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March 7, 2005
How to surprise your body into better health with qigong
When I first started to practice Qigong and Tai Chi in the Seventies, I was very intense and overly serious. I looked down my nose at people who insisted on referring to their Qigong and Tai Chi practice as "play". I knew better… this was a serious business for serious people who seriously wanted to get seriously enlightened. Fortunately qigong practice by its nature started to "lighten me up" and take me out of my uptight, "technique-your-way-to-God" approach to life.
One excellent way qigong uses to kick seriousness in the butt, is surprise. Surprise is a key element in adapting the body for more radiant health. Fresh movement and sudden jolts provide an excitement and stimulus that the organism naturally craves. All newborn animals, including the human, respond to surprise as an essential part of their natural growth. Play is by its nature a series of orchestrated surprises. Play ignites the sense of fun leading to an energized, motivated, pleasurable experience of life.
Seriousness, by its nature, constricts us into stuck tension. Qigong expands us into playfulness. One popular qigong method for activating this playfulness is Spontaneous Qigong:
Begin by standing completely still. Calm down, drop the mind. Get out of your own way and allow any movement that shows up in your body to express itself. Anything can happen: you can end up rolling around on the floor, running on the spot, throwing your legs around in impossible gymnastics, or you may simply gyrate around slowly… whatever… just make no attempt to control or guide the movement with your conscious mind. Let your innate healing intelligence take over and surprise you out of your habitual body-patterns.
Check out John Du Cane's Qigong resources here.
Posted by james at March 7, 2005 7:24 AM