Meet Frans Stiene

We recently connected with Frans Stiene and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Frans, so great to have you on the platform. There’s so much we want to ask you, but let’s start with the topic of self-care. Do you do anything for self-care and if so, do you think it’s had a meaningful impact on your effectiveness?
Self-care is a very important element of our daily life, I see way too many people struggling in their daily life these days. However we can change this and that is why some kind of daily ritual or practice is so important. First of all I always make sure that if I am tired I do a little nap, maybe 15 or 20 min. You can train yourself in it to have the perfect nap which is very rejuvenating. Second I do daily specific deep breathing meditation practices to restore my own inner energy, in Japanese they are called hara breathing practices but often translated as deep belly breathing. By focusing on the hara and using my diaphragm I start to feel more focused so that when I do my work it is more effective. Most of the time we get so distracted by all sorts of things during our work, but if we train ourselves to be more focused our work is done faster and therefore we have more time for self-care.

Self-care for me also includes regular massages and Reiki treatments.

All of these help me to be more effective in my daily life, not just work life.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I have been teaching the system of Reiki for over 25 years world wide. One element is to keep sharing love and kindness in the world and teaching people how to be kind to themselves and others. We need more kindness in this crazy world. This year I am going to train with my teacher again in Japan, he is a priest and lives in a small temple deep in the mountains of Japan. I have been training with him since 2012 and it is such a privilege to train with a teacher like that, someone who walks their talk. One of my first teachers was a Chinese Taoist teacher and I trained with her for 12 years, unfortunately she passed away. Both of these teachers helped me to discover more and more how to be kind and how to teach others how to be kind through specific meditation practices. In November 2022 my third book came out: The Way of Reiki – The Inner Teachings of Mikao Usui, an accumulation of all my training and practices.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Dedication is very important, dedication to keep at it, thus also perseverance. When we first start out our dedication and perseverance is always strong but for a lot of people it starts to wane over the years. Therefore it is of utmost importance, no matter what we do, to cultivate these two elements in our life.

Plus we have to keep a beginners mind, stay open for new things. Don’t think that we know it all and that there is no need to keep studying or practicing, that way we loose our dedication and perseverance. The more we stay openminded the better life will be and the more fun we will have in our work and daily life.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Zen Mind – Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, what a fantastic book. Suzuki is a Japanese Zen master who taught all over the world and his teachings are still so relevant today. Here are a few quotes from this wonderful book:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”

“Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself. We say, “It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.”

When we can stay calm in activity, not getting carried away by our anger and worry, being focused, not being distracted by the past and future, then we have true calmness and therefore we can lead a calm life even if we have to do lots of activities in our daily life.

And here is one more:

“Emotionally we have many problems, but these problems are not actual problems; they are something created; they are problems pointed out by our self-centered ideas or views.”

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