Fall Into Spring

A lot has happened in my life since the last time I posted here. Sadness and frustration gave way to expansion and growth as the year turned from fall, to winter, to spring. This post gives the highlights of those changes.

My fall seemed unrelentingly stressful. My elderly cat, who had taken so much care for over a year, finally worsened and I had to put her to sleep in early September. I became increasingly unsatisfied with my work situation over the summer, and applied for several jobs to change my situation, but with no luck. For reasons that I won’t go into here, those potential work avenues are now closed.

I struggled with pressures on the work front, both positive and frustrating, that just kept coming and never let up.

I continued to feel frustrated with my lack of strength and flexibility.

I just wanted a life that worked again.

I felt like I was in a holding pattern. Craving movement, and frustrated at its lack. As is often the case when it feels that life isn't working, I recognized that much of the frustrations I was feeling were because of my attachment to a certain outcome. One particular job that I wanted badly. Getting this job would have meant a big change in my life, including a potential move. As I waited to hear about it, I held open space in my life that I hoped that job would fill.  

At the change of the year things began to shift. I started making new, positive steps in my life.

* I started seeing a Reiki healer I had seen a few times about a decade before. Our work together really shifted my energy and freed some of the blockages in my life.

* I began making plans for the new year. Plans that would fill the space I had been keeping empty. My New Years goals for 2011 included 1) begin taking Tai Chi classes and 2) begin teaching meditation regularly.

I started teaching/leading mediation classes in February.

In late February, after too long a delay, I was finally able to find time to have a heart-to-heart with my manager, and ask for some of the duties I had found missing in my job. Amazingly, she was able to give me everything that I asked for. My job is now (for the time being at least) much more fulfilling than it has been in a long while.

I started weekly Tai Chi classes in April.  

My life has changed in so many ways for the better. All of the new things in my life have brought me a great deal of learning and growth. I plan to be a better blogger and record some of those blessings here.

Qigong practice: Summer into Fall

Throughout the summer just past I kept up a qigong practice several mornings a week before work. I settled on a routine of a warmup and four or five forms that takes about 10-12 minutes to complete.

I think it was in July that I finally got myself to go outside for my practice. I have read that qigong should be practiced outside, and it makes sense, since the practitioner is interacting with the qi in the natural world. I am a creature of habit, though, and moving my practice out of the comfort of my house, was some resistance I needed to break through. I am so glad I did, though. Moving out of doors really increased my enjoyment of the practice, in ways that I hadn't anticipated.

I found myself noticing little things about my surroundings.  Insects flitting around the stems of grass, making them quiver as if they fluttered in a breeze. A spider navigating around the tip of a blade of grass near my feet. Small spider webs glinting in the sun. Farther away, fog glowing in early morning sunlight and bales of hay drying in a field. The red orb of the sun, rising over the row of trees at the other end of the field.

Out of doors, too, it was easier to feel that I joined heaven and earth with my movements. It was easier to use my imagination, and later feeling, to pull qi from nature into my body.

Now, though, with the cooler temperatures, and especially darker mornings, I have had to quit my outdoor morning qigong routine. I have brought the qigong inside. I can also do some at lunch, if I have a free lunch period. But I definitely miss the sunrise qigong.

However, I have noticed a really nice change in my qigong practice in the past month.  I have started be able to really feel the energy/qi move as I am doing the qigong movements. Lifting my arms up to my head, I feel an opening in my head. Moving my arms out in a circle, I sense the qi move with my hands, like smoke or ripples in water. It is beautiful and amazingly cool.  

I think the change has been prompted by a new hormone balancing treatment that has been added to my regular acupuncture treatments. As it has been explained to me, the balancing attempts to bring one's yin and yang into balance. The fact that I am now able to feel the qi move means that I am becoming able to balance the qi on my own. I am thrilled by this development! I plan to use this new understanding to deepen my practice and continue to improve my health as well as my spiritual understanding.