What's That Tingling Sensation? Qi!

--from The Healing Promise of Qi by Roger Jahnke, O.M.D.

Through your practice you will learn to feel the Qi within your own body. It is a sensation that is unique to each person. Here are a few of the sensations that are typical:

• tingling in the hands, feet, cheeks
• feeling fluffy internally like clouds moving inside
• a sense of flowing or circulating
• feeling radiant or luminescent
• feeling that the surface of the body is porous
• spreading warmth in either the limbs or torso
• the feeling of being tipsy on wine
• energy moving in the belly
• release of tension in shoulders or neck
• decrease of pain
• sensation of a magnetic field between the hands
• sensation of heat coming from the hands as they pass over the face or body parts
• the urge to cry or the release of tears
• a sense of reconnecting with a lost part of oneself
• a sense of the transcendental or spiritual
• a feeling of coming home
• a feeling of ecstacy or bliss

There is no correct way to experience the Qi sensation. If you are fully awake and attentive in the experience you will probably ask, "What is that sensation?" Most of us have these experiences bu then fail to take the time to investigate them.

Kwan Yin's Quatrain #8 | Living the Tao

Living the Tao

In the forest, the pines and cypresses grow straight up

And neither rain nor wind, snow or frost can harm them--

One day to come you'll see what it all was for...

And these will be the pillars of the temple of community.

-From KUANYIN Myths and Prophecies of the Chinese Goddess of Compassion By Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay with Man-Ho-Kwok

10 Tips for Winter Health

Staying Healthy With the Seasons is a very popular, easy to understand, health guide by Dr. Elson M Haas. This book is recommended reading for Body Balance Academy students seeking natural ways to harmonize with the seasons for life-long health.

Here is the short list of ten tips for winter health. Click the link for more details about each one of the ten listed here:

1. Take time for reflection.
2. Reduce stress.
3. Get quality sleep.
4. Increase the relaxation in your life. Learn some relaxation exercises or practice yoga, Tai chi, Qigong, or Pilates exercises. These gentle practices can be done almost anywhere, regardless of the weather. (Congratulations, Body Balance students! You are way ahead on this one!-Shih Fu Catherine)
5. Nourish yourself.
6. Be sure you’re getting enough Essential Nutrients.
7. Avoid over-indulgence.
8. Have fun. Laugh.
9. Make time for love.
10. Nourish others.

Karen Armstrong on Compassion (Shu)

In this long book review from the Brain Pickings newsletter, author Karen Armstrong traces the evolution of compassion across religions, cultures and time. Her own life story is as fascinating as her study. Reviewer Maria Popova writes that 

“Compassion… asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.”

Later in the review she writes, "In fact, the first person to formulate the Golden Rule predated the founding figures of Christianity and Islam by five centuries and a millennium, respectively — when asked which of his teachings his disciples should practice most tenaciously, “all day and every day,” the Chinese sage Confucius (551–479 BCE) pointed to the concept of shu, commonly translated as “consideration,” which he explained as striving “never to do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Armstrong clarifies:

A better translation of shu is “likening to oneself”; people should not put themselves in a special, privileged category but relate their own experience to that of others “all day and every day.” Confucius called this ideal ren, a word that originally meant “noble” or “worthy” but that by his time simply meant “human.” Some scholars have argued that its root meaning was “softness,” “pliability.” But Confucius always refused to define ren, because, he said, it did not adequately correspond to any of the familiar categories of his day. It could be understood only by somebody who practiced it perfectly and was inconceivable to anybody who did not. A person who behaved with ren “all day and every day” would become a junzi, a “mature human being.”

Read more.

Shen is the awareness that shines out of our eyes when we are truly awake

 

Shen is best translated as Spirit. It is an elusive concept, perhaps because, in the medical tradition, it is the Substance unique to human life...Shen is the vitality behind Jing and Qi in the human body. While animate and inanimate movement are indicative of Qi, and instinctual organic processes reflect Jing, human consciousness indicates the presence of Shen.

Shen is associated with the force of human personality, the ability to think, discriminate, and choose appropriately, or, as is commonly said: "Shen is the awareness that shines out of our eyes when we are truly awake."

--from The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted J Kaptchuk, OMD

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