Hi! I’m Adrian VanKeuren and I want to share with you how my health story has become our health education story at MoveMentation. My hope is that the gifted teachers at MoveMentation will become part of your own health story.
I have always felt a desire to teach and to learn, so after high school I pursued a college degree in education. With two associate degrees on my resume and plans to continue higher learning, my life changed dramatically in 2007, when a tick bite gave me lyme, babesiosis, and bartonellosis, and led to over a decade of chronic, debilitating illness.
Early in my battle to regain my health, I joined a local support group led by lyme advocate Lucy Miller, and it changed the trajectory of my life. Here was an opportunity to channel my desire to do deep dive research and to teach and help others. Educating through community service and helping Lucy advocate against the many misconceptions surrounding lyme disease was deeply satisfying and helped lay the foundation for who I am and what I do today. Lucy shaped both my advocacy and my leadership abilities, and it was a natural evolution for me to assume that role when she passed, growing the group over the next 11 years into one of the most active in the eastern US before handing the reins to my successor.
I had encountered a local tai chi instructor, Victor Franco, at health fairs in the area during my advocacy years but was hesitant to engage in learning something physical due to my ongoing exhaustion, until my mother expressed interest in the art after seeing a documentary on its benefits. We decided to learn together and attended classes twice weekly. Noticing my health steadily improving prompted the researcher in me to need to understand why, and that was the moment I began coming home to myself, remembering that I am not simply a physical body, but an energetic one as well.
Franco saw my dedication to the art of tai chi, and to the growing body of scientific understanding of its many benefits and offered me a scholarship as a personal student. The scholarship was conditioned on my commitment to growing this important health art through teaching as my health continued to improve. Steadfast learning and daily practice over time was attended by growing responsibilities in the dojo and certification as a tai chi instructor in my own right.
My journey of learning and teaching and advocacy continues. I now hold a Level 3 Instructor certification with the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association, Reiki master certification, qigong certifications, and am completing a medical qigong practitioner certification. I’ve created a wonderfully fulfilling business teaching tai chi and qigong, locally and across the country, alongside a healing clinical practice and ongoing advocacy and lyme education up and down the east coast.
Yet I’m not satisfied. I’m frustrated. Over the years I’ve been teaching, one recurring thread bothers me deeply. Time and again students have attended classes and workshops and have appreciated that what they’re learning will help them be healthier, then approached me afterward to say they simply couldn’t continue because they couldn’t afford to. ARRGH!!
PRIORITIZING NECESSITIES OF LIFE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO COME AT THE EXPENSE OF HEALTH!
How can I help change this ever-growing dilemma?
I realized I needed to expand my reach to underserved communities: the elderly, veterans, fixed and low-income people, and the chronically ill. Forming a nonprofit to bring education on, and opportunities for, multiple movement modalities like tai chi, qigong, yoga, and meditation seemed like an obvious answer.
Fast forward to 2019 and a chance meeting at my booth at a holistic health fair with Dr. Lyle Wilson. Lyle is a qigong practitioner and teacher of many years and we had an instant connection in our shared passion for teaching, leading to us teaching one another our respective arts. And more. Lyle’s steady encouragement and mentoring over time has helped me bring my desire for movement education to be readily accessible to everyone to fruition.
If my years of advocacy and board service have taught me nothing else, they’ve most assuredly taught me it takes a team of people with different talents to transform an idea into action. Lyle had agreed to help and I wanted to be patient and choose wisely for a third person to form the leadership nucleus for the nonprofit. As is often the case, doing what you love brings you
people who love what you do, and teaching tai chi brought me into contact with Lynn Fox. Over the course of a number of meetings, It became clear to me that Lynn was who I wanted to round out the leadership team. And when I asked her, she agreed. She had been quietly looking for a board service opportunity and thankfully has chosen to contribute her business acumen and steadying style to MoveMentation, a forming nonprofit committed to excellence in education in body mechanics, energetic flow, and mindful movements to build a foundation of health for everyone.
