I know that many among you, Lovely Readers, hold issues of sustainability, nature and respect for life close to your hearts. As I often explore the intersection of QiGong, science, and ecological spirituality, I cannot help but wonder:

How can we heal the Earth when we, ourselves, are broken and suffering? How can we ease human suffering, the plethora of “diseases of civilisation” as well as our deeply broken mental health, when Nature is under constant assault and the jungles of Amazon are burning?

Those difficult yet urgent questions are what a group of world-class thinkers attempted to tackle at a conference hosted by the great Brazilian astrophysicist, Marcelo Gleiser, in Italy. Marcelo’s goal is to forge a new, ecological spirituality, rooted deeply in science rather than in blind belief.

As someone who loves both science and the subtle work with energy, I was beyond joyful to have the privilege to learn from some of the world’s best scientists and philosophers – as well as teach them QiGong!

I want to share some of the insights with you all, because I know that if you are on my list, or a part of my Qi Tribe, you deeply care.

Marcelo is the author of, among his many other oeuvre, “The Dawn of a Mindful Universe”, winner of the Templeton prize for combining sciences and humanities in an effort to create a modern, ecologically-focused spirituality, as well as co-author of the “Blindspot”. The topic of “Blindspot” is very close to my heart. It argues that the existing paradigm of science has failed to take into account something most crucial to us all: the lived aspects of human experience. And as such, it has produced science which is de-humanised and de-sacralised at the same time, stripped of awe and meaning, and driving the biosphere and consequently, our own species, into extinction.

This is all of great relevance to someone who, like myself, aims to build bridges between the East and the West. The difficulty of reflecting the essence of Chinese Medicine – both acupuncture and QiGong – in the Western research framework and epistemological model, is something I struggle with daily. The experiential learning required by both does not fit into Western (Cartesian) epistemological model and I sweat buckets to explain this when teaching students at the International College of Oriental Medicine.

Back to the conference.

Mr Gleiser has gathered a circle of prominent thinkers in the (rainy) Tuscany: each a world-class expert in their own field.

This, for me, was like the best summer camp! I just loved being there! I am forever a learning nerd and proud of it! Every morning my brain was steaming with ideas and new knowledge… and then, we had Italian coffee every break – while continuing discussions one on one. What is not to love?

Teaching QiGong to world-class scientists

It was also quite an experience to teach QiGong – and explain the science of QiGong – to this lot of geniuses. Evan Thompson has trained himself probably since I was in the crib, but some of the participants were new to the practice. And here is a bit of disclosure… Because of how high-profile those people are, I was very secretly, very deep down petrified.  I know I am a good teacher, but I am also someone who always aims at excellence. So… I was secretly anxious enough that I even had a dream in which I kept pondering and changing the movements I teach on the go! 😀

Luckily, I have plenty of experience in putting such feelings aside and interpreting them from a wider perspective. I have done it many times in my life since the beginnings of my QiGong practice, and now coach others how to develop breathing and other techniques which allow us to dissolve the stress and anxiety and just roll with  it.  So, I breathed deep and low and aligned my body with my heart’s true purpose: which is not to show off, but to share and to empower.

Did it go well? You bet it did!

Did I still feel I could have done better? Yes, I did! I always see potential for growth, but I also learnt to see it as a good thing. It is logical for the 100th QiGong workshop to be better than the 10th one, right? And the 1000th one even better. This is how we learn. If we were not to improve, it would mean we do not learn.

But no one else knows about my slight criticism of myself – well, apart from you now, dear Readers! 😉 The scientists in fact loved my session so much they asked me to do another one, if I would be so kind. I was, and we had even more fun. Check out the picture from day two up by the title (Marcelo Gleiser was not there, as he was on a school run duty, but he told me in person how powerfully he felt after the first session).

