Thubten Namgyal Lhamo worked as a school teacher in Brazil before returning to live as a citizen of Greece in the 1990s. She now lives in Newcastle and works in child care.

"I first met Sifu in 1996 through a friend who attended Sifu's teaching in Greece. Almost one year later, during a period I was grieving over the death of an uncle of mine and I was not in the mood to go out or see people. On this weekend Sifu came to Athens to give teaching. I was invited by my friend to join Sifu for dinner. I was surprised how peaceful I felt just being around Sifu and my sadness disappeared. I attended my first ever retreat that summer. During the retreat I have witnessed several times when someone who could only speak Greek wanting to ask Sifu questions and before the interpreter had a chance to translate the question into English, Sifu would stop him and answer the question directly in English. To my knowledge, Sifu only knows a few words in Greek. Many people have made comment that Sifu can read our mind and this is very true. I became aware whatever I was thinking or whichever subject I was conversing with my friend would often end up as examples used in Sifu's teaching. Sifu's commentaries appeared to be based on what us students were going through at the time and what was happening in the world. In this way the teaching is very accessible to us students. Many times I had felt that Sifu on this particular day was only speaking to me and I found afterwards that many people thought the same way.

Since I became a student of Sifu, not only has my relationship with my family improved but also with people in general. I came to learn how to deal with difficulties and experienced less of their effect as a result. Sifu is constantly teaching, he teaches even when he appears to have a casual conversation or is making a joke, every single second is a lesson when we are with Sifu.

One time, some of us had made plans to practise Taiji outdoors on a day that had been raining since dawn and I thought how could we go out in such rainy weather? We stayed out of the rain in a nearby building as we waited for the arrival of Sifu. The moment Sifu arrived we went outside with an umbrella. When Sifu saw me with the umbrella he said to me that I had no faith and I wanted to reply that 'can't you see that it is raining'. Before the words came out, the rain had stopped. It remained sunny for the rest of the day right up to the moment the practice finished some six hours later, then the rain returned."