’s the beauty, I think, of Zhineng Qigong, especially with this Qi field, setting up the Qi field, connecting to the universe and to the Qi field of Zhineng Qigong or to each other or to your projects or to your house or anything. It’s like communication. And it’s a much wider communication than you are consciously aware of. So by accepting what is there and from there,
with setting your intention for, “Okay, this is where I want to go,” you communicate with the universe or with the Hunyuan Qi and then, with life itself. Then life can respond to it. What I experience a lot of times, and I’m quite sure you also have that, is that then there are opportunities that you did not think of before, but that are much greater or much more beautiful
than you could have imagined. It’s important, I think, also to not think like, “Oh, I open up to the blue sky or to the universe, and then the universe has to come back to me and answer me.” This universe can also be the other person who gives me an answer, or the weather, or whatever circumstances there are. It’s all within this communication. When we open up, beautiful things
might happen. Life gets more smooth, more easy, more easygoing. First, because you mind about things and you care about things, but when things change, you can more easily make the change yourself as well, without resistance. And at the same time, for instance, when I set out a new course, teach some teaching, or a retreat or anything, I envision like, “Okay, I want to have this amount of people
in my course.” And of course, I make steps to it. So, okay, I write a newsletter and I put it on my website and on Facebook and everything. At the same time, I somehow communicate like, “Okay, if the universe thinks it’s a good idea to have this course and to have this amount of people, and they can really benefit from my program, then let it be like this.”
It’s amazing how it works because many times it works like that. It’s more or less, sometimes it’s a bit more, sometimes it’s a bit less, but more or less it’s about the figure that I had envisioned. And it’s so, I do put my effort in it, but I also put it in the Qi field and I trust, and that’s also an important subject, I think. Trust. I trust,
like, “Okay, whatever.” However, the Qi field finds these people, let the people who can really benefit from it, let them find this way and my program or someone else’s program, and then I let go. Because it’s one of the aspects that I think Zhineng Qigong can provide: that you let go and trust. So it’s not like trusting in yourself. We have a culture in the West very much
like, “I have to have this self-trust,” but that’s fear, very much in itself. But when we can trust life, there’s this Qi field, or then it’s much wider. Then it’s not so much about me doing good or bad or things like that, but much more like, “Okay, I trust that life is treating me well and I ask it to treat me well,” and then in the Qi field,
it just starts to exist like that. We have a way you can discover Qigong. So, at the Zhineng Qigong Students 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. 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 hear two things in
what you’re saying that I’d like to come back to. One is that you seem to promote here that you’re also not too attached to your intention or to a specific goal because you trust that, you know, the universe or life or whatever will basically bring whatever is best. And that is the second point that I want to make, because in our Western mind, or in our human mind,
we are actually a very arrogant species. We always think we know what is best, while in fact, we haven’t got a clue. So the universe might bring up something completely different, and only later we discover, “Wow, that wasn’t so bad after all.” Right? But we always set out with a certain idea, pretending that we know what’s best, and no, we don’t. This is just an ingrained arrogance, I
think, in our mind. You pointed that out, or you spoke about this in this direction when you said, in our Western culture, it’s about us achieving a certain goal, and we want that because we think this is important and we think this is it. No, it isn’t. Now life is out there, and life will do whatever it does, and we need to be in harmony with life, and
we need to embrace life, and we need to surrender — that’s the word you used earlier — to life. And then we can have it unfold in all its beauty, and we might discover, no, whichever way it takes, it’s actually a wonderful thing. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and it’s also, when you, as an example, a lot of people who have a burnout , there’s lots of people having that,
or also with sickness , many people afterwards, and not at the or in the moment itself. Then it’s just low energy and not so much to enjoy. But many, many people afterwards say, like, okay, it changed my life. I started on a journey, more inward journey, for instance, to discover different qualities within myself. When we start out on life and are not so much involved yet in Zhineng
Qigong, meditation, or self-exploration, we have this goal, like, okay, I have to get this career or certain external, material things that we want to achieve. There’s nothing wrong with that. We can find bliss within that. But for many people, there’s a lot of insecurity at the same time, a lot of thinking going on, and this mind that goes on and on and on, and we cannot stop it
anymore. Other feelings of not being satisfied or searching for something, and many times life has to put the brake on our life first before we really address this topic in ourselves. And then this, you could say, like our first thoughts, our daily thoughts are like shouting more. They are in our face all the time. But when we go inward in Zhineng Qigong or other forms of meditation, it’s
more like a more silent voice within ourselves that, as long as we are in this worldly daily thinking and achieving, this silent voice, we do not hear it anymore. Then, when this silent voice actually calls us, like, “Okay, but I have to.” There’s something different in myself. There’s something different here that wants to be explored and that wants to be, yeah, explored. Then life puts on the break
and, like, okay, stop here. Then it’s the invitation to, what happens when these shouting thoughts, these thoughts, these daily thoughts, when they just die away a bit, and what is the silent voice within? I think Zhineng Qigong is a beautiful way to explore the silent voice, but in a very soft way. It’s also, of course, the voice that tells us, like, there are patterns that we are not
so proud of. We all have these patterns or these hang-ups that we are, we would love to just hide it away, like, oh no, this is not me. But silently, on the inner side, we do have these patterns. Like, okay, yeah, it is like it is. It’s more the silent voice. But the beauty of Zhineng Qigong, I think, is this silent voice gets more heard. You listen to
it, you start to listen to it, but without having to listen to the negative thing of it, just exploring it. Like, oh, wow, there is a different feeling in me. There are different layers of me, which are much more connected, connected already with life, with others, and there’s not so much judgment in it. I can more, and then we come back to accepting or submitting to life itself.
