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March 21, 2005
"Excuse me, but did you know your car is on fire?" - Qigong to avoid flare-ups
When I first came to Minnesota I was dirt poor and scraping nickels from the sidewalk. My first car was the mother-of-all-beaters: a massive, shoddy, faded-green boat once known as a Buick Century. I think it was about three hundred years old.
At an intersection one sunny day, a woman pulled up beside me, rolled down her window and asked: "Excuse me, but did you know your car is on fire?"
"No, I didn’t," I thanked her politely and leant over and out of the passenger window to take a look. Sure enough, dirty yellow flames were flickering up from the bottom of the car.
Turned out the old beast’s engine was smeared with leaking oil, which had finally decided to crackle into life.
I felt strangely relaxed watching those flames creeping up the side of my car door. Amazing, really. And fortunately, the fire died down as quickly as it had flared up and I am here still to tell you the story.
I think about this story quite a lot as a good metaphor for what we don’t do to take care of our bodies. Internal negligence, that sense of obliviousness to the need to stay clean internally, often precedes minor if not massive physical flare ups.
If you don’t use good internal detox procedures you are asking for it sooner or later.
While most forms of qigong help you detox, here’s a “bone-marrow-washing” Qigong technique that is simple and effective:
In a standing qigong position, raise the hands above the head, drawing in fresh energy. Hold the palms over the top of the head and imagine a waterfall of purifying water slowly washing down the front of your body all the way out below the feet, cleansing it of all debris and toxins. Repeat at least three times. Then repeat for the back of your body and then finish by sending the purifying waterfall through the center of your body.
Check out John Du Cane’s Qigong resources here
Posted by james at March 21, 2005 4:10 AM