Hello, I’m Alison Menzies (1975). At the age of 23, due to my hectic London life-style I decided to take more control of my health and well-being. Next to my work as a web-designer, I began a parallel journey of self-development and professional level education with a wide variety of body-mind tools and systems such as Yoga, Chinese Energetics, Massage, Meridian Reflexology, Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology (EFT), Aromatherapy en Macrobiotic nutrition.

After 10 years, at the age of 33, I realised living in London was costing me energy and my health, and I decided to move back to Bristol where I was born and raised. Shortly thereafter, I was fortunate enough to stumble across an authentic Lineage of Tai Chi from Grandmaster Dr. Shen Hongxun. Through Tai Chi, I discovered a whole other level of self-empowerment and self-healing that I was missing up until that point.  Through all the years of computer work and thus bad posture, I had developed a chronic and uncomfortable bend in my neck, which after a couple of years of dedicated training, corrected itself. I also met my Dutch husband Paul, during my first training.

After 6 months of long-distance dating, I moved to the Netherlands to live with Paul. We were married in 2011 (almost 10 years now!). And had our first son together in 2018 (at the age of 43). I also officially became a Dutch citizen that same year.

7 years ago, Paul and I started our school of Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Dance and Meditation: Monkeyturtle.nl. We are dedicated to developing and evolving our knowledge and teaching to support our students to deepen their own understanding and ability to relax, open and evolve on a deep physical, mental and emotional level.  With that in mind, we are both constantly enriching and deepening our own levels of understanding. We have both studied Consciousness coaching, which gives a powerful way of teaching and also communicating in all settings.

To take my education a step further, in 2015, I started a 4 year HBO study to become an acupuncturist. I took a year break to have our son and officially graduated in 2020. Why acupuncture? During the years I have been working with people, teaching Tai Chi, I realised that sometimes we need extra support. Individual attention and care to really zoom in on our unique and specific challenges. Sometimes we need more guidance and intervention than is possible in a class setting. Acupuncture is a wonderful addition to the skills I have evolved over 20 plus years of education and self-exploration.

I continue to enrich my own knowledge, studying ‘Hunyuan’, a branch of Chinese Medicine, and other consciousness development tools by applying them in my own life. Ultimately, whichever tools I use and choose, my goal is to give you the experience of self-empowerment that you can take your own health in your own hands. 

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