That is the beauty of Zhineng Qigong, I think, and from this subtle voice, when the intention comes from there, it’s different than when it comes from our daily thought, our shouting voice, so to say, our first mindset. I think we all know that the one who is loudest in the room doesn’t always have the most interesting or important thing to say. So and there is a reason why
these voices are so loud, because they are the panicky voices reacting to everything outside in our life while, you know, the more silent voice from within is obviously what we would call the inner self, the core of who we are. This is where the important messages are, but there is no way to listen to that as long as the radio is on full volume because you don’t hear.
You don’t hear it. So you totally have a point when you say Zhineng Qigong is a beautiful method to get there because ideally we don’t need to go into a burnout before, you know, it’s no fun, as you said, and it’s a serious situation, and we don’t want that for us. So anything we can do, and Zhineng Qigong certainly is a path to come to that silent voice
and listen there and find our real underlying intention. Now we are back to the intention because it is coming from the silent voice that is coming from within. Anything we can do can only be greatly supported and encouraged. So, Wabke, you mentioned the word trust earlier. I know this is a concept, an idea that many people struggle with or misunderstand or don’t know how to use it, because
trust is not something you can force upon yourself. Just like love. You can’t say, you have to love that person or, you know, or you have to trust this. Trust and love are not things you can force. So please explore a little bit what your thoughts are on this trust. Yeah, trust is something that I think many people are searching for. We have a world, especially in the
West, but I think worldwide also, which is more and more only directed at. We have to be safe, we have to get vaccinated, we have to have big cars so we can drive safely. We have to, in the Netherlands, we have a culture of biking. Now there’s the discussion, oh, we have to get helmets on so we do not fall or we do not get hurt. Of course,
there’s much to say. It’s nothing bad about it, but I think our culture and our media are very much trying to get us into this position of fear of not trusting, because fear sells. It’s something that, of course, I buy that helmet or that big car or anything like that, and it’s out of fear. Many things we do out of fear. That’s something that’s so, well, it’s, how
do I say that? It touches my heart, you know, like, oh, I would love to have more people like, okay, trust, trust. Again, we are, and it’s also, we are much trying to control life, controlling everything. Then trying. Yeah, and that way we have to, then we can more or less trust as long as it’s in our controlled borders. But I think when we relax and when in
relaxation already there is a lot of trust because when I do not trust anything, I cannot relax. When we relax and when we put our Qi field, when we communicate again with the Qi field, with the blue sky, with the universe, then we can gradually start to trust life itself again. It’s something that is gradually, it takes time. But by going back to this relaxation again and again
and going back to this connection to the blue sky or the universe, to the Qi field, we can gradually increase this trust. Because I think life is trying to give us the best it can. It’s not so much that life is putting all these obstacles in there, but there’s, it’s almost more like going into religious thoughts. But I think life is really a very. When you see the
life in the spring, when it comes out, the new life coming, the new birth, it’s so joyful and somehow we have to trust that life is not only this birth, but it’s also the death. So when we trust life, it’s this whole cycle that we start to accept again. Like okay, life is not only the thing that we can control and that we have to make and, but
it’s much more like okay, what is life actually and what is being human actually? And then we can, yeah, we come back to our inner self, to this more silent voice, what we talked about. And from there we are much more in connection. And when we are connected, when we feel connected in this one or in this Qi field, then we can relax and then we can trust
again. So it’s like a self-evolving cycle. Like, okay, I can relax. By relaxing, I feel more connected. By feeling more connected, I can more trust and by trusting I can become more relaxed again. So it’s strengthening each other, but also the other way. Like okay, when I do not relax, I keep on fighting with life and with everything that is in my life or whether it’s it. And
it doesn’t matter whether it’s my personal thoughts or emotions or it’s something outside, whatever I’m fighting with, both inside or outside, it’s the same. It gives me stress, my body has more tension and then the energy cannot flow anymore. So okay, we relax, connect and we trust. Now the one thing, the one thing that is constantly bombarding our trust. It’s the issue that when you say we start
