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Self Nurturing: The Qigong Experience

This is another catch-up which I referred to in my posting Freedom-  Also a Loss.  I had my Qigong experience in Orlando back at the end of April this year.  I read  Natural Awakenings, a free monthly newspaper that is mainly geared to health and alternative health practices and modalities.  For three years I had seen the advertisement for the Qi-Revolution event in Orlando in this newspaper and my curiosity was peaked.  But each year by the time I got around to checking into it, I already had another commitment.

So this year, or rather last year, because the initial advertising came out I believe sometime in October or November of 2010, I made sure I put it in my planner at first sighting.  Shortly after that I completed my registration and I was set to discover what this “energy event” was all about.  Because I saw the word “Qi” (which is pronounced “chi”), I had an idea that it was something akin to Tai Chi with which I am familiar.  However, nothing prepared me for the 4-day experience that I had with Qigong.

The event was held in one of the huge conference rooms at the Orlando Convention Center.  When I entered the room on the first day I remember my first feeling:  overwhelmed.  There were more than two thousand people present for this event and I didn’t know a single person.  The energy level was high and I was aware of a sense of anticipation buzzing around the room.  The second feeling was an old enemy re-presenting itself:  a feeling of “less than”.  Old toxic thought processes began to invade my mind.

“You shouldn’t have come here Margo, you’ll probably not be any good at it.”  “Most of these people are younger than you, what were you thinking of?”  “You’re going to make a fool of yourself in front of all these people.”  “How do you expect to keep up with everyone especially with the pain in your hip?”  And many other forms of “You’re no good”, “You’re not good enough” etc, and some other self-sabotaging phrases.  You get the picture.

After taking some deep breathes and centering in on my God, I was able to clear my mind and fill it with some positive affirmations.  Only then could I allow myself to feel the excitement and anticipation that was like an electric current all around me.  Only then did I really look around and notice that at least one third of the people there were over fifty, and quite a few were over sixty,and the really “young ‘uns” were a minority.  I smiled as I watched the negative thoughts scurry out of my headSmile.

Within two hours and after some great stretching exercises, we were all, yes all, more than two thousand of us, going through the first Qigong form.  I had no idea that it would be take about an hour to do this, and I am so glad I didn’t.  I think I might have panicked and run away.  But what was so amazingly awesome was that I was able to keep up, stay focused, and complete the whole form.  On top of that, what was wonderfully boosting for my self esteem was that younger people were needing to take a break half way through.

I am not sure that I can explain exactly what Qigong is, but I will attempt to do so.  Please be aware that this is my own subjective explanation.  Qigong is the practice of aligning breath, movement, and awareness for the purpose of exercise, healing, and meditation. But it is so much more than that.  Through the use of slow, controlled, focused movement the practitioner is brought to an awareness of the natural flow of energy that constantly surrounds us and that we have in us.  Through the practice of qigong it is possible to “harness” or “increase” this level of energy, bringing more into the body and sharing it out with the world.  It is what I refer to as the God energy.  I found the whole experience to be very spiritual.

I do know that I felt a tremendous “high” after that first session.  My body, despite some fairly severe pain in my left hip, felt alive and as though I could do almost anything.  I was very mentally alert and was aware of a sense of joy and lightheartedness.  It was as though in some way I had accessed a deeper part of me, or perhaps I had learned a different way to access my soul.  And by the way, no longer did I feel like a stranger in a crowd.  I felt like I belonged.

On the second day we did more Qigong and also learned a form of energy breathing.  If you want a serious natural high, then energy breathing is the answer.  This is something that I will not attempt to explain here because I don’t think I could do it justice.  You’ll just have to check out www.qigong.com and see if there is an event near you and try it.

The other major component to this 4-day event was the approach to food healing.  Much of this I had heard before but in bits and pieces.  Jeff Primack, who is the driving force behind “Supreme Science Qigong” and the leader and main presenter of the 4-day Qi-revolution event, has taken all those “bits and pieces” and presents them as one whole healing source.  It felt as though someone finally gave me the key to the lock and showed me how to turn it. 

