In Memory Of

"In a world which is increasingly superficial and directed to appearances and the outside world Joop was a man of character and depth. Not to say that he didn’t care for his personal appearance – on the contrary, he did. He dressed with flair. Perhaps the first thing you noticed about him was his beautiful coat or hand-crafted shoes; then his tall stature, greying hair and marked face, which could crease with a grin and warmth, or with great seriousness. Joop listened. He chewed over what you said – perhaps for some minutes, some hours or sometimes days. Then would come a comment or an answer to a question or a problem, which he had considered from many different angles. He was never satisfied with a simple answer – his solutions were rounded, thought out, compassionate, surprising, meaningful.

Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist who helped reveal the emotional lives of animals by tickling rats and listening to their ultrasonic laughter in experiments that upended his field and opened new possibilities for the treatment of depression and other forms of mental illness, died April 18 at his home in Bowling Green, Ohio. He was 73.

John was a celebrated teacher of polarity therapy and Biodynamic craniosacral therapy. His blend of therapy combined ancient wisdom with current health practices. He and his wife, Anna Chitty, started teaching polarity therapy in 1979 and opened the Colorado School of Energy Studies in Boulder, CO. in 1992. At the end of his life, John created Polarity Counseling.

With regret we share the recent news of Christa D. Ventling’s passing. According to Courtenay Young, she was a female pioneer in European Bioenergetic Analysis and in qualitative research in body psychotherapy.