meet Jaap van der Wal
Medical Doctor
Jaap van der Wal Ph.D. is a medical doctor and, until his retirement in 2012, he worked as associate professor in Anatomy and Embryology at the University of Maastricht, Holland. After his medical education in 1973 he specialized in the functional anatomy of the locomotor apparatus with emphasis, later on, on the architecture of connective tissue and fascia, and its role in proprioception. Gradually he developed as a teacher in the Philosophy of Science and in Medical Anthropology.
However his long term passion is and continues to be, human embryology. His view is that the human body is a process, developing and functioning in time, and that the embryo moves and behaves in forms. It is in this area that Jaap encountered the Goethean phenomenological approach. He applies the method of dynamic morphology to understand what we are actually doing as human beings when we are an embryo. With utmost respect in the embryo he finds cautious answers to questions about the meaning of human existence.
After his retirement Jaap fully devoted his energy to ‘Embryo in Motion’, a worldwide project on teaching ‘Embryosophy’. He now teaches his ‘Embryosophy’ in Europe and the USA in institutes for Craniosacral-therapy, Osteopathy, Polarity Therapy and also Prenatal Psychology and Trauma therapy etc. For more information visit his
website: www.embryo.nl