Obey My Blog

No, no, no. No more talk of unconditional love. No more pontificating on the meaning of life. No more talking. I just want to do Qigong. In class this past week I felt disconnected and aloof. Not like me at all (well, in class anyway). A couple of students started chatting about how it’s possible to pick up negative energy from someone else and carry it with you. Our teacher started talking about all the exotic places he would be visiting this summer. At the end of class, everyone gathered around him to hear his words on why cultivating unconditional love and happiness are important to your health and the quality of your life. All of this seemed to run together and turn into something like a pop song I’ve heard on the radio a thousand times. I like the song, but I’ve heard it so many times that it’s starting to lose its original meaning for me. I really wanted to go back to the time before when it was fresh, new and made me want to sing along.

I didn’t really feel like singing along this time and a part of me kind of felt guilty for that. At the same time, I can’t deny that I’ve been feeling just a bit disillusioned with my practice. Well, actually it’s not my practice really. On that I am clear. I love practicing Qigong and I love practicing Tai Chi. It’s when philosophical underpinnings get tacked onto my practice that I start squirming.

On the other hand, I think these philosophical underpinnings are very important. I absolutely agree with my teacher that cultivating unconditional love and happiness are important to creating health and improving your quality of life. I think more people should consider this. Especially the employees of the Ruzyne International Airport in Prague (if you’ve never experienced customer service in a former Communist country, I highly recommend it.). However, in the context of this class, it feels strange to me. Even though that’s what initially attracted me to the class. Absurd!

I guess it goes back to my resistance to teachers in general. I have believed in philosophies and people who I discovered later on were completely full of crap. Needless to say, it’s a very disillusioning experience to find that everything you believed in wholeheartedly and passionately was in reality a complete fabrication. It’s made me just a wee bit gun-shy (is that the word I’m looking for? I don’t know.).

I have no solution here by the way. I’ll just keep on practicing. Because I love it. And I’ll keep on questioning my teacher, while (hopefully) remaining humble and open to learning. It’s a weird compromise, but the only one that satisfies me at the moment.

I’ll admit it. I don’t practice very regularly. I do about 10-15 minutes of standing meditation each morning and go to Qigong class every week, but that’s about it. Lately, I have been practicing a bit more, but not every day. So while this schedule is very convenient for me and my busy life, it kind of feels like I’m half-assing it. I don’t like that.

But what’s the best way to deal with those excuses that pop up? You know the ones – I’m too tired, I’m too emotional (well, maybe that’s just me), I don’t have time, I just ate, I want to eat – RIGHT NOW, my cat needs to be fed, I have too much work to do, blah, blah, blah.

The most pleasant and satisfying response I’ve encountered to this question, was written by Linda Myoki-Lehrhaupt, in her book T’ai Chi as a path of wisdom. She sees the matter of motivating yourself to practice, not as a question, but as an invitation from a special friend. If we can imagine ourselves as this special friend that we love and care about and would do anything for, then we might find the invitation to do tai chi (or qigong) much harder to turn down. We are patient, understanding and unconditionally loving with the friends that are near and dear to us. Why then, not turn this same attention to the care of yourself and your practice? Indeed…

Unconditional love is like breathing. As cliche as it may sound, I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for years.

This thought ocurred to me during my Qigong class this week and it dawned on me that I wasn’t really letting myself go and into the flow of the movements. Master Li stopped the class and asked one of the students in the middle of the room to continue doing the movements for the rest of us to see. She was beautiful. She was fully in the moment and put her whole body into it. You could just see it.

I was struck – because I’m embarrassed to let myself be that free in front of a group of people. How great if I could release that self-consciousness? How great it would be not to worry about being laughed at or criticized. This is the ideal place to release those fears and yet I find myself unable to. I am on the brink but cannot quite cross that boundary yet. It’s a little disappointing, but understandable. I’ve lived with this fear almost my entire life. It is familiar, albeit, paralyzing. But still, the unknown is scary. I haven’t let that stop me before though, so I will keep coming back and just try to take it one step at a time.