About

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I'm David welcome to my website.  I've spent the last 20 years involved in the field of energetic medicine. I realised, quite early that health isn't something that can be studied, taught or practiced but is in fact the body's own instinct to wholeness, that was my interest. Very early on in life we are totally natural, we move and express naturally. However, very quickly in the dynamic of standing-up, energy rushes up to the head and there becomes an over focus on the mind and senses. This quickly creates a unique problem for the human animal in that we lose our naturalness, becoming a decidedly different and alien creature relative to everything else around us. 

Most of the time we have to find ways of re-entering the natural, so everything I have become interested in are ways of remembering or re-sensing something that we lost in early childhood, this too is the quality of not feeling separate from the world around us. 

Health from the old English; hǣlth, means "whole", so there is a feeling of brokenness/ separateness in all dis-ease processes that define a person's identity. The identity acts like a resistor in a circuit. It impedes natural expression and flow of energy. When that feeling of separateness shifts, even for a moment, people spontaneously recover or spontaneously allow the body to do what it does without resistance. From this, my interest became about relaxation and how the deepest forms of that relaxation can take place and how people can return to their senses, guided by their own innate reflex to be free of the feeling of separation. This is a process of re-discovery or remembering, the courses I provide, my love of Qi Gong (Nei Gong/ Dao-yin) and Tai Chi and information I have gleaned helps to trigger the senses to return. All aspects of what I do come from this same source, just seen from numerous different angles.

This website offers several things; 

-  Firstly this website provides a place I can offer online and person-to-person consultation in "innate-health recovery" where through one or a number of sessions I can aid you to find your way to your own instinctive  patterns of diet, movement, relating, career/ work and everything in between . I call this process "instinct-mirroring". This has been the focus of my own journey into finding resolution of my own issues as well as hundreds of others, so the recommendations I make now are honed.

-  Secondly, it is a portal that I may run a number of online courses from. The courses have been created over many years of study and practice. They are all energetic "maps" to help you navigate through a number of different subjects, all associated with a return to the instinctive and away from the tension based religious and scientific world we live in. The nature of what I offer is sense based energetics, it may seem that there is allot of information offered in the courses but this information is all about finding a way back to sensing, if we can do that already there is no need for further investigation. These courses are for those of us who find it hard to navigate the world as it is at the moment where instinctive-energetics is mostly not given the time of day.

-  Thirdly this website is a place I can connect the other parts of my interests together. I teach Tai Chi and Nei Gong/ Dao-yin and am also forming community projects. 

-  Lastly this website offers my books, links and other information of people that the work I do or interests I have are connected to. I am extremely rigorous in the links I have  so I hope you find further study and interest and this site becomes a hub for anything that resonates with a return to instinct.

While I write my story here for anyone interested, I do so not attempting to validate it. It's just an expression of a struggle to find solace from the one root addiction; that of "myself". A battle that "I" will  always loose because instinctively something feels, that there isn't actually anyone to fight.

I was born in september 1978. My father had multiple sclerosis from before my birth and this was a huge factor of difficulty in my life, but also something that has allowed me to see many things I never would before in the process of attempting to understand dis-ease and my own depression. I found that I had practical skills with craft work and interests in music, but my drive delivered by my family's situation was very much towards medicine. I went towards Chinese medicine after finding the philosophy of Yinyang something that helped me out of a depressive breakdown time during my late teens. After this I focused heavily in healing, getting confused as to whether it was I that needed healing or focusing on others. I had always been a carer since I was a toddler to my father, so the carer-healer job seemed to fit. I started practicing Tai Chi at nineteen, then food energetics and shiatsu and started to learn Xuan Kong Feng Shui and I Ching at this time. I also connected to the message of radical non-duality via UG Krishnamutri from age eighteen through my brother's research, which profoundly touched me and still does now via Tony Parsons. It is a message totally different from all self-enquiry, Advaita Vedanta and other teachings which seem similar but aren't. Something beyond "me" knows this is the message of Tao/ Nature. 

The skills I'd learned improved and I started a practice and started treating people. I then decided to study further; acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. After realising that many of the pictures of medicine I had learned were confused by misinterpretations and separations through the history of Chinese medicine, I went to Tokyo to study for three years in apprenticeship to small lineage of the key line of Chinese medicine transmitted through the Zen monasteries to the modern practitioners of "Meridian Therapy". The lineage I found there was as close as there is to the ancient medicine of the Han dynasty, the root of Chinese medicine, where there is a uniform and connected origin that is complete and based in instinctive understanding.

While this picture of medicine was clarified for me , the practice of Chinese medicine is a process of gradual deepening over time and quality and quantity of practice. I understood the direction to follow if I wanted to have uniform success in treating patients. On returning to the UK I started my own practice again and documented a combination of what I'd learned and what was a result of personal research into several books over a seven year period. 

I continued to practice Tai Chi and Qi Gong (focused on Nei Gong) having had contact with advanced practitioners who came to Japan to teach. This practice was deeper than what I had been doing previously in the UK. 

After some time I hit the biggest wall I have faced in my life; that of extreme grief from the death of my father and then my partner from breast cancer. The effect of both these events began the process of the last six years of my life which was about me finally realising that I had never been shown or given a way to really look at the pain I was carrying emotionally. 

I went towards various forms of herbal medicine treatment that I hoped would alleviate my "depression" (which I later discovered was titled Caregiver's Syndrome and burnout;  patterns based around chronic stress). Many of these treatments were psychotropic plant medicines. I felt like I needed something that would simply help me to overcome years of grief that had mounded up due to my life circumstances. I experienced many states on these medicines, but really only once that was so profound it broke the identity I had of myself as a carer, something that was with me from before my earliest memory. It was devastating, and I was in an extremely vulnerable state which I did not realise until a long time afterwards.  Also because of the fact that most of the people associated with the medicines I was in connection with, had very little or no experience with traditional herbalists, root energetics and so knew little of the plants they were using, there was very little understanding of my state and more just a hope for the best.  In a very open state and drawn into this seemingly magical world of the "plant medicine community", I was encouraged by various people to use my abilities again and so I moved quickly back into a role of carer/ helper and healer, so bypassing the pain I had; a pattern I had done all my life. Without the base energetics of indigenous methods I encountered whole host of problems over the next few years leaving me and others totally unprotected.

During this time I investigated herbal medicine cultures. My interest in this was to find root non-dual energetic understanding. This simply means the instinctive knowledge of plants or herbalism, which relates to some of the earliest uses of these plants and an understanding that later may have been re-interpreted with religious connotation, but nevertheless have a sound energetic basis. The ceremonial preparations of many indigenous herbal medicine cultures can seem religious. It is often like that even to the people creating the ceremony, but the practices themselves have an energetic foundation far more ancient which has less dualistic abstraction and are vital to understand the plants' natural energy and also to understand how to be safe using them. One might describe this as foundational energetic structure. In Chinese medicine I spent many years sifting through allot of pseudo-religious and scientific obstructions to finally find the energetic unity at the foundation of the medicine. When one is looking for this energetic basis it often about observation and listening and looking and getting a sense of what is going on in a situation or ceremony energetically, not what it looks like superficially. Religion is dualism of good-bad, not instinctive and science is a modern day religion of the "known"; intellectually to "know" is good, mystery is "bad" so it too creates its own dualism. Energetics is between and surrounding these, it is neither science nor religion and therefore is a point of connection to life that has a purity, that is natural, instinctive and free of prayer or intent. We have often lost touch with this sense and the use of these plants can help to reconnect but at the same time they can be "used" rather than listened to, there is a huge difference. Often we have to remember how to listen before we can really connect.

In my time in the groups of people using specific herbal medicine, much of what I saw was people creating their "style" from their own belief systems so forming their own “tribe” or “cult” if you like. This suited them and often became something of a group who all had the same beliefs, like cleeks at school. When a person is seen to have  a smattering of knowledge of another culture, in their own land this makes them an expert, where as in reality they are a novice.  I saw allot of "kings" creating "kingdoms" of their own brand of culturally appropriated medicine without very much actual engagement with the herbalism and root energetics of what was going on because of such little connection with the source place and its people. 

The problem I felt was that the basis of these groups were not based on a unified feel of energetics nor of observation and real sensitivity of the passed on herbalism and energetic foundations of ceremonial work but instead it came from an innocent-arrogant drive to form one's own “style” or way that was like a particular flavour that you may or may not like. This was not centred around participants needs but the practitioners ego. What is often missing in the modern west is the sense that understanding subtle energy takes time and listening and also being with the people that have foundational structures to work with. If this is bypassed it leaves people open to be hurt either physically or psychologically. If one believes one knows when one doesn’t, this in itself is a precarious foundation to begin with. Also if one teaches that same message, there is a whole lineage of people that will do as they wish in the name of a seeming "liberated celebration of individuality", which tends to follow ego rather than following the energetics of the nature of the plant itself. Energetic understanding takes time and guidance often of the herbalists within indigenous peoples who are most in touch with it, and these individuals take time to seek out as there are many dead ends/ guru-sharmans in that arena too. Our modern culture likes speed not slowness, to speak and not listen, likes to tell and not hear, likes to show and not absorb and likes to advise, not hear advice. As a result many complication do and have occurred. This was/ is my observation.

I started to find and ask questions to people with actual experience and realised that the people I trusted themselves did not understand the key basics of working with the herbal medicines they used and so put me and others at risk, psychologically and otherwise. At that time I even believed that somehow forming a community around these plants, which did alleviate the depression for short periods, would be a good move. However these ideas gradually crumbled as I felt a deeper and deeper discomfort at the emotional pain I had been unable to let go of because of the rekindling of the carer role. I realised that while these herbal medicines in natural-authentic context could be powerful openers, the confusing roller-coaster ride of the modern "plant medicine" world was another addictive behavior plus an avoidance  of the roots of issues, which I realised, was something I and many others around me were doing, but could not see. Also the total lack of understanding of integration from such work was astonishing, including the complex requirements and time length for each person involved, especially for people with a lifetime of repetitive or chronic stress/ trauma. Once I saw these things, I couldn't continue. Looking back on this there is no blame, but simply the fact that ignorance and arrogance of the modern ideology is something that means listening to the sincere advice of original herbal medicine cultures or even the instincts of sensitive people, doesn't happen. People in this group professed to be world-changers and healers but in fact the new age "conscious" stance is really a red-herring. Spirituality/ Spiritual-capitalism is exactly the same as actual capitalism but it seems to be doing something different and fighting the "good fight", unfortunately this is simply reinforcement of good-bad dualism, and so ends up having exactly the same doctrine as all religious beliefs, which continues the status quo.  To not look at the roots of a problem is a ridiculous as trying to kill grass by mowing it.

I was however able to understand the nature of many herbal medicines that are quite rare and important for healing but only in the hands of people that really are able to know the root energetic understanding and herbalism of the area of the world that the plant comes from. I have spent some time helping to secure indigenous rights to the plant medicine Iboga for this reason and so some of my time is spent as a co-director to a community interest company called "Blessings of the Forest". 

In the last four years finally I have been able to meet the key people and the key plants that have helped me to heal and to redirect my life. 

I now am happy to say that no I longer consider myself a practitioner of  medicine in that I do no physical treatments in acupuncture, massage etc. I focus now on helping people see and sense themselves and offering them a mirror to be able to recognise difficulties they have and give solutions for their resolution using direction in food, movement, and advice on a broad range of subjects covered by the practices of Daoyin/ Nei Gong and Tai Chi, Chinese medicine, Feng Shui and I Ching. In this way I can indirectly offer people understanding and they can find their own strength and realise that healing is an instinct rather than it being from the seeming power or ability of a practitioner, "space-holder" or any other such hidden hierarchy. This feels more natural to me and finally I feel like I am more settled and healthy in myself and able to see clearly what I've been through and let it go. 

My experiences in life often centred round a feeling of victimisation that I'd had from my upbringing as a carer, bullying in school and the same in my time as a student in Japan and many other places. This, I realise now, has been the greatest gift to me from all the people in my story who have attempted to control, manipulate or otherwise influence me to be what they needed rather than allow me to be myself....this process has been a study of the co-dependence of victim and bully no matter what situation it's in. The gradual process of changing this framework is one that has lead me to trying to find things that helped me to end perceptions of egoic power; hierarchical divisions of "master"-student, practitioner-patient, etc. Breaking down patriarchal and matriarchal ideology to natural unity, and fundamentally to find ways to self-heal and non-treatment based remembering of the autonomic human, underneath the illusion of separateness.  This is about the natural sense returning to the body, breaking the belief structures in the way that come about by the situations of being made to feel small, broken or malleable. In the end the most sensitive of people (who are simply highly empathetic) are often the ones that lose themselves in other peoples worlds. The process for them and for me was/is to sense the anchor within. In the end gravity is my greatest healer. People that can't hear and feel and yet profess to know are often the people that try to control or manipulate to make sure their world view stays the same, in the end this illusion has to crumble and when  people who are sensitive finally stand in the natural energy that runs through them, they can finally be less afraid and more able to live without tension. This also ensures that the process of victim-bully can't repeat any longer as it is seen to be illusory.

My depression has alleviated with the help of three main things: my continued connection and hearing the rare message of nature via Tony Parsons, my practice of Tai Chi and Nei Gong/ Dao-yin - totally re-structured from the inside-out, to the rare essence of the art  over the last few years by my dear teacher, and through the use of micro dosing of Psilocybin mushrooms. 

I now teach Tai Chi and Nei Gong/ Dao-yin and hope to do so as my main work alongside the consultations and courses presented here.

(Written: April 17th 2020)