A compass in the storm; the Dao and the virus
(Reading time 5 minutes) Recently, I finally got around to reading Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines after it had stood untouched in my bookcase for more than twenty years. In the book, Chatwin describes his travels in Australia and his attempts to fathom the nature-based religion of the Aboriginals. I had just started reading it when the coronavirus struck the Netherlands…
Science and spirituality: two streams, one source
The Dutch scientists Ronald Hanson and Bas Hensen recently gained worldwide recognition for their research into the spooky behaviour of electron pairs. And this attention was well merited because their study offers a fascinating insight into the incubator of our own material reality. The results show that behind the reality that we perceive through our senses lies an entirely different…
The power of perfectionism
These days it seems that perfectionism is a quality that you are better off keeping under your hat. Telling someone that you are a perfectionist often results in little more than a weary if slightly sympathetic reaction. Perfectionism is seen as a problem and considered a risk factor when it comes to burnout and depression. Many of my patients tell me that they have…
Cancer – just a case of bad luck?
The Scientist recently published an article about a scientific study that claims that getting cancer is often just a case of ‘bad luck’. How the scientists in question arrived at this conclusion is remarkable, to put it mildly. Their claim is a good example of the kind of confusion that can arise from the rather simplistic ‘either/or’ mode of thinking that…
Stomach ulcers – stress or bacteria?
Up until the early 1980’s doctors were generally of the opinion that the cause of stomach ulcers could be traced back to stress. It appeared that they were entirely mistaken, however, when the researchers Barry Marshall and Robin Warren claimed that they could prove beyond all doubt that the cause was actually a bacterium: helicobacter pylori, to be precise. And…
Qi? There’s no such thing!
Qi is one of the most fundamental concepts in traditional Chinese medicine. Acupuncturists stimulate the qi, often crudely translated as ‘energy’, when treating their patients. But is there actually such a thing as qi? Many sceptics tend to dismiss the idea because the qi has never been identified anywhere in the human body, as is also the case with yin,…