Achmed Herling Adrianus Valk, MFA
When a fork in the road appears on your spiritual path, one or more of Achmed’s Transformational Navigation Resources® may help you to make the correct decisions for you in choosing an alternate direction out of your conundrum rather than the conditioned you might take. TNR presents a pragmatic array of integrated body-mind-spirit methods and approaches for you to consider. A deep dive into a set of personalized options will be designed to clarify your individual needs and means to re-align your Self within your cellular structure, and commensurately, your external ecosystem into harmonic resonance.
To help reset your unique trajectory in life, Achmed offers you his more than six decades of diverse exploration, in-depth formal study, research, and disciplined practicing his professional skill sets. He has acquired them within the framework of academia as much as through hands-on professional training and employment. He resolutely utilizes a uniquely direct, no-nonsense approach to your individual path of Self-discovery, honing your own practical skills and develop a comprehensive awareness vis-à-vis the ‘One’ you truly are as an, at times, all too human navigational vessel.
In The Hague, his hometown in The Netherlands, from the age of 12, and inspired by the release of the blockbuster movie, West Side Story in theatres worldwide, Achmed enrolled in his first jazz dance class at a local private dance studio. Soon after, with undeterred intent to become a professional dancer, he began his serious ballet training. To his substantial cultural fortune, Holland harbored a fertile ground for internationally acclaimed dance companies: Netherlands Dance Theater, The National Ballet & Opera, and The Scapino Ballet, the latter of which provided him with his first professional engagement following his high school graduation. Furthermore, the annual Holland Festival brought in companies from allover the world at very affordable student-discounted ticket prices, which were guaranteed by a personal so-called Cultural Youth Passport available to all Dutch students countrywide.
After his short Scapino Ballet engagement, Achmed continued his academic dance studies at the Amsterdam Theater School and the Royal Conservatory for Music & Dance in The Hague. A full-year engagement at the German Opera on the Rhein in Düsseldorf, Germany ended with incurring a severe knee injury. Open-knee surgery temporarily sidelined his professional dance career, which prompted him to enroll in paramedical school and become a Dutch-certified and licensed Physical Therapist. To fund his studies, Achmed began teaching ballet, modern dance, and jazz, during the evenings and weekends. Fully recovered he resumed his professional performance career throughout Europe and the Middle East leading to his arrival in the United States in 1980 where, eventually, he performed his swansong as a professional dancer at the Performing Arts Center in Sedona, AZ, at the ‘ripe old’ age of 55.
During Achmed’s teenage years, he stumbled on a first edition of The Book of Tarot by Fred Gettings and the accompanying new edition of the original design of the Marseille tarot deck of cards. He has been delving into its deeper archetypal meanings ever since as the foundational layout of his Tarot Mapping™ method. Over the last 3 decades, it has brought into play 20 additional card decks gathered in ‘The Magician’s bag of tricks.’ Since moving from Los Angeles to Sedona in 1997, Achmed displays a selection of 12 of them on his mapping desk during each one-on-one session with clients in Arizona’s Verde Valley.
Since 1987, Achmed has been studying Native shamanism under the guidance of Michael Harner, PhD, and Carlos Castaneda in Los Angeles from 1995 until Castaneda’s passing in 1998, the year in which he discovered the Human Design System, or more correctly, when It discovered him. While living and practicing massage therapy, Pilates® fitness, teaching movement and dance at all the major spas and resorts in the Sedona area, Achmed created and presented choreography for his small TrancenDance ensemble. After a three-year hiatus living in Hawaii between 2006 and 2009, he has engaged in a creative partnership with the Sedona Chamber Ballet and established his home-based studios in the Village of Oak Creek, Sedona, and currently in Camp Verde.