fighting something, it is judgment. Judgment is the one thing that will make sure we don’t have trust. Because if we judge everything that life brings up, this is good, this is bad, then we are, yeah, there is no trust. So this brings me back to the arrogance I brought up a little earlier. If we stop that and we just observe life and say, you know, it’s no matter
what comes up, it’s always good. It’s fine, because this is life, just as you said, there’s birth and there’s death. If we start to put a label and say, birth is great, yeah, death is awful, ooh, then, yeah, we are in this cycle of judgment. And then we will judge everything along the way, and we will constantly be in resistance. And obviously we won’t trust, because if something
bad happens or that we call bad label bad, our trust is broken. Now, how can the universe do that to me? How can I trust the universe if this is happening to me, while really we have no idea where the whole thing is going, what the universe bigger plan is, maybe doesn’t even have a plan. It’s just a continuous cycle of a birth and death, and new things
coming up, and that’s fine. That’s good. That’s what things. How things are, and we can totally surrender to that basic idea and trust that. So I also loved how you. How you are not speaking about trust, a specific thing or a specific method or a specific person. You were talking about trust in life in general. That is important because if I put my trust in someone or in
something, it’s easy to say, “Oh, my God, they didn’t react or expect the way I wanted them to. This is why I don’t trust them or this anymore.” No, it’s not about this. It’s really about trusting life in itself. So I’m glad we brought up this point because I know this is a very interesting thing to explore, and I think it deserves maybe an additional podcast one day
where we just look at the whole trust issue and what does trust really mean? All right, I don’t want to keep you much longer. Wabke. That was really beautiful. Is there anything else you would like to add where you feel like, oh, I would like to explore this a little more. We touched on it briefly, but there’s more I would like to say about that. Just one short
thing, also still on this trust subject. Because this week I’ve been thinking about, okay, what are we going to talk about? About. And things like that and this morning, actually, I woke up with. I started my day with the thing like. Okay, it is judgment that is against trust. It’s so subtle, and it’s actually in every moment that we think, like, life should be different than it is.
I think when we can change that, like, okay, really accept, like, okay, this is how life is. No good, no bad. This is how life is, and then we already have much. We win a lot, and we can enrich our lives. From where life is, this is how life is, and from here, when we come back to our initial subject, from intention. From here, I can put my
intention out. Okay. From here, when I’m where I am now at this moment, I can say like, okay, “I’m going to do my Qigong exercises because I want to be healthy or I want to fight.” Whatever your intention with the Qigong exercises. So it’s really accepting what it is and setting out this intention for the direction you take. Having this clear intention helps to actually, in every moment,
make a choice. Like, okay, sometimes in the morning I wake up and I do my meditation, and I feel like I’m not. I’m not feeling like meditation. Just let me do something else or watch my phone or anything. Okay. Oh, and I see my intention. Ah, no, no, no. My intention is that I do my Qigong exercises, for instance, or my meditation, because that’s the direction that I
want to take. So, yeah, that’s. That’s the two parts that I wanted to. Great, and I want to come back to the first part because many, many, many years ago, I wrote a little paper called the “Cause of All Unhappiness.” It’s exactly about what you were saying, because the cause of all and any unhappiness is us wanting that life does something different or that someone does something different
or that I am something different. If we don’t have that, if we no longer resist that and just accept, this is life, this is the other person, this is me, there is no unhappiness. It is always only based on our judgment that we would like. We would like life to show up different, but guess what? Life doesn’t care. Life will do whatever it does, whether we resist it
or not. So we can as well let go of this judgment and let go of all this unhappiness and misery and, yeah, just look at what is beautiful and then live happily ever after. So it sounds a little bit like a fairy tale now. So, thank you very much, Wabke, for joining me on this very exciting podcast journey today. I wish you all the luck. Of course, we
are putting all your details below in the show notes, so I encourage everyone who resonated with what you’ve said to be in touch and to see what you offer and how you can support people on their journey. Thank you very much Thank you. Thank you, Torsten. 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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