Erica Heijnen – Rebalancer
My name is Erica Heijnen, born in 1963. Before I trained as a Rebalancer, I worked as a nurse in an Intensive Care Unit for a number of years.
I started my Rebalancing practice in 1992. In addition, I worked for twelve years as a teacher and examiner at the Rebalancing School, a three-year vocational training course. Furthermore, I am also a relationship therapist EFT. And because one never stops learning, I have been attending Hameed Ali’s Diamond Approach Course since 2012.
After more than 30 years I still enjoy being a Rebalancer, both in individual sessions and in courses and workshops. Rebalancing is a deep and essential process. The answers come from within yourself during inquiry and body work. I have great trust in the wisdom of the body and I’m happy to guide you if you like.
Interview from Dutch national paper de Volkskrant (December 2000).
text: Daniel Koning
Erica Heijnen, rebalancer
When I was 11 years old, I saw a television report about children in Bangladesh who died in the streets. I started saving money to give all the people over there a guilder. My mother told me: ‘It is better to go there if you have some kind of profession, you will be more useful’. That’s why I became a nurse.
When I was in my early twenties I became acquainted with bio-energetics. A completely new world opened up for me: physical exercises with the aim of becoming more aware of your feelings and being able to express emotions. Exploring myself was completely new to me. After several years in intensive care nursing, many of my certainties began to waver. It was 1988, I was twenty-five. I sold everything I owned and went to Nepal to see what would remain of myself without a familiar environment. I urged myself to stay away for at least two months.
In the beginning it was very scary. I hardly dared to go out on the street. In the four years that I have travelled I have learned to approach people and make contact. I took meditation courses for a month in a Tibetan monastery, I spent six months in a Thai monastery, worked as a nurse in Australia, sold dolls on the street in Japan and worked in a leprosy hospital in India, although I wasn’t really necessary. I occupied the jobs of three people.
Later I went to Poona, to the Ashram. Osho was still alive. It is a big supermarket of meditation, massage, therapy and creative development. I stayed there for almost two years. I loved it. I still get a feeling of freedom and pleasure when I think about that period. So many people from all over the world together who were working on personal development. There I was trained in rebalancing. It is basically a Western method, with Eastern meditation techniques.
I came back for a family reunion here in Zwolle. It turned out that someone had just opened a shop with a practice room above it. I was able to work there so I stayed.
Rebalancing is a form of bodywork that is not only aimed at relaxation, but at awareness of your body. It consists of slow and deep techniques. I can feel which part of a body is tense, where it is stuck, and which parts are alive, including the emotional side. In regular health care, touching another is usually taboo. I do touch people.
People come here with their fears and tensions, and don’t always know where it comes from. Rebalancing can help people who are mainly living in their heads to feel more. You must be willing to self-inquiry.