Ian's July 2024 Newsletter

Greetings from Tokyo, the last leg of my annual teaching trip to Europe, which started just on three months ago.

First stop was the lovely seaside town of Malahide near Dublin, where I taught my Mental & Emotional Wellbeing workshop. Here I enjoyed catching up with my old mate Seamus Murphy, who is our Bush Essence teacher in Ireland. Another of our teachers, Josephine Gallagher from Northern Ireland, also attended and told me she was finally coming out later in the year to do my Australian Level 3 workshop and to see all the Bush Essences.

From then on, the journey continued westwards with England the next destination. My workshops there, Level 2 and Women’s Wellbeing were held at one of London’s best kept secrets, Roots & Shoots, a wonderful, pristine, green oasis in the heart of the city, teeming with flowers – the perfect venue. An added highlight was having Alfie, the husband of my friend and organiser, Kasia, deliver a hot banquet every lunch time for all the workshop team.

I love travelling to England. I have always had fantastic spiritual and healing experiences there. For each of the last 20 years I have made it a point to head to Glastonbury for sessions with Sally Pullinger, a trans-medium with whom the four Divine Presence Essences were created. Sally channelled the very high spiritual beings, such as Isis, Gaia and Melchizedek that came through her to help create these essences. My sessions with Sally, getting inspiration and insights from Chung Fu, an ascended master who speaks through her, are always a great source of spiritual “juice” for me each year.

This trip I arranged to see Stephen Turoff, who is based in the countryside near Chelmsford. He has the ability to perform psychic surgery and it is quite amazing to feel his fingers doing “their thing” inside your body. Having a session with Stephen is a good preventative check-up to make sure there is nothing untoward going on physically with you – or to have something known treated. He does a wonderful weekly blog that I always enjoy reading.

A new friend made on the trip was Barry, a Qigong master with tremendous healing hands, who gave Jane and I several private lessons. We have gratefully incorporated into our morning rituals a number of the exercises he taught us. While in England I conducted a Bush Essence webinar for Marcus Fernandez’s Centre for Homeopathic Education. Fortunately, Homoeopathy seems to be on the up again with Marcus’s school as well as Mani’s School of Homoeopathy (SOH) all having large enrolments. I will be conducting a webinar for SOH later this year.

The next stop was Belgium, though my Numerology and Level 2 workshops were put in the background as Yves, the husband of Karen, our Belgian distributors passed away on the first day of the workshop. It was only ten months ago that the four of us spent a wonderful time together enjoying the wine regions of Burgundy. Yves then had been the pillar of health and so full of life. He was a gentle, charismatic “big bear of a man” who Jane and I are so grateful to have known and enjoyed such great times with. Testament to how much he was loved, were the 700 people who came to his funeral.

Germany followed Belgium and we had the best German attendance ever for our workshops there. After the classes we travelled with Carsten, our distributor there, to the ruins of Hildegard von Bingen’s monastery. It was my third visit and is one of my favourite places, there is such a serene and beautiful energy present there. On my previous visit I had received an earlier message in meditation from Hildegard to go to where the altar had been in the monastery and that there would be a gift from her for me. At the altar I was instructed to collect two stones, one small and one slightly larger and that when making an Essence in Australia to put the smaller stone next to the bowls to remind me of her presence, which would be with me when doing this work. The smaller stone was to be used similarly if making an essence overseas.

After Germany it was a visit to Corsica for some time out and research. One of the highlights there was spending my birthday on the water, whale and dolphin watching, along with being towed behind the boat holding a rope tightly. It is astonishing how deep blue the Mediterranean Sea is.

From Corsica we went to Marseille to catch up and stay with a body surfing friend Julien Luppo, an excellent chef and sommelier. Julien cooked some great meals and took us to his favourite haunts - beaches, restaurants and showed us his city.

We continued our trip in France driving through some breath-taking scenery to the village of Le Poet–Laval to teach a residential Numerology workshop. It is a lot of fun when the group are all sharing meals and staying together the whole time. Nadia, our ABFE teacher in France, again did a great job organising such a large workshop and running it so smoothly.

Italy again had huge workshops, with over 130 participants attending the Numerology, Women’s Wellbeing and Mental & Emotional Wellbeing courses. This was my 21st year teaching in Italy and I really enjoy meeting the people who are just starting the courses as well as those coming back regularly over the years. The classes comprise mainly pharmacists, herbalists and naturopaths with many doctors as well. Another highlight is always the bingo night, where our distributors, Green Remedies give great prizes, including this year two ten-speed bicycles. The best part of the night undoubtedly was Anna, the boss of the company, riding one of the bikes with great glee, through the audience.

Jane and I love visiting and exploring new countries. This year it was Romania, with Silvia Berta, our new distributor there organising a workshop in the beautiful Transylvanian city of Brasov. Silvia took us on a wonderful hike through the mountain forests with a group of her friends, parents and children from the local Steiner school. We had been told before coming here to be watchful for the brown bears that live in the forest and woods. Silvia’s son had encountered one the day before, but we didn’t spot any during our 5-hour hike, much to Jane’s disappointment.

Our final European stop was Bulgaria. Jane and I were last here 15 years ago when some very significant seeds were sown. A local book publisher came to my talk and subsequently printed my first two books in Bulgarian – and they are still in print. Our original distributors, Tatiana and Irena, the latter a hospital emergency doctor, took us all around the country from the mountains to the Black Sea. Both also became Bush Essence teachers.

Prior to that first trip, our current distributor Desi, who has taken over the distribution from Irena, came to many of my English workshops when she was living in London and was always encouraging me to come to Bulgaria. Since coming back, Desi has been doing a great job teaching Bush Essence workshops and really spreading the word in Bulgaria. Thanks to her sterling efforts we had over 70 very excited participants for my two One Day workshops held in Plovdiv.

It is very rewarding and satisfying to see the widespread use of the Bush Essences in countries like Bulgaria and the beginning of that journey in Romania.

Our trip started in early May in Western Europe where their spring has been very cold and wet, continued to Eastern Europe and temperatures in the mid thirties as we moved into summer and now it is very hot and humid in Japan.

In a few weeks’ time we will be home and back with our dog Rosie and five-month-old grandson Hudson. Thank heaven for zoom and phone video conferencing. One of the first things I will be doing after catching up with them is heading down to the beach and enjoying a long body surf.