Several months ago I was running. I was walking my dog. We had just crossed the bridge and crossed over to the right side of the road towards the pond closest to the road. I was so happy. Dakota and I were running together and I felt so strong and so free and the happiness seemed to be fueling my run into flight. I was proud of my ability to keep up with my running dog. The air streamed back across my face and the rest of me and I felt sure that I could fly. In preparation for take off my body was beginning to lean forward and my legs were not keeping up with my head and shoulders which were leading me. I fell forward with great momentum and as my left hand let go of the leash I jammed my left thumb hard against the ground back towards my wrist.

It hurt, but not that much. I cried out a little and laughed too. I picked up the leash in the other hand and continued on my way around the pond to go and see my friend. My thumb swelled up some. I took care of it for a couple of days and then figured it would take care of itself. I stopped playing the guitar for a little while but then started up again. I could play, as long as I was gentle in my use of the hand. It did not continue to resolve itself. I let my friend who is a masseur at Kim’s Healing Center look at it and pull it back into place. It seemed to be a little out of joint. He did pull it back into place, but a couple of days later after playing guitar some more, it went back out of joint again.

I guess I don’t need to recount all of these details. The fact is, after almost three months, this thumb still has not healed the way I hoped. I have gotten advice and followed it. Part of what I have needed to do is to stop playing the guitar while it heals. I had gone for nearly two months without playing the guitar when two days ago I decided I just had to pick it up and since then I have been paying the price again.

It seems to me that my story is an allegory for me. I find that more and more I can look at my life and see patterns and I interpret meanings from those patterns.

In my wonderful happy run, I got ahead of myself. I leaned far forward with my head and even my heart and my feet left the ground. I thought that I could fly. I thought that if I believed with great intensity, the world would lift me with my vision. But in this case, it wasn’t really vision. It was heart and desire. But my feet apparently still have to stay on the ground if I am to avoid a fall.

I have let you all know a little bit about how a couple of years ago, maybe more at this point, I had held back on myself for so long that it felt like either I was going to let myself sink and die, or I was going to let go and allow. So I let go. I let go to a very large degree. I let go of so many boundaries and definitions that I had felt imprisoning me that it took me a while to catch my bearings. Actually, I think I am still catching my bearings. I love the freedom that I have felt. I love the vibrancy. I love expressing without fear. But I went from being in a curled up ball to curling back into as wide an embrace of reality as I could muster. My spine is not bent forward like an old woman. I have a tendency instead to lean back. I have a tendency to look upward all the time. Even when I meditate, my head tends to bend back and upward. It is like I want to understand the sky.

When I begin my qigong active exercises I remember the cues that Chunyi Lin gives about how to stand. One of the things that he says almost every time in every exercise or meditation is to tuck the chin downward just slightly to keep the whole spine straight. The strongest and most natural state for the spine is to be straight. The spine is the energy channel which is most basic. My spine is still not straight. I have gone from one extreme to the other.

I look up like I want to understand the sky. But it is more powerful, perhaps, to straighten my spine so that I can see what is directly in front of me. It is called having a level head. I guess that phrase has a literal meaning for me.

Dakota, my model in flight:

Technorati Tags: Bursting, Chunyi Lin, guitar, meditate, qigong, renewal

Sometimes the world seems like it has gone crazy. And it is reflected in my own life directly around me and within me. I reached a point a couple of years ago where I felt like I was being sucked down into a well and I didn’t know how to pull myself up to see my own horizon any more.

But then someone gave me a sense of hope which I followed. And gradually I began to remember that I exist. You see, at that point I couldn’t even feel my own existence any more. I was awake and I had a body and I had thoughts, but somehow I was gone. It took someone looking into my eyes and seeing my despair for me to realize some time later my own despair.

Life can be really tough. And I guess it is particularly tough right now. It is scary to watch the world as we know it fall apart. Outside and inside. But since I grabbed the thread of light from my friend, I have been climbing out of my well and I have remembered that I am really still here and now I even have a sense that the world around me exists. Hey people! Hello! How are you!

I began a yoga class a couple of years ago. It taught a very relaxed deep form of yoga called Svaroopa. It allowed me to ease into parts of my body that were holding tension and not allowing energy in. I began a process of release. Thank you, my wonderful teacher and friend Midi.

I have been exploring the disallowed parts of my own inner space through yoga and qigong since then, and have found that breath and energy work can be blended with singing. I have found that singing can in itself be energy work. After all, certain notes are associated with certain chakras. And I do find that if I draw attention to different parts of my body as I sing and allow the singing to flow through those parts of my body, the quality of the singing changes, a feeling emerges and blockages can be cleared.

I am finding through my qigong that energy work can heal others as well as the self. I am hoping that I can use my singing in the same way. And my talking and communicating generally, although I am reluctant often to commit myself to strict rules of thought which sometimes makes understanding me difficult. I think I still have a bit of anger to work though. I will gradually come back down to earth through my healing process though. I really want to get to know you all! And I want to begin to learn from you too!

Technorati Tags: , chakras, energy work, qigong, Spirit, Svaroopa, Yoga