Home for the healing arts

We breathe in the inky-thick fumes of secondhand Japanese buses. We are reluctantly caked in a thin sheen of grime from the city’s pollution. We feel our energies dissipate from being trapped in an electronic cobweb of cell phones and electrical wires. We hear our bodies scream bloody murder from the stress that devours our health. This is city life-Manila style, which is paradoxically the boon of our lives and the bane of our existence. We need the city to live in spite of how it eats away at our quality of life.

To keep up with our metropolitan existence, we often turn to popping quick-fix pills, believing that pills are the panacea that’ll keep us alive. But for the growing number of individuals who have either grown jaded with or chosen to complement the solutions that Western medicine have to offer, Eastern healing and the meditative arts that require body or energy work – such as tai-chi/healing chi-gong, yoga, pranic healing and zen meditation – have provided emergent solutions.

Ideally, the location of a "healing practice" often plays an integral role towards the improvement of the quality of our lives. And healing practices are more attuned to areas where the natural state continues to hold sway. Due to its proximity to Metro Manila, Tagaytay has often been the idyllic home for many of the restorative practices.

Fortunately, the healing arts have found a home at Buena Vista Nature Park and Country Club, a 30-hectare club that will rise along the gently sloping hills of Tagaytay/Talisay. According to Ledesco Development Corporation, the developers of Buena Vista, they plan not only to preserve the natural contours of the mountain and the rich greenery that makes up the property, but they also envision Buena Vista to become a haven for practitioners of the healing arts who are looking for nature sanctuaries. Nestled along the hillsides of Tagaytay/Talisay, ensconced in a highly forested area, and gifted with a fantastic view of Taal Lake and Volcano, Buena Vista Nature Park in itself can be a source of healing.

"Nature is a healthier and more abundant source of chi," says David Montecillo, a healing chi-gong teacher who co-manages Greenlight, an organization that offers workshops on integrated therapies and disciplines. David explains that chi is the energy or life-force that runs through our bodies. When the chi flows freely through the body, this gives us a feeling of wellness. David relates this to the good feeling you experience after getting a good massage or acupuncture treatment, because the therapist/acupuncturist is unblocking the chi points that allow energy to flow more freely through the body. On top of that, the view of Taal Lake and Volcano is a more than welcome plus. "The view of nature is more healing than the view of skyscrapers," David notes.

The insights of Bela Lipat, yoga teacher of the Sai Shanti Yoga Sanctuary, pleasantly resonate on the same plane of thinking as David’s with regard to Tagaytay. Bela explains, "The vibrations in the city are so dense because of the electromagnetic fields that come from cell phones and electrical wires. The energy coming from television sets, radios and watchers is not conducive to the energies of the body. When you enter places of nature, you feel immediately freer, your aura widens, and you become more energetic. That’s because, whether or not you are aware of it, you feel immediately relaxed in nature. You don’t feel the need to defend yourself since your natural state is to be in nature."

Bela points out that the quality and cleanliness of the air in Tagaytay, combined with the greenery, render it an area with higher levels of vibrations.

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If you wish to learn more about healing and the meditative arts, escape to Buena Vista Nature Park and Country Park. For inquiries, call 811-6420 or 830-2179 (look for Arlene or Agnes).