Ringing the Temple Gong | QiGong Warm-up

What follows is taken from the book, The Healing Promise of Qi by Roger Jahnke, OMD

Ringing the Temple Gong is a classic practice with prehistoric roots. No one knows who developed them, and they are used in medical, Taoist and Buddhist QiGong as well as many Tai Chi traditions. The primary purpose of warm-ups is to awaken, excite and accelerate your inner self-healing resources--Qi, blood and internal water--as prelude to deeper cultivation practices.

Historical reflection This practice is used by almost every practitioner of Tai Chi or QiGong as a beginning warm-up to get inner resources circulating. It has a powerful effect on the spine. Notice that is is very rare to actually make this movement under normal circumstances. This suggests that the movement was designed for us by the architect of the universe to allow us to improve our health. The twist sends a strong stimulus into the connective tissue of the spine, which fosters flexibility and generates very low level electrical potential. As the hands strike the body, it sends a mechanical stimulus to the organs.

Repetitions and focus  Do as many repetitions as you feel will awaken and accelerate your Qi. Six or nine repetitions to each side is in keeping with traditional numbers from ancient Chinese philosophy. After some time of using this method, most people will tell you that they can tell when the practice has done its job.

A quiet place is the think tank of the soul

 

Krista Tippett, host of the public radio show On Being, interviews acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton about his lifelong adventures in the sound and silence of nature.  Hempton is founder and vice president of The One Square Inch of Silence Foundation. He has produced more than 60 albums of natural soundscapes. Shih Fu Catherine recommends you listen to this interview with earbuds to enjoy the natural sounds that are woven throughout the hour.

Silence is an endangered species, says Gordon Hempton. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise. The Earth, as he knows it, is a "solar-powered jukebox."  Hempton says to really listen, whether to nature or another person, you first have to quiet your mind.  He says "Quiet is quieting."

Take a hike with him through the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula.

"Good things come from a quiet place: study, prayer, music, transformation, worship, communion. The words peace and quiet are all but synonymous, and are often spoken in the same breath. A quiet place is the think tank of the soul, the spawning ground of truth and beauty.

A quiet place outdoors has no physical borders or limits to perception. One can commonly hear for miles and listen even farther. A quiet place affords a sanctuary for the soul, where the difference between right and wrong becomes more readily apparent. It is a place to feel the love that connects all things, large and small, human and not; a place where the presence of a tree can be heard. A quiet place is a place to open up all your senses and come alive."

http://onbeing.org/program/last-quiet-places/4557

Chapter 30 Tao Te Ching

30

Use Tao to help rule people.

This world has no need for weapons,
Which soon turn on themselves.
Where armies camp, nettles grow;
After each war, years of famine.

The most fruitful outcome
Does not depend on force,
But succeeds without arrogance
          Without hostility
          Without pride
          Without resistance
          Without violence.

If these things prosper and grow old,
This is called not-Tao.
Not-Tao soon ends.


(from Tao Te Ching translated by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo)

Directions for folding origami peace cranes here.