by Claire | Sep 6, 2007 | Uncategorized
March, 04
Things are just fine, we say.
We like to keep things the same.
We like security.
We like the familiar, routines.
We like an easy life.
We like our ways.
We like to stay with what we know.
We like people who are like us.We don’t like new things.
We don’t like big changes.
We don’t like adversity.
We don’t like obstacles.
We don’t like pain.
We don’t like upheavals.
We certainly don’t like our enemies.
Or do we?
Can we switch our likes and dislikes?
We all like happiness.
But we don’t agree on what makes us happy,
or how much something makes us happy.
Everyone pays attention to happiness. Even scientists who are supposed to be dispassionate, are churning out studies. They assigned numerical values to happiness and let people rate how much something would make them happy:
Before they got it,
When they get it,
And after some time.
They found three outcomes on happiness.
Everything material, people tend to rate them high while expecting. When they get it, the rating is almost never as high. And the value depreciates in time.
When people rate the time they spend with loved ones, the outcome is just as high if not higher than they expected. As time goes on, people recall these memories and the happiness value goes higher and higher. In another word, the value appreciates, or high ROI—return on investment.
So how do we spend time with our loved ones?
Some of the deepest pains are also caused by some of our closest family and friends.
How can we continue to find happiness, grow in happiness
when we argue, we get mad, irritable, disappointment, sad, hopeless, fearful…
with our closest loved ones?
One way of modern thinking must be changed—
the way we think pain is bad.
We avoid, we suppress, we do everything we can
to not have pain, not even discomfort.
We bandage, we drug, we numb our pain and discomfort
instead of finding out what causes the pain.
We stay right on top of pain and darkness in ourselves,
sometimes all the way until death.
We become more and more rigid
from deeper and deeper layers of fear of pain.
3. The third outcome the psychologist learned from their research is that whenever people expect something to be really bad, when it happens, it’s never as bad as people thought, even when it is the death of a loved one. We always get over the pain sooner than we could image. Almost without fail, happiness returns sooner than we expect.
If we are not forced to look at pain and always run away,
more and more fear and rigidity builds in our psyche and our body.
Emotional and psychological pain becomes physical.
When we suppress physical pain, it doesn’t really go away.
It continues to build, cause bigger and deeper pain and more severe illness
in our body.
How to get out of this endless vicious cycle?
Reverse the spiral—
Choose to look at the pain.
Look right into the pain, physically and emotionally.
Know that we are strong and resilient,
that we will survive the worst healing crisis.
Know that the pain is never greater than who we are.
When you trust yourself, and let go, release,
you go through the pain.
Then we are a layer lighter. Brighter.