From korfball to Acem retreats

They’re young, they’re athletic, and they play korfball, a Dutch game similar to basketball, now included in the World Games. They are also quite reflective, combining a love of sports with a serious interest in life, people and personal development. Four years ago, both of them started to practise Acem Meditation.

Joep Bruin (28) is training to become a teacher after years of work in sales and recruitment, and when he is not with his girlfriend, he spends his free time coaching young korfball players. Jon-Tjitte te Biesebeek (31) is a physics and chemistry teacher at a high school for deaf children.

Long before they learnt to meditate, the two men got to know each other well through years of hard training in the same korfball team in Groningen, a university city in the northern Netherlands. Then Jon-Tjitte got a meditation course as a birthday present, and Joep decided to join him.

Coping with emotions

One of the first things they discovered was how meditation helped their sports achievements:

“Every Monday we would have a group meditation and then go to korfball training right afterwards,” says Jon-Tjitte. “It felt as if the ball would just fly into the korf (basket), as if I was aiming every ball almost perfectly, without even having to concentrate. To shoot well, you need to be relaxed and at the same time sharp, and meditation helps me with both.”

Joep agrees: “It’s also about emotions. If the pressure to win is too strong, your capacity for clear thinking in complex situations is reduced. Meditation gives me a better overview of the situation, and it increases my precision as well as my stamina.”

“For me, the first meditation was a very special experience,” Joep recalls. “I needed relaxation, and after my first meditation I immediately felt more relaxed.” Jon-Tjitte also wanted to relax. He had just started working with deaf children, but he was not trained as a teacher and could hardly use the sign language he needed in order to communicate with the kids. “It was difficult and stressful, and I was quite tense. Meditation helped me calm down and regain focus.”

Both have had ups and downs in their motivation for meditation, but they have always come back to it. “One winter I got tired of the whole thing,” Jon-Tjitte recounts. “I felt blank and wondered if the method helped me at all. But then I went to my first weekend retreat, and the long meditations there gave me a boost. Both during and after the retreat, it was as if my mind brightened up and became much clearer. Or was it just that winter turned into spring? Anyway, I have been meditating regularly ever since. I always meditate when I come home from work, because I know it will give me energy and help me to rest properly, and I usually meditate in the morning as well.”

Changing your personality

Over the years their meditative interests have gradually expanded. They still meditate for daily relaxation, but increasingly their focus is on the way meditation helps them relate to their own personal issues. “I wanted to get as much as I could from the technique,” Joep explains. “Immediately after the beginner’s course I enrolled in the Second Level course (also known as M1) and later the Third Level (M2). Then I started to go to retreats. This broadened my perspective on life and was fascinating.” Both of them have been to a number of summer retreats in Scandinavia. “I’m a shy person, but at the first retreat I learnt to talk about myself in a group,” says Jon-Tjitte. “At the second retreat I became more emotional, and though I got tired, it helped me work through issues that have disturbed me. As a result, this year I have more energy to listen to lectures, ask questions and relate to others.”

Both enjoy listening to other people sharing their stories and issues. Joep says: “Meditation makes people more sensitive and helps to create strong emotional bonds between people. In the guidance group you develop a lot of sympathy for your fellow participants, because you recognise that we are all quite vulnerable beneath the surface. We are on the same footing, even if we come from different cultures.”

It was korfball that brought Joep and Jon-Tjitte together, but meditation has deepened their friendship and is gradually becoming a central part of their lives. In a couple of years Jon-Tjitte plans to stop his career as an active korfball player. Acem Meditation, however, has come to stay, both in his life and in Joep’s.