The September issue of Shambala Sun, a magazine, speaks about finding Peace during
stressful times. Are you familiar
with that word, stress? Here are
some inspiring ideas to share
with you from this issue. .
“Life is stressful, and no matter what we do, that
blunt fact will never change. Yet
we’re not powerless. The way
we think about stress and the way we react to it-that is always up to
us.”; Judy Lief’s article
on the “;Middle Way
of Stress” tell us that
“Not only do we have to lean into our own stress at times, but we
also have to be willing to allow others to learn in that same way. It is hard to watch someone struggle
without feeling anxious and wanting to help out…but it is not always so
simple. For instance, if you see a
butterfly struggling to break out of it cocoon, and you try to ease its
struggle by prying open the cocoon, that butterfly will emerge in a weakened
state and may even die. The butterfly
needs the stress of working its way out of the cocoon to build up strength and
to dry its wings. Clearly, a
certain amount of stress is part of life, but how much stress and what kind of
stress? How can we navigate a
course that is challenging but no overwhelming?
We think that if we were smarter, prettier, wealthier, more
powerful, living somewhere else, younger, older, male, female, with different
parents-you name it-things would be different. But things are not different. It makes more sense to learn how to deal
with the stresses that inevitable arise.
Yet Lief teaches that there is real hope for relief and that it lies in
practice.”
.
This leads us to
QiGong. Here is a flowing
dance with gentle, stretching movements that help us, enable us to let go, let
go of the stress, the pain and the worry as we seek to find our balance. Balance is like happiness, it can be
fleeting. But the practice of
QiGong, the Gong, the focus, the
intention as we move the Qi [Chi – life force, energy] toward aligning Body, Mind, Heart, Spirit and Soul towards who YOU ARE, is
my secret that I want to share with you.
And her basic suggestion about getting to know your own mind by
following the breath RESONATES with Qigong. The Breathwork is an important element in
QiGong practice. As Lief suggests,
and also in QiGong practice, we bring our attention to our inhalations and
exhalations, thereby discovering that there IS something steady and reliable
about our mind. That when life
becomes stressful, we can draw upon that inner strength that lies within each
and every one of us.
Join me and others as we Dance and Practice Qigong here at
the Resiliency Center
every Thursday @ 2 P.M. and @ 6:15 P.M. in the open work space. $10.00 charge.
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