Katerina Panagiotopoulou                                                    Born in Thessaloniki, Greece (1959).

With 5 planets in Virgo, I love to learn.The trees were my first teachers. And the sea. I was climbing  the trees and swimming, which helped develop body intelligence and intuition and made my hands capable. I finished highschool in America as an exchange student, and then, followed my curiosity to get to know planet earth. Thessaloniki, my home town was a crossing port and station on the journey to the East. As soon as I could I joined the magic bus to India.

In those 6 months of travel, I had my first vision of a human being in harmony with nature and the universe. I saw that the ancient earth traditions are the source of this knowledge and I set out to explore them.

When I found the I Ching, the book of changes,  the foundation of Taoist cosmology, I started learning how to learn. I was reading it from beginning to end, not as a divination book, but as a way to see how the universe works. The I Ching shows us the holographic nature of life, the interconnections of all there is. Relationships between polarities, unity, and perfection, the language of symbols. There was another Taoist classic available in the city bookshop: The secret of the golden flower. With that, I started to meditate.

I completed studies to be a tour guide, traveled around Europe, and then took the opportunity my parents were offering me, to go where ever I liked, and study whatever I liked. They had fought hard to win the freedom they gave me.

I chose England mainly because I knew the language and loved the music and the culture. I wanted to develop skills so I was studying art for a year until I was summoned by acupuncture in 1981. My teacher J.R Worsley had traveled to the Orient, found Taoist lineage teachers, and got back to England to begin the Leamington College of 5 Element Acupuncture. His words: “You have to love your patients.”Human development was central in the 5-element teaching. Developing your senses, seeing the color, hearing the sound, smelling, sensing the dominant emotion, feeling the pulse, and familiarizing yourself with the causative factor and its qualities is a dynamic ongoing transformation process.

John and Angela Hicks were my clinical teachers and led the integration school of 5 elements with TCM, modern Chinese medicine.  I studied with them for many years, starting with diagnostic skills courses in 1984 and completing the TCM theory and clinical skills course focused on integrated diagnosis in 1995.

Part of the integration was to employ human development: NLP skills in our practice. (1987). NLP is a set of life skills like rapport building, reframing, planning strategies, or using language consciously.

In 1988 I studied Shen Dao acupressure and massage and started using my hands more. I was working at the Waterloo acupuncture center (1984-1990) which was a school on its own. With more than twenty 5 element practitioners from different countries, it was bubbling with inspiration and discovery. I still miss it and hope something like it will happen again.

World-class teachers were in London. I studied ki aikido with David Currey and Qi Gong with R. Tindell. I was lucky to study Chinese Geomancy with William Spear  at Feng Shui Network International from 1993-98

Feng Shui opens the sacred dimension of the 5 elements. The happiest consequence of Feng Shui was that I discovered my Hellenic ancestry. I was teaching Feng Shui in Astroon in Athens where I discovered that the ancient Asclepeia were very advanced geomantic centers, showing a perfect knowledge of astronomy, depth psychology, and the healing of the human soul. I study ancient Hellenic medicine with 2 wonderful women teachers, Altani and Pitsouli. My relationship with the sacred sites of Hellas became stronger, and I ended up making my summer residence in such an ancient healing place. In Eressos, Lesvos.

I moved to Holland (2000) where I was lucky to find Yifan Yang, and study Chinese herbs and medical diet with her at Zheng Shu university in Amsterdam (2003-2006).

Yair Maimon has been my greatest acupuncture teacher since 2012.

I studied Shen acupuncture with him and integrated diagnosis. I believe in the healing power of diagnosis. Yair Maimon takes that much further, by seeing the patient’s soul, qualities and journey.

Joseph Muller has been another wonderful teacher in 2018/2020. The spiritual anatomy of the meridian system is a series of very wise teachings based on a deep understanding of the classics.

In Holland, I did a year's study of western medicine twice,  in 2003 and in 2015. That inspired me to study functional medicine.  Many Western medicine Doctors teach people how to heal themselves. I   find that at this time this is our main task.

In 2003 I joined the Diamond approach in explorations in Human Development with AH. Almaas. Practicing presence, meditation, and the art of not knowing and inquiring has given me the gift of understanding by being.

Almaas as JR Worsley and Socrates are helping people to empty their minds and explore themselves with curiosity. Roberto Villoldo, my teacher of Shamanism also says: You can never know yourself, or another. Being a practical hands-on person, I love healing, which enables us to bring these timeless principles into our every day life.