Journey from Karate to Internal Energy Arts
John Erik began martial arts training in college (studying Isshin Ryu Karate with Master Joseph Jennings). When he was introduced to Tai Chi as part of a stress reduction class, a whole other world opened for him. The ease of movement and peacefulness of Tai Chi more suited him than the tenseness and focus on “external strength” he experienced from karate (no offense to Master Jennings and karate)
He found his way to the Chinese Wushu Research Institute with Bow Sim Mark in Boston. In 1984, he traveled to China with her to participate in the 1st International Tai Chi Exchange/Demonstration Meeting in Wuhan. Students and teachers from around the world gathered together to demonstrate and exchange knowledge with some of the great Masters in China. It was a rare and memorable opportunity to get a taste of old China before its modernization.
In 1989, he meet Bruce Frantzis and decided to move to California to participate in one of Bruce’s first Wu Short Form teacher trainings. John taught numerous classes in the Bay Area and continued studying with Bruce at weekly classes, workshops and retreats.
John Erik returned to Bruces training in Ba gua, Tai Chi, Qigong and Tui na in 2016 after a several year sabbatical and has again fallen in love with the Energy Arts 16 Nei Gung system. He is a certified instructor of the Wu Short form.
Therapeutic Bodywork
Taking what he thought was a 3 month break from computer programming, John Erik enrolled in a residential massage training certification program at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California in 1987. Instead, this began a very deep transformational process that took him to Norway and both East and West coast for the next year before landing back in Boston, leaving his corporate software programmer career to teach Tai Chi and offer professional therapeutic bodywork. During this time, he continued learning deep tissue (Postural Integration with Jack Painter), Polarity Therapy, Rebirthing, Myofascial Unwinding and various other Mind-Body modalities.
His bodywork style is a blend of deep tissue, good old fashion massage and more subtle “energy work”, very much informed by his training in tai chi and chi kung.
NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming
John received his initial NLP training at Tom Dotz’ NLP California and Master Practitioner training and certification with Carl Buchheit of NLP Marin in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. He co-formed the informal “NLP Intern Action Center” to give new NLP’ers a chance to practice with each other and also hosted brief presentations by practitioners of other personal change disciplines. This fun, experimental group’s purpose was to build community, build skills and experiment with how to integrate NLP with other personal change systems, while giving people opportunities to present in front of a group.
The unique combination of NLP, hypnosis training and seeing clients in private coaching and therapeutic bodywork sessions has given John Erik an ability to work with his students on a deeper, more personal level .