Boekrecensie van De Vijf Elementen door Jean Haner

Jean Haner bestudeert al meer dan dertig jaar de spirituele principes van de Chinese geneeskunde. In dit boek ontdek je welk persoonlijkheidstype je hebt volgens de elementenleer uit de traditionele Chinese geneeskunde, en krijg je vervolgens eenvoudige opdrachten om meer in balans te komen.

De Chinese geneeskunde kent vijf elementen: water, hout, vuur, aarde en metaal. Gezondheid heeft te maken met balans: als je te veel of te weinig van een element hebt, kun je daar aan werken om je beter te voelen. Jean Haner geeft je inzicht in jouw persoonlijkheidstype en biedt vervolgens tips en technieken aan om de balans te herstellen. Dit zijn concrete huiswerkopdrachten zoals ‘draag meer groen’ zodat je de inzichten vanuit je type praktisch kunt integreren. Jean Haner noemt dat ook wel ‘acupunctuur van de geest’: het aanbrengen van kleine veranderingen kan grote impact hebben op de rest van je leven.

Welk persoonlijkheidstype ben jij?

In De vijf elementen vind je een uitgebreide vragenlijst om erachter te komen wat jouw persoonlijkheidstype is. De persoonlijkheidstypes worden uitgelegd. Zo heeft iemand met een waterpersoonlijkheid bijvoorbeeld een voorkeur voor een vloeiende manier van leven, in plaats van gestructureerd met je agenda in de hand. In deel twee leer je over de valkuilen van je persoonlijkheidstype en wat je daartegen kunt doen. Ben je echt vastgelopen? Dan vind je in deel 3 een bootcamp van 5 weken om àl je elementen in balans te brengen.

Dit praktische boek geeft inzichten die je op zielsniveau leert integreren. Daardoor hebben de kleine veranderingen een grote impact op de rest van de leven.

Uittreksel

Introduction

It was happening again, with yet another client. Lisa had her hand on the doorknob, ready to leave after a powerful session. Then she turned to me and, as if coming out of a trance, said, “But what do I do?”

The thing is, we’d just spent the last hour together, with me telling her exactly what to do! Using the techniques of Chinese face reading (an ancient branch of Chinese medicine), I’d uncovered her patterns of personality, explained how they showed us why she had the problems she struggled with, and gave her direct ways to solve them.

One of the most important things this age-old system revealed was that Lisa was a “bamboo” personality. The flexible trunk of the bamboo is one of its secrets to success: because it’s able to sway in the wind, it doesn’t get knocked down in a storm like trees with rigid trunks do. Like the bamboo, Lisa was a very flexible person. She could easily get along with lots of different types of people because she could adapt to their personalities, and that made her especially successful in her career as a teacher.

But every personal characteristic has two sides. On one, we’ll find many natural strengths and benefits; however, there will be a downside as well. In this case, Lisa was “swaying” too much in terms of how she let other people influence her.

Just like the bamboo bends in every breeze, Lisa would listen to one friend’s opinion and be ready to act on it, but when someone else would voice another idea, Lisa would change her mind based on that new advice - until yet another person spoke up to say, “No, you should do this . . .” This pattern caused a “bamboo mind” as well, giving Lisa a terrible time with indecisiveness, procrastination, and self-doubt. Her thoughts would go back and forth, wavering about any choice, until she finally got so frustrated, she’d give up trying to decide at all and just put things on hold again.

These bamboo tendencies were the source of the problems Lisa was experiencing with her career decisions at that time. She’d become a teacher because both her parents had been, and they pushed her to go in the same direction. Even though she hadn’t been interested in teaching, she let her parents’ opinions influence her, too worried about their disapproval to not follow their lead. Now, seven years later, she wanted to leave teaching and choose a new career, to carve her own path in life. But her flexible nature was making it difficult to stand firm for her own needs in the face of her parents’ opinions, plus the flip-flopping of her indecisive mind was making it impossible for her to figure out exactly what career to choose instead.

In our session, I explained how people with this bamboo pattern have a tendencyto overthink things, and then to procrastinate so they can think some more, but still end up feeling so unsure, unable to settle on a decision. One key to moving forward was to understand that she did need more thinking time than other types of people. However, she also needed to learn to recognize the stage in the process where she’d narrowed her choices down enough. Even if she still felt unsure, there would be a point where she knew enough about each possibility to choose a direction. And of course, no matter which path she decided on, there would be some bumps in the road, because that’s just how life works - it wouldn’t be a sign she’d chosen wrong. In fact, she was actually much better equipped to deal with those problems because of her adaptable nature. While most people would only be able to come up with a plan B solution, she could think of plans C, D, and E as well!

I helped her understand why she was right that teaching wasn’t the best fit for her personality, and we discussed several careers she was considering that would make her so much happier. I coached her in how to stand up for herself instead of letting other people too easily change her mind. I explained the timing of the steps she should take from here and taught her practical ways to not be so swayed by self-doubt and indecision so she could feel more confident about the plan she was forming for her future. Throughout the session, I saw her light up with big “Aha!” moments. More than once, she said, “That’s totally me!” with pure relief.

