Kris Deva North

Born in wartime London in a Year of the Dragon, bombs raining all around, Kris spent his teen years in the turbulence of Mau-Mau Kenya. At age fifteen the Wakamba tribe initiated him as an honorary member. Dancing in their drum-circles he witnessed the fire-bath, where adepts fell in flames and were unharmed. Military action in South Arabia and Borneo introduced him to real-life death. Service with the Gurkhas of Nepal steeped him in the culture and traditions of these Kaliworshippers and their rituals of blood-sacrifice.
25 years in business and management followed, until Kris decided to change his life, pursuing oriental healing and martial arts. In 1991, he set out to learn from masters throughout Asia, Japan and USA. Impressed by the teachings of Mantak Chia, Kris embraced the Tao.
In 1993 Kris came home, to found the London Tao Center and Zen School of Shiatsu, the latter becoming in 2009 the first to be accredited by the British Accreditation Council, and in 2010 by Middlesex University. Kris sat on the Assessment Panel of the Shiatsu Society UK, before founding the Zen Shiatsu Society in 2004. In 2006 he founded the Healing NLP Institute after training with Richard Bandler and Paul McKenna, pioneers of modern shamanic practice through their work with altered states. He was closely involved with Skills for Health drafting the Shiatsu National Occupational Standard and in 2009 was appointed to the Shiatsu Board of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, the UK Regulator for complementary medicine.

Taoist Master Trainer Kris Deva North integrates the principles of ancient Shamanic, Tantric and Taoist traditions with modern Life-training techniques from the Mind Dynamics of the 1970s to state-of-the-art neuro-linguistic programming of the new millenium. His experiences living with Kali-worshippers of Nepal; travelling with a Thai Buddhist monk; satsang with Shiva Saddhus in the Himalaya, Shamans of Africa, North America and Hawaii, and Aboriginal men of high degree in Australia; darshan with the Dalai Lama; witnessing last rites in Varanasi and puja with the Brahmins of Pushkar; practising the teachings of the Taoist Master Mantak Chia; and his own taoist, tantric and shamanic meditations and teachings on death, life and beyond, in jungle, mountains, city, beach and desert.

He has appeared on national TV in Taoist Tantric practice, in programmes such as Emma Freud’s series on Sex and Religion; Nick Hancock’s Sex and Stopping; Carlton TV City Survival Guide; and was consulted for the Sex Inspectors. In 2004 Channel 4 made an observational documentary on his work teaching the Taoist practices to a group of celebrities on an unhabited island in the Andaman Sea... more info on this.

Published work includes the articles
Zen as a Philosophical Discipline;
Taoist Teaching, Taoist Practice, Taoist Life;
An overview of Chi Nei Tsang;
Shiatsu - Ancient Medicine for the 21st Century;
Calabash of Light - Hawaiian Huna Healing;
and the definitive 1998 Interview with Mantak Chia, ‘A Modern Taoist Master’ with whom Kris co-authored ‘A Touch of Sex: Shiatsu Secrets for Love’ republished by Bear and Company in June 2010 as ‘Taoist Foreplay’.
Kris has also written the definitive ‘Finding Spirit in Zen Shiatsu,’ published November 2006,
and contributed with Wayne Dyer and others to ‘Bouncing Back: Thriving in Changing Times’ an anthology on success in recession, published February 2010.

In 2010 he published the Taoist Medicine Wheel re-published by Bear & Co Destiny Books January 2011 with contributions by Mantak Chia as 'Taoist Shaman: Practices from the Wheel of Life'

Back to Front