Estafet 2 | Video Interview with Janine Booij

Transcript

Anna: So, hello everyone and welcome to our next episode of Estafet where we meet our colleagues from EARTh and we get to know them with some questions and answers. And today, we have lovely Janine with us. We’re back to Holland today. And so, we’re going to learn about Janine and how she works. And a little bit more about her. Hi, Janine, how are you today?
Janine: Hi Anna, I’m good. Thank you for inviting me for this interview. Thank Olga as well.

Anna: Very happy to have you here with us today and so we’ll just start if you could introduce yourself and where you from and where do you live now?
Janine: Yes, my name, you know, Janine Booij. I’m from the Netherlands. I was born in a small village, Nieuwkoop in the Netherlands but I don’t remember much of that because my parents moved to Duivendrecht a village attached to Amsterdam when I was one year old. So, I grew up there and I still live in Amsterdam now.

Anna: I see, you live in Amsterdam. Nice. And what is your education or your profession if what have you studied in your life?
Janine: That’s a lot. So, I will give a short summary here. I did a bachelor in communications, journalism, editing, copywriting, and I worked in that for a long time actually. At some point I got some physical complaints. I wasn’t really on the right track for me I felt and that’s what brought me to a soul search and to look first of all to resolve my problems. I had a lot of tension, repetitive strain injury and so I first went to look for physical treatments like massages, kinesiology and gradually I went more to the psychological way. But it’s always combined. I felt that from the beginning, body and mind. So, I followed courses. Yeah, at some point I didn’t need it for my own complaints anymore but I was just interested in actually all the alternative remedies and I did a bit of research there in education. I did still freelance writing work and then I started doing massage courses and also starting a practice with that: kinesiology, healing methods, all kinds of things. And well, finally I still do some of those things now but when I found regression therapy, I felt that was really for me the thing that I was looking for. Then I felt I’m on the right track now.

Anna: Yes, like many of us also find this way. And how did you actually find out and learned about regression therapy?
Janine: Yeah. Also, that came on my path in different ways. At some point, in a meditation, I had a vision of the past life for myself that gave an answer to me, like, why is this pattern coming back to me all the time? And it was just one flashlight, but it was like a photograph. And I felt, OK, that’s me. And then there were different ways it came on my path. I sort of avoided it in the beginning. I’m like, OK, I know it, that’s enough. But then at some point I was in Thailand and I did a fasting course there. And there was a lady from Luxembourg and she was a regression therapist and she introduced herself and she offered sessions and she said, “well, we don’t necessarily go to past lives, but if it comes up then we explore.” And yeah, she seemed nice. So, I did a session with her and a lot happened. Yeah, I went through that past life that I had already had a glimpse of. Also, other things came up. My grandfather and some childhood memories, so it was very emotional but also very healing. And she said after the session, “well, you seem to have, you know, a feeling for this. So maybe, you’re in the Netherlands, there’s Hans TenDam, he teaches this. Maybe look into a course with him.” And then after that, I did some other things. I forgot the name, actually. And then in my practice I got more and more people with emotional experiences. And in the field of body work they always say like “ohh, just let people cry and then they’ll be OK.” But it didn’t work all the time. So, I started asking a bit more about what was coming up. And you know, they would describe pictures or situations either in childhood but also sometimes past lives. And at some point, I had this lady that came into a past life. She was all coughing. And almost turning blue, crying a lot, coughing and she came into a past life where she was tied up with her husband that had died. He was a prominent figure in the society and it was a culture. I’m not sure where it was but she, the widow would be buried together with the husband. And she was still alive. So, it was very emotional, very painful. And so, I just, you know, let her cough and I let her cry, but it didn’t become less emotional. So then at some point I remembered from my session, so I said “OK, so just imagine that you leave your body and you look from above that your body. What’s happening?” And then she became calmer and it worked. And I was actually surprised. But after that I’m like, “OK, now I need to know more about it.” And I started looking for this guy she’d been talking about and the education. And then I started the course with Tasso.

Anna: So, you did, you went to the Tasso School in Amersfoort?
Janine: Yes, the school of Hans ten Dam. At that point, it was in Utrecht, also in the centre of the Netherlands.

Anna: Yes. And so, you know, that was my next question. So, they have the answer to it also. You went to Tasso with Hans and yeah, great. So now, you attended that and so, how is being a regression therapist is a part of your life? What work do you do now? And how do you combine?
Janine: Yeah, I work now as a regression therapist. I have my own practice and I also do some massage but more regression therapy. I also do constellation work. And I teach with Tasso now, so it’s a big part of my professional life. But it’s also a big part of my life in general, I feel that when I used to work for companies and doing editing and communication and I felt often I needed to play a role. But with regression therapy, you can’t play a role. You have to be authentic, otherwise you can’t work with people. And so, it feels like it’s me.

Anna: And how did that actually help you? You work now as a therapist, but how do you see the regression therapy helped you as a person? I mean, you already mentioned a few things. Are there anything else that you would like to share, like how it actually affected you in your life?
Janine: Yeah, well, in many ways I think. Mostly that I feel more in peace with myself, just being truer to myself, more authentic. Going more with the flow of life and also what my feelings are, where my heart goes, I want to go. And I feel that I’m getting the help to do that and yes, and the work. It’s like I’m on my path. I may not be at the end of the path, but I feel I’m on track.