I have been working diligently on my approach to food for many years, but since this event it has been easier to bring things into place within my daily diet.  I am sixty seven years young, with just as many years of bad habits about food, plus I am a slow learner.  There are times when I can really follow true healthy eating, and there are other times when I just muddle along as best I can.  But somehow, since my Qigong experience, I manage to come back to the full healthy approach.  I am just so very grateful for this experience that has taught me to incorporate some very specific things on a daily basis into my nutrition plan today. Thanks to that I am almost totally free of arthritic pain.  My energy levels are so much higher and my body feels healthier in general.

I have just read through this posting and I realize that I have given a very poor “nutshell” idea of what my Qigong experience was about.  I guess it is something that you have to experience personally to have a full or better understanding of it rather than just reading words.  Much as I love my words, I am very conscious of the fact that sometimes they simply do not do justice to an event or situation.  This is one of those times.  Please check out Qigong for yourselves.  It really is quite amazing and will probably change your life forever.

Shared Wisdom: Latest Quotations

So while I collect my thoughts and get ready write on some specific topics that have come up for me over the past couple of months, let me share some words of wisdom from others.  I think if I had lots of money I would have a house with a huge library that would house not only lots of books, but collections of all the words that I have read over the years that have impacted me deeply or influenced me in some way.  Here are a few more of those precious words.

 

“Everything that I think, feel,say, and do belongs to me, and everything that you think, feel, say, and do belongs to you.”      (Paul Ferrini)

“I cannot think myself into a new way of living; I have to live myself into a new way of thinking.”                              (AnShin Thomas)

“Know that making a commitment to your happiness, to your health, to your fitness, to your family, to your abundance, to your career, to your mission in life,    to your love, to your friends, to your community, to your creativity, to your spiritual life, is all the same thing. It is all a commitment to growth, to wholeness, to being your best, to living life fully and gratefully starting from where you are right now!”                                                    (Jinjee)

“Making amends without forgiveness leads to dishonesty and lies.”                                                                                           (Anon)

“Everyone who’s human deserves to be treated with some dignity – whether they’ve done good things or bad things, they have to be given hope.”
                                                                                                                                                                             (Elton John)

“When you stop resenting what anther person can’t give you, you begin to appreciate what they have to offer.”                              (Anon)

“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”
                                                                                                                                                               (Douglas Everett)

“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”                                                       (Mark Twain)

“The fact that Christianity is a religion of love makes every evangelizer the teller of a love story, the singer of a love song.  By example as well as by words evangelizers must be teachers of love.”                                                                             (from John Paul II and the New Evangelization)

“The power of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.”                            (Blaise Pascal)

“When people envy me I think, Oh God, don’t envy me, I have my own pains.”                                                        (Barbra Streisand)

“He paints the lily of the field, perfumes each lily bell; if He so loves the little flowers, I know He loves me well.”             (Maria Strauss)

“Go out into the world today and love the people you meet.  Let your presence light new light in the hearts f people.”    (Mother Teresa)

“He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.”  (Thomas Fuller)

 

Happy reading!

Shared Wisdom: Along The Road

It has been far too long since I posted some wonderful words of wisdom from other souls that have or still are travelling along this road of life.  I was searching for a particular piece of writing and came across some great quotations.  Here they are.

“The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”   (Muhammad Ali)"

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”    (The 14th Dalai Lama)

“May the stars carry your sadness away,
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty.
May hope forever wipe away your tears,
And, above all, may silence make you strong.”
                                               (Chief Dan George)

“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”   (Pearl S. Buck)

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”    (Leonardo da Vinci)

“Moderation.  Small helpings.  Sample a little bit of everything.  These are the secrets of happiness and good health.”    (Julia Child)

“Ideals are like the stars; we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course  by them.”    (Carl Schurz)

“I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes – the finer things of life – would make you happy.  My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.”      (Coretta Scott King)

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: It is the time for home.”    (Dame Edith Sitwell)

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself.”     (Alan Alda)

So many words of wisdom. So many God-given truths.  So much shared by our fellow travelers. Sometimes I look at a phrase or a sentence and I wonder what was the author thinking.  What was going on in his or her mind?  Or perhaps it was something they were seeing or hearing or touching or tasting or smelling at the time. 

Some phrases leave me in awe with their simple beauty.  Others leave me breathless with their construction, the way the words are strung together.  One thing is for sure, words will always hold me caught up in  their magic like a child caught in the wonder of a firework display.

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