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We are honored to share this special message spotlighting Eva Maria Wiesenthal, a distinguished Icons of Change Ambassador for SDG 3, representing Austria, and a leading voice in holistic healing, mind-body education, and peace-centered wellbeing, for this year's Icons of Change International Awardees 2026.

Eva Maria Wiesenthal is a lifelong educator, philosopher-artist, and holistic healing practitioner whose work advances human wellbeing through the profound integration of mind, body, and consciousness. With more than five decades of dedicated service in education, health, and cultural leadership, her contributions embody a systems-level approach to Sustainable Development Goal 3 – Good Health and Well-Being, establishing inner balance as an essential foundation for resilient individuals and societies.
At the heart of Eva Maria’s impact lies her pioneering work in Tai Chi Chuan, deep relaxation, and therapeutic voice-guided healing, which she has practiced and taught for over 25 years in schools, fitness institutions, medical practices, and private settings throughout Austria. Her methods focus on breathwork, embodied awareness, and profound relaxation to release physical and emotional tensions, activate the body's self-healing capacities, and restore internal equilibrium. This practice directly bolsters preventive health, mental resilience, and recovery from stress-related conditions, core elements of sustainable healthcare systems.

Her healing approach is deeply experiential and educational. Through empathetic guidance and structured relaxation practices, Eva Maria empowers individuals to reconnect with their innate abilities for health, clarity, and self-agency. By fostering self-trust and emotional regulation, her work promotes enduring wellbeing rather than temporary fixes, perfectly aligning with the preventive and holistic vision of SDG 3.

Eva Maria’s influence also profoundly shapes institutional education. For more than three decades, she served as a Professor at a Vienna Gymnasium, teaching philosophy, psychology, classical languages, Tai Chi Chuan, and integrative wellbeing practices. Her teaching blended intellectual rigor with inner growth, guiding students to unlock their potential through reflection, embodiment, and emotional awareness. Many former students credit her not only with their academic foundation but with shaping their sense of self, purpose, and lifelong wellbeing.

As a philosopher-artist and cultural leader, Eva Maria bridges Eastern and Western traditions, intellect and empathy, education and healing. Her role as President of !WOW! World of Wisdom, Wonders and Wealth fostered a multidisciplinary platform for holistic health, creativity, and global peace, promoting non-adversarial dialogue, cross-cultural philosophy, and cooperation between the Global North and South, linking personal healing to collective harmony.

