Our Teachers
and Founder
Our Teachers
Elisabeth Apel and Leah Voysey trained over many years with Shuichuan Founder, John Freear, and together have over 60 years of practice and 41 years of teaching experience. They come from different backgrounds culturally as well as from the perspective of their own personal experiences in the greater journey of Life and bring these unique qualities to their work.
Elisabeth Apel
Leah Voysey
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Inspiration
They both have a love of nature and hope that through their work, they will be ultimately contributing to a more harmonious and peaceful world. There is an abiding interest in the world’s religions, philosophy and history as they all teach about Inner Life and can confirm what we feel within or reflect what we experience through our practice.
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Experience
We have worked in various fields in the business world as well as in teaching, caring and health-care roles. We have travelled far and wide, giving a rich experience of relationships within a wide variety of cultures while discovering that our human uniqueness as well as frailty and search for meaning is common to us all.
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Belief
Shuichuan has a Loving Intention inherent within it and this quality can be brought to every aspect of Life. It has nothing to do with personal power at all but allows us to follow and be guided by the energy emanating from The Da Qi, The Universal Life Force. When we are able to live in this way, we learn from within ourselves and this is part of the immeasurable gift in Shuichuan practice for which we feel eternally grateful.
Those who follow have received a precious gift to share so that the Shuichuan legacy continues to be available to all of Life.
About our Founder
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JOHN PETER FREEAR (1942-2003)
John was born in England and moved to New Zealand in 1974. He was largely self-educated and widely read on many subjects with a focus on world history, culture and religion. His special interest in Eastern philosophy grew through martial arts where he trained with teachers from Japan, Indonesia and China. He travelled widely, visiting Indonesia, India, USA, Europe and Australia.
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Experience
His experience included teaching karate at his own school at Blackheath, London, England, and T’ai Ji Chuan at London’s Royal Ballet School. His dedicated approach gave him a high level of self-discipline as well as respect for the sacredness of life itself, which laid the foundation for the deeper spiritual practice that gave rise to Shuichuan Zi Ran Qigong.
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The Shuichuan School
The Shuichuan School was established in New Zealand in 1989 followed by Australia in 1993 and from then until 1999, he travelled between the two countries. As far as we are aware, this was the first time that Zi Ran or Natural Qigong had become available for western students to learn outside of China. During this time, he also created the Internet School allowing people from all over the world with Internet access to learn Shuichuan.