Recently student Russell asked me why, out of all the thousands of options, I choose to study Luohan Qigong. “Because it makes my back feel better,” I answered. When I took the form in a Qigong workshop 15 years ago I had been having acute back pain for several months and I was concerned. Given what I do for a living, was very concerned. Had years of hard style martial arts caught up with me? Within the first couple of hours of learning the form, my back pain vanished. I have practiced almost daily ever since and my back pain has never returned. “It really was that simple?” Russell asked. I answered, “yes” and we stepped onto the floor for practice.
As I breathed in the first movement I affirmed to myself it actually was that simple, but there was also more. I reached and stretched and inhaled through the long flowing yang movements of the 18 Luohan. I dove into its deep yin curves and exhales. I found, as I have ten thousand times before, the deeper truth: this form and these practices have never been just about my back. They have never been about pain or relief from pain. They have always been more: they have been about awareness, about observation, about contemplation and more than that still. These practices have always been about changing the way I see myself.
We humans have a unique capacity to concretize an experience into our truth and create the landscape of our life accordingly. Pain and pleasure seem to be big pieces of our internal architecture. It really is not solid construction though is it? How many times have we proven that? At the same time, I think it takes courage and tenacity and active intent to break those construction sites down - to dig around and look for a different design. To build back up a life not upon the rebar of transitory opinions about our capacities but upon the creative and flexible unknown possibilities. What is there to loose? In a recent discussion with David Gaffney, teacher and author, he shared with me that he has banned the world “can’t” from his classes. What a great idea. How many times do we alter the course of our day because "we can’t?" What if we banned that word from our interior dictionary? How would not just our forms, but also our lives be different?
Here we are at 2015. The New Year. Another one. Goals, resolutions, and so on. I for one am not a big resolution setter. I prefer instead to practice what is right in front of me. Perhaps a concept I learned at a workshop captured my imagination, or an insight I have leads me to a deeper state of inquiry, or maybe it is searching to express the same idea differently. For me, I find working towards insight rather than accomplishment to be relaxing and interesting. Lately I am enjoying practicing spear, which is very new to me. Its quite fun actually, to be at the bottom of the learning ladder, again. Can, cannot. Do they really matter? They seem to make things complicated. What is simpler for me is simply practicing what I value the most, seeing my world and myself anew.
Wishing you all the powerful manifestation of your clear intention this next year!
See you on the floor.
Kim