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00:00hi i am eva maria wiesenthal ambassador for austria from the icons of change
00:11and i want to talk to you about the most necessary changes in our life
00:19in our world in our micro and macro causes we are gifted with
00:28overcoming the dualistic principle of cognition see josef mitra we can establish a new theory of
00:40philosophy a new theory of science new politics new way of personal and global health and peace
00:56with unconditional love as healing political
01:09power
01:15millions of people around the world are suffering by wars wars in themselves wars between
01:25countries and driven by hatred anxiety fear will for power they use philosophy and even more religion
01:37for justification for their war
01:43religion nowadays in our understanding is completely different from the original
01:58in the in their origin it was
02:05it was the relationship between the innest
02:11and the transcendent however we describe it around the world and we do have about 160 different
02:22descriptions that always try to describe
02:30the same in a way in the different way they understand it
02:36so religio i call this original conception and i do think that is the most necessary to come back to
02:46this
02:46this way of coming in contact with existence with our innest our soul
03:01and the transcendent and we all have
03:06the transcendent this love however you call it in our innest in this way we are all equal
03:19in the beginning of western philosophy
03:24logos was preferred to explain everything to explain reality to
03:30we explain everything and mythos myth was repressed
03:36logos means the logical way the rational way to describe what we can describe as far as we can describe
03:46and myth is
03:50evolution and mythos myth
03:52with our emotional contact
03:56our feelings
03:59our personal
04:02contact with
04:04the transcendent
04:06so 600 before christ there were also
04:10philosophers like socrates and plato
04:14who did not only speak about what we can perceive and how we can logically talk about it.
04:24No, already Socrates thought that it is Eros, the god of love,
04:29who takes us out of this prison of prejudices we are kept in.
04:41And the art of a philosopher to remind people to remember the original reality we were in before our incarnation,
04:58the ideas he called it, the spiritual world, he called meiotic, comparing it with his mother's profession,
05:12who was a midwife, helping mothers to bring their children into our world, to give birth to their children.
05:29And later Aristotle only concentrated on what we can perceive with our senses and logically, rational,
05:48in a rational way, describe and find out about what we have in us and around us.
06:01And this was an enormous loss,
06:10gradually loss,
06:12of getting in contact in an emotional way,
06:19in an intensive, personal way, intuitive way.
06:34And the Western world was influenced by Aristotle enormously.
06:45those Greek philosophers also used to follow their professor after they had finished their philosophical studies,
06:57to find out about themselves in a personal way, in a personal path.
07:21the German philosopher Kant thought we cannot come in contact at all with the world, per se, with the Welt
07:31an sich, he called it.
07:40and Freud made clear that we suppress a lot, that we deceive ourselves like this a lot, to feel okay.
08:00Karl Gustav Jung
08:02Karl Gustav Jung
08:05preferred
08:06to use Chinese philosophy, the I Ching especially, in his healing work.
08:13Niels Bohrijo
08:17took the yin-yang symbol as his logo, because he was sure that Chinese philosophy describes better what there is
08:28than his own quantum, physical findings.
08:33I myself finished my philosophical and other studies at the University of Vienna
08:40and I learned a lot from other traditions also especially from India, from China, from Tibet
08:52and also from South America and India and China they integrated logos and
09:05mythos to come in contact with existence in India philosophy was based on the
09:19religious texts of the Veda the Upanishads and the fundamental interest was to
09:29bring in contact the inner of the soul and they called it Atman with the whole of
09:40existence Brahman they called it and through meditation they thought we can
09:51we can come to ourselves instead of always only thinking and thinking as we
10:03know is a lot about what we learned how to think how we have to think how we should
10:14think so meditation was their way and the path of yoga the holistic medicine in
10:30India Ayurveda used the path of yoga taught the path of yoga and also they taught what
10:41what we can take to us that's healthy so I can say about diets and they brought it
10:52always in relationship to the personal condition and like this they strengthen the
11:02the body and the inner of course in China the aging was the basis of philosophy the
11:19book of changes and with this book of changes they tried to control energies and
11:33emperors and emperors aristocrats made their decisions based on the itching and
11:47nowadays also a lot of people use the itching for making their decisions and for
11:57controlling energies they used Tai Chi Guan and Qi Gong and like this they healed it was a
12:18preventive medicine a holistic preventive medicine in China doctors were paid as long as their
12:27clients were healthy in Tibet philosophy and science was based on faith directly based on faith
12:50doctors for example prepared their medicine and prepared their medicine during their priests praying and the love of the priests
13:09the love of the doctors
13:12doctors made this medicine to a medium to teach patients about love as much as you can learn about love
13:27and you never can learn about love in a rational way you can only learn to feel it in frameworks
13:37like meditation
13:57do you know that if you don't really want to feel it in a variety of different things
13:59do not have feeling it in mirrors they want to feel it out and are broadband-producing
14:09systems of your compassionate
14:10it again in those frameworks I just have told you about and if we have felt it we
14:30are sure it exists and only when we have learned to love ourselves we can love others so love is
14:51the healing power we have to evoke in ourselves and inspire others and if we feel it we also find
15:06out that we are responsible not only for what we do but also for what happens to us we are
15:15responsible for our education the education of our children about politics for politics we are
15:24responsible also for war and peace so let us work for peace
15:40artwork is also a way to learn to come in contact with your innest with yourself with existence with
15:53the transcendent so with art you can also change your life as I did and
16:00and I hope that you would like to work with me that we come together in a way and please
16:16send me an
16:17email to e m w at a o n dot 80
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