Qigong: a healing practice
When we practice Qigong, we move beyond the physical to bring peace and healing to the deepest levels of the mind and the heart. As the mind becomes calm and the clutter falls away, we develop mental clarity and are able to take a closer look at our thoughts and our emotions.
Fear, anger, anxiety, grief, and worry are feelings that we all endure but can be difficult to clear. It is common to bury feelings, ignore them, or try to push them away.
I have heard it said that this is similar to throwing a ball against a wall, and the harder we throw that ball, the harder it bounces back to hurt us. I compare it to a dog who buries a bone. Sooner or later, you’re going to go looking for that bone, because you know it’s still there, hiding in the recesses of the mind. You will continue to dig up those feelings and move them around until they are finally brought to the surface and resolved.
The big question is, how do we manage the myriad of feelings that have become so deeply ingrained from years of living?
It takes a lot of courage, and I have noticed that people who shy away from the contemplative aspects of Meditation, Yoga, and Qigong do so because they are not ready to face the reality of their emotional pain. They do not want the mind to be quiet because the distractions of a busy mind serve as a defense mechanism to buffer what hurts.
The beauty of a Qigong practice is that the slow, meditative movements safely encourage a flow of energy that lessens physical pain, and this leads to a sense of focus and calm in the mind. It then becomes easier to act as a quiet observer to our thoughts and become curious about our feelings without judging them. It helps us to connect the dots between our thoughts and the emotions they create, freeing us from our burdens and cultivating wisdom, kindness, hope, acceptance, and a more cheerful disposition.
Having a shift in perception in how you have typically thought about something can be quite liberating, like an aha moment when the light is shined so clearly that the emotion simply vanishes. Chinese philosophy believes that our thoughts, emotions, and physical health are all intricately intertwined and cannot be separated. One will always affect the other. Like a revelation, it would be quite natural for the physical symptoms that manifested as a result of a faulty mindset or misguided emotion to simply vanish, and you experience the true healing that you desire.