As a child, I loved creating my own magical world. I was sensitive to energy. Of animals, flowers, and trees, but also buildings, stones, and even objects. “Oversensitive” we called it. For me it was normal, but also very intense. At some point, I was aware that my sensitivity created so much intensity and disturbance in the family that I started to tune it down, being also sensitive to the reactions of others. When you are reading this, chances are that you remember this from your own childhood.

One very concrete memory is one time, just after we moved house, when my parents took my sister, brother and I to a shop to pick out a poster for in our new bedrooms. We stood there, scanning the various posters and pictures. And even after an hour, I just could not choose,  because I felt so sad for the poster I wouldn’t choose. Or feeling bad for the parent whose suggestion I didn’t pick. The result: big tears, confused parents, who thought they were doing us a favor, and no poster in the end.

Brought up in a rather strict Christian family, my mother started rebelling against the church when I was around 9 years old. But not publicly at first. Indoors, she created another reality. We had Kombucha’s on the attic in the late 80s, the water bottles were in front of the speakers as a Dutch medium sent her energy to charge the water. Slowly my mother started to share her views, and one day our church minister asked my mother if she was in fact ‘working with energies’.

I grew up in a world where both these realities existed together, where everything was ‘normal, but where at the same time I didn’t always feel there was space for all my energy and sensitivities as well.

My strategy in life at first became to feel into what was going on and to adapt accordingly. To choose the easy way. Good grades, sports I was good at, nice friendships. Until I started rebelling, getting the worst migraines and skipping school.

Fast forward to university, where I joined AIESEC and started to feel my own potential as a leader, working with people for a better world. I travelled alone to India, where I first connected with a culture vastly different from my own. I remember the smells, the energy and the magic of India like it was yesterday. Like a part of me came home. That unleashed so much longing and possibility in me,  that I lead this youth led leadership development organisation for one year in the Netherlands, and then moved to Bahrain to start up a new chapter of this organisation there. Yet another culture, with rituals and beliefs I tapped into. I learned some prayers, and asked my friends to take me to the mosque. Again, it felt so easy to connect with the spirituality, the magic and the energy there, that I was home. and stated for 3 years.

For me it has always felt All-One. Unity.

Back home I took a deep dive into Big Corporate where I lived my life in two worlds: the Big Corporate, and my own world where I explored my passion for personal development, resulting in facilitating workshops, coaching people, and starting my journey into NLP and systemic work. Fast forward to 2019, after a three-day vision quest in nature, I went back into a deadline hell week for a major project, and then the next Monday i couldn’t walk anymore. Burnout. The biggest gift I didn’t ask for, and took me many months to unwrap, and fully own.

But  it gave me wisdom, a route back to myself, and a new opportunity to slowly un-cover all my sensitivity, my connection with nature, and all beings. My ability to know, feel and connect with energy. Many ceremonies, courses, mentorship conversations and therapy sessions later, I am now at a point where I can fully own and carry out my magic, and help other explore and dis-cover theirs.

Read more about how Magic on Earth came to life!

— Jorien van Duijn