One the title photo from the right:

Evan Thompson, one of the precursons of embodied cognition, Beck Todd, a neuroscientist studying emotion, attention and synchrony between people, Monica Gagliano, a trailblazer in plant intelligence studies, (me), Peter Ulric Tse, a neuroscientist hell-bent on proving we have free will, Yuria Celidwen, a Maya spiritual leader and indigenous rights activist, Kari Gleiser, a trauma therapist and with her husband, Marcelo Gleiser, our host. And the dog’s name is Felix!

Insights: don’t give up! The need for an ecological spirituality and connection

Here are some wonderful things I learnt, as well as suggestions for further reading for those of you so inclined.

• The brain can reorganise itself, and our thoughts play a big role in it! It is not just deterministic. You may have heard of the “activation potential” of one neuron triggering off the firing of another. But this is just a small part of the story: neurons impose their own conditions on how to interpret the signals that they receive, and moreover, those conditions can dynamically change!
• Plants can learn! Researchers have now applied Pavlov’s conditioned response experiments to plants! The original experiments (involving a dog and a bell: a dog started to associate the sound of a bell with food, and would salivate when hearing the bell. To adapt this to the world of plants, blue light was used as “food” and a gentle fan as the “bell”.
• The Enlightenment has created a world based on reductionist science, where objects, organisms and ecosystems can be divided, and each part studied separately;
• This does not work, however, for living organisms, and neither does it work for the biosphere
• That the narrowly defined intelligence, which is essentially seen as logical problem-solving with a narrow focus, brings about the problem of losing the bigger picture
• That wisdom necessitates the awareness of a wider perspective. How to gain a wider perspective? Through various traditional practices as well as connections and interactions – each connection we make opens our world a little bit more.
• We need to recognise, as humanity, the deep interconnectedness of all living things…
• As well as all the parts within ourselves (lack of divide between the mind and the body).
• That interconnectedness has been practiced from ancient times by indigenous peoples, to whose knowledge the world is waking up now, yet a lot of this “awakening” is done in a way which does not respect those people’s cultural heritage…. Instead, culturally appropriating it into Western ways of thinking.
• One such example being ayahuasca – which has become a tool rather than a dialogue;
• Fostering interconnectedness is a job for a lifetime, and requires dialogue between people;
• And (with my own contribution to the discussion): that healing is crucial for this dialogue, as people full of fear, pain, and feelings of inferiority cannot be truly open or truly reach out.

Further reading on science and ecological spirituality

The topic of ecological spirituality, and how science leads us to a new understanding of the body-mind-biosphere interaction (or unity), emerges with tidal power from all of these works. Apart from Yuria’s paper on the Ethics of using indigenous medical plants, I am providing only the titles of books. All of the authors have also written many scientific papers, for those of you out there who love research, which can be easily found through Pubmed or their personal sites.

I have not read all of them, but am in the process of doing so!

• The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. By: Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch. The MIT Press, 1991; 2^nd ed. 2017.
• Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. By: Evan Thompson. Columbia University Press, 2014.
• The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience. By:  Marcelo Gleiser, Adam Frank, Evan Thompson. The MIT Press, 2024.
• The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future. By: Marcelo Gleiser. Harper One, 2023.
• Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. By: Evan Thompson. Harvard University Press, 2010.
• Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being. By: Yuria Celidwen. Sounds True, 2024.
• Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants. By: Monica Gagliano. ‎North Atlantic Books, 2018.
• The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation. By: Peter U. Tse. The MIT Press, 2013.
• A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will. Peter U. Tse. Oxford University Press, 2024.
• Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice. By: Yuria Celidwen et al. The Lancet, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2022.100410
• Why some conservatives are blind to climate change: A Conversation article on new study by Jennifer Whitman, Jiaying Zhao, and Rebecca Todd  http://theconversation.com/why-some-conservatives-are-blind-to-climate-change-91549

If you get your hands on any of these books and want to discuss them – please get in touch! You will find many of them referenced in the book I am now writing on the neuroscientific impact of QiGong, and a discussion, whether in person or over the phone when walking dogs, is always welcome 😊

Photo by Michael Sacca.