MANIFESTO
MARIE-PIERRE DILLENSEGER
When I created PowerSpaces in 1999, few people had heard about classical Feng Shui nor Chinese Astrology. These subjects were unknown, suspect and taboo, the laughing stock of sinologues. The essence of these disciplines, albeit thousands of years old, remained hidden and buried in obscure texts, inaccessible to beginners and non applicable to specialists. Only the acupuncturists of the second generation were practicing the Chinese Techniques of Qi in confidential locations, with addresses shared within restricted circles. Mine, an octogenarian, continued to hop, smiling, from one treatment cabin to the other. People still stopped, flabbergasted or jokingly, to watch the rare Taiqi or Qigong outdoor classes held in Paris. Geobiology was making its appearance, already useful but still misunderstood. You had to go to Switzerland or to India to be treated differently. This is how my Mother supplemented her chemo treatment with plants that French medicine was denying her. The new French version of the Yi Jing had not yet been published (2002). It was another time.
My initial goal was to deepen and share years of independent research on the energy of places and its impact on people. This search for knowledge and meaning had been fueled by the enigmatic presence of Chinese objects in the ancestral family house. In their presence, I would instantly find myself in a strange yet familiar place, nourished by gentleness, insights and memories. This would come in the form of images, stories and coïncidences. My own discovery of the Yi Jing in 1977 (version of Richard Wilhelm) was stitching a very old weave, whose meaning had been lost. If nothing could point to the path of a therapist or an author in my initial track, the dice had been thrown a long time ago. Circomstances (a life-threatening illness and a reserved prognosis) combined with the listening of my inner voice pushed me towards the unknown: the sacrifice of an established career for an uncharted, improbable path where in France, in the 90s, everything had to be created.
The person I once thought I was was making way for the one I was returning to as I was paddling along the reading, the questions and the learnings. The path clarified itself when my Chinese Master at the time said : « Now you should teach. » Teaching Feng Shui ? In France ? Wasn’t that crazy, a form of unconsciousness, a planned failure? I nevertheless launched my own professional teaching for practitioners (with an official “accreditation number”) in 1999 in Paris in a magical place called the “Maison Saint François-Xavier”. My courses would prompt the spontaneous opening of the door of the adjacent library although perfectly closed! I had passionate and fruitful exchanges with Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger after our respective days of teaching. I taught the very first generation of French speaking Xuan Kong Feng Shui and Bazi practitioners. Like some Jesuits gone to foreign lands to share their faith, I tirelessly shared my passion for all Chinese disciplines related to Time and Space. Those years of teaching in virgin territory were like a “sacerdoce”, an immense and sincere effort to build bridges between the Western mind, linear and logical, and ancestral Chinese thinking, global and pragmatic, aiming at strengthening vital energy.
To share further and deeper, beyond classes and consultations, I added writing to my already filled days. I spent years writing, communicating and alerting people about the importance of preserving vital energy. The responsibility to do so belongs to everyone but my resolve remains: make people more autonomous in their personal path, better equipped with healthy routines and effective, simple tools. I have witnessed the numerous waves of simplified, westernized Feng Shui, alternate and new therapies (a good thing) and now shamanism.
I am happy to have initiated, with a few precursors, a long lasting interest for Chinese energy and strategy practices. I have noticed the regular dilution of sacred tools, servicing life, in an amalgam of personal development methods. In truth, what really matters is the quality of the practitioners, their souls, standards and allegiance to life forces more than the method itself. The very deep and precious essence of teaching has to return from time to time to the shadows that protect it from simplifications and excess.
More explaining is not needed. The time to pause and realign with the very essence of my practice has arrived. I will be reducing social media presence, fully returning to research, consultations and writing. The quest for meaning continues. My books will meanwhile carry the messages.
Marie-Pierre Dillenseger,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 2024
1) Yi Jing, traduction de Cyrille Javary et Pierre Faure, Albin Michel, 2002, 2012.
2) Yi Jing, traduction de Richard Wilhelm, Librairie de Medicis, 1973
3) Schutzenberger, Anne Ancelin, Aie mes aieux!, Desclee de Brouwer, 1993