COMMUNITY PROFILE

Providing hope and healing

Life coach and teacher Christina Kook is founder of the new Liberty Healing Center

Terry Hankins Teacher and life coach Christina Kook is founder of the newly opened Liberty Healing Center. Zoom Photo

AT A GLANCE Name: Christina Kook Age: 58 Occupation: Teacher of qi gong and life coach Family: Single (widowed), one son, one granddaughter. How long in Petaluma: “I’ve had my office here for 7 or so years.” Education: Master’s of science in environmental studies Fave book: “I’ve been reading and re-reading ‘The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine’ by Ted J. Kaptchuk.” Fave Petaluma hangout: “Do I say Shollenberger or Helen Putnam Park? I love to hike both.” Web site: seljecoachingandtraining.com

Does something feel a little off? Perhaps it’s time for a little more than just the usual checkup.

Christina Kook operates Liberty Healing Center, 115 Liberty St., Suite 4, in Petaluma, with two partners.

“Melissa Wilson is an acupuncturist who has been practicing for 15 years and Julie White is a psychic who has been practicing 25 years,” says Kook (pronounced Cook) of her associates.

“I think we all love Petaluma and believe in one another’s ways. We see ourselves as part of the community and we want to bring the practice of wellness to the community.” Kook says, “I see mostly business people and help them with a ‘whole body approach’ to wellness.

“I belong to several business groups whose members need to learn to pay attention to themselves. When clients come to see me, I give them back a snapshot view of what they want to accomplish. I give them a list and integrate qi gong as a take-home practice.

“I like the combination of coaching and qi gong because I believe being well and successful and loving the life that means something to you is a picture that you create. Qi gong helps you stay strong, well and grounded, being happy enough to make it here. Being happy helps you stay well, transforms you as you move along.”

Wikipedia defines qi gong as “a wide variety of traditional ‘cultivation’ practices that involve methods of accumulating, circulating and working with Qi or energy within the body.” Qigong is sometimes mistakenly said to always involve movement and/or regulated breathing; in fact, use of special methods of focusing on particular energy centers in and around the body are common in the “higher level” or evolved forms of Qigong.

Qigong is practiced for health maintenance purposes, as a therapeutic intervention, as medical profession, a spiritual path and/or component of Chinese martial arts.

Today, millions of people in China and around the world regularly practice qigong as a health maintenance exercise.

Qigong and related disciplines are still associated with the martial arts and meditation routines practiced by Taoist and Buddhist monks, professional martial artists, and their students.

Once more closely guarded, in the modern era, such practices have become widely available to the general public both in China and around the world.”

Kook also loves being in the outdoors, naming hiking and walking with her dog, Nacho, and gardening as her best-loved hobbies.

“I love ecology,” she says, adding “the study of it is one of my passions. I helped work with Lois Fisher and others to restore Washington Creek, which runs through Petaluma, because I wanted to do something involving my passion that was also a way to give back to the community.”

Kook notes that the word “selje” means “to serve” in Norwegian.

“If I could change anything in the world, I really think the world is going through a huge change already and I’d like to help ease the transition,” she says.

For herself, Kook says, “My secret wish is to remain vibrantly healthy until I’m 100!”

(Contact Lynn Schnitzer at argus@arguscourier.com)