And yet here we were, just minutes later, standing at the door, Lisa now equipped to move forward..., and she was asking me what to do?

And this worried me because it wasn’t an isolated incident. Some of my previous clients had said exactly the same thing to me at the end of their sessions, despite the fact that I’d given them so much direct information about how to deal with the problems they were experiencing. Up to this point, I’d review for them the most important parts of the reading they’d just had, and it seemed to help. Still, I had to pay attention to the fact that this kept happening. Was their new understanding fading just moments after they’d had these insights?

But worse still, when people returned for another session, I found I was giving many of them the same explanations all over again. While they’d often been able to use what they’d learned to solve the original problem they’d come to me with, they weren’t recognizing that the new problem in their life was just version 2.0 of the exact same pattern. I knew I couldn’t expect a complete breakthrough after just one session, but I felt I had to do something more to help them.

However, in that moment, standing at the door with Lisa, I didn’t have time to review our session for her. Another client was on the way, so I quickly said, “What do you do? Here’s your homework: For the next two weeks, take a walk in nature every day, wear more green, and go to sleep each night by 11 p.m. Then come see me again.”

She looked delighted. “I can do that!”

I made those odd-sounding suggestions because according to the spiritual principles of Chinese medicine, these are some of the actions that can strengthen bamboo energy overall, and specifically create more ease in decisionmaking. I didn’t think much more about my spontaneous advice, so imagine my surprise when, two weeks later to the day, Lisa walked into my office looking like a changed woman. While before she’d sat wringing her hands and twisting in the chair, she now sat bolt upright, brimming with enthusiasm. “I could hardly wait to come here today to tell you. I made my decision - I’m going back to school to be a massage therapist! After just a week of doing the homework you gave me, I woke up knowing what to do, and I feel more sure of this decision than any other I’ve made in my life.” She went on to describe how her parents had tried to talk her out of it. “I felt my bamboo start to sway, but I caught it in time. I stood up for my decision and it felt great.”

It suddenly dawned on me why people kept describing my work as “acupuncture for the spirit,” and how that was truer than they knew. In assigning Lisa those specific actions to take, I’d given her something similar to an acupuncture treatment - not for her body, but for her life. What most people don’t know is that when you go to an acupuncturist, their goal is not to heal you. Chinese medicine teaches that your body is very wise and knows how to heal itself as long as its energy is in balance. The goal of an acupuncturist, therefore, is to figure out which points to place the needles in your body so energetic balance returns; then they step back to let the wisdom of the body take over, and healing happens.

In that moment decades ago with Lisa, I realized in a flash that, in the same way, we can apply the equivalent of acupuncture needles - tiny changes you can make in your everyday life - to bring balance back and to heal on a whole-life scale. This is what I’ve been doing with people ever since, watching in awe as their lives changed as a result.

Conscious Insights And Unconscious Shifts

While conscious self-understanding is a powerful and a necessary source of transformation, it can be valuable to also have steps to take that work on an unconscious, energetic level to support that change. That’s what happened for Lisa: she got new self-insight during our session, and the “homework” afterward acted to settle it further into her soul.

If you go to an acupuncturist, they will probably talk to you about lifestyle changes that will improve your health. But, of course, that’s not all they do. They also give you an acupuncture treatment, placing needles in certain energy centers in your body to effect change in subtle but powerful ways. And that is what this book will give you, based on my 30-plus years of study and research into the spiritual side of Chinese medicine, as well as my experience in doing thousands of personal consultations. I’ll shed light on aspects of your personality and patterns and how to be more true to your authentic nature, which will give you insight into why you are the way you are. Then I’ll guide you through “treatments” that can create solutions to the problems you’re experiencing and bring you to a new place of balance so life just keeps getting better and better.

In Part I, we’ll examine how this ancient body of knowledge reveals how each personality type has special strengths and natural talents, as well as predictable types of problems in life. You’ll work with a questionnaire to find out which personality patterns are strongest in your nature, and what that means for your experience in the world.

In Part II, we’ll discover how to choose remedies for the kinds of difficulties we humans struggle with, and then learn simple, practical little changes you can make in your everyday life that act as acupuncture needles to solve these problems, sometimes in seemingly mysterious ways. Although it may seem to work like magic, this is actually grounded in science, albeit a science that is very different than our Western one.

In Part III, we’ll see how, if you’re feeling totally stuck, you can do a full “reboot” to get your life moving in the right direction again.

Finally, in Part IV, we’ll learn how to stay in the flow from here so any new problems that emerge are far more easily and quickly solved, and you can live in wellness, authenticity, and joy.

Thank you!

To get the survey to find out your personality type, learn which remedies are a fit for your unique problems, get instructions for the 5-Week Reboot and more, click here to purchase...

Recensie

door Tsenne Kikke

Nogmaals: dit praktische boek geeft inzichten die je op zielsniveau leert integreren. Daardoor hebben de kleine veranderingen een grote impact op de rest van jouw leven.

De Vijf Elementen

Jean Haner

Korte Inhoud

Uittreksel

Recensie

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