Anna: Yeah, wonderful. Are there any special techniques that you like the most? In regression or that you maybe have used the most. Or do you mix?
Janine: Yeah, I do mix the things actually, I use many methods but for Tasso in the last year in the Dutch training we do our own kind of research with the method that you like to explore and I chose induction by touch, so touching people to let them connect with certain parts of the body and asking for the emotions. So, for example the place with the most tension in the body or the least energy in the body and then ask them to go into it, get the emotions and go from there into regression. Also with breath work, finding the blockages in the body through breath and breath work. And then you know when the breath doesn’t go further, there’s often something, some unresolved emotions that are stuck there. So, you can easily go into the emotions and let them go back from there. I also used the Gestalt method with the empty chairs. For example, when people have bodily complaints or physical complaints you take the different chairs for the complaints, which always turn out to be a personality or past life or a child part or sometimes external energies as well. I like to sort of play with it.

Anna: That is very interesting. That you work with breath is very interesting.
Yeah. Wow, cool. Is there one favourite story from your practice that you could share with us?

Janine: There are many interesting stories, but I think the ones that remain with you the most are from the early practice, the ones that went really deep. So, there was one young man that came, around his 20s and he came to the Netherlands to study. I think he was from India or at least Hindu background. And once he got here to study, he couldn’t do much. He was depressed and he was surprised about it himself. “I’m not like that normally.” He said so. He said he had thoughts, like when he went on a high building, a high tower, there was a thought in his head, like, “why don’t you jump off?” And so it was, yeah, it was really strange to him. And his family actually asked him to do something about it, and that’s why he came to me. And we did a session and he came into a past life where he was sent away by his parents because he didn’t do well in school. He was sent away to an orphanage. And during that ride to the orphanage, there was an accident, a really bad accident. He got crippled, he didn’t die, he got crippled and he lived on for some years but eventually he killed himself because he just couldn’t cope with it. So, once we did that session, the depression was gone. He didn’t have any of those thoughts anymore, but there was something else that happened too. His mother, when she heard about it, she started crying because, as a child, he had these incredible pains in his legs that were popping up also in the session. That’s what we started the session with, actually. And it let to the accident. Yeah, that came up and she went to doctors and hospitals and so and so on, and no one could find anything. So, she thought, “ohh, that’s fine, that’s it.” Now she understood why that pain was there. And he said, after the session, one or two days that pain just came up very intensely again, and then it was gone forever. So it was a side effect that was quite nice, yeah.

Anna: Wow. We all love the side effects. Sometimes unexpected results that come. Wow, that’s beautiful. My next question would be: So, you are a member of EARTh, you being also a long time. Since when are you a member of EARTh actually?
Janine: Yeah, I think it was 2010. I was still studying and I went first to the annual convention in Kleve in Germany. I’m very happy that I went there at that time because there were Roger Woolger and Morris Netherton, two of the pioneers in the field of regression therapy, and by now, as you know, they died. So, it was my luck to have been able to see them work still.

Anna: Wow. And since then, you’ve done a lot of things in EARTh. Could you share some of your roles and activities?
Janine: I started with the Membership Committee. I was in there for a couple of years and then I was asked to join the PR Committee. Of course, because of my background, I was a little bit reluctant at first, but then I’m like, “OK, I like EARTh, so I’ll do that.” I’m still in the PR Committee that I’ve been chair of when I was a board member. I’ve been four years board member of EARTh, treasurer of EARTh. And I was then chair of the PR committee, and now I’m just a member of the PR committee and. And I’m in the Financial Committee also for a while, as a chair and now as a member. (Now I’m not in PR C anymore, but I am in college committee – but you can leave it like this)

Anna: There’s a lot of things very active.
Janine: Yes, the board was very active. Now I’m, you know, not the most active in the committees anymore, but I’d like to contribute because I think EARTh is a really beautiful organization and yeah, we need to, we need people to help getting it going, right?

Anna: Is there anything you think that the EARTh still is, is important for Earth to continue doing? Or maybe do more or add?
Janine: Yeah. Well, I think the main thing of EARTh is the connection between different schools, different countries. We all have different approaches and we can learn from each other and we all share the same passion. I think there’s not that many professions where people are so excited about what they do as regression therapy, but I think that is what we have in common throughout the association.

Anna: Yeah, the connection is most important. Yes, yeah, alright. Is there any message that you would like to give or anything you would like to say to the fellow members of EARTh and the therapist?
Janine: Yeah. So, keep going. What? Keep doing what you’re doing. I think we’re doing  very deep, very profound work. We are helping people to heal. And even though we’re not always understood outside our circles. Yeah, we need to keep doing this. And you know, people are being healed from severe problems, even physical problems sometimes. And relationships heal, people get more in touch with themselves and so we make the world little by little a bit better place.

Anna: We should continue that, alright. And I’m just going to finish up with one question. Is there something that in your life as a therapist or just as you that you still haven’t realized but you dream about doing?
Janine: Well, I’ve done some workshops abroad. I would like to do some more and maybe a bit further ahead in the future. I’m dreaming of maybe a retreat centre somewhere in a beautiful place and most wonderful would be in a warm place.

Anna: So I wish you the very best of luck to achieve that.
And thank you very much for joining us today and I hope everyone will enjoy this interview with Janine. And again, you might be next and that will lead me to my last question. Who’s next?
Janine: I would like to propose to interview Yasemin Tokatlı. Yeah, because she, Yasemin, has been active in EARTh from the beginning. She’s been one of the co-founders of EARTh. She’s very active in EARTh and she has a very lovely personality, always willing to help. And if there is some tension here or there, she will try to soothe it. And she, yeah, she listens to everyone and she is quite modest in EARTh. She always does her work behind the screens but she does a lot for EARTh, so I think it’s good that she should be a bit more in the picture.

Anna: Alright, so we will do that. Thanks a lot for bringing her and again, thank you so much for your time. And for your sharing and we hopefully see you also this September. (Note: This interview is dated May 2022)

Janine: I’m not sure yet, but I hope so too.

Anna: Hope to see everybody, all of you, and also you, Janine, and once again, thank you very much.
Janine: OK, thank you too Anna, and bye to everyone. Hope to see you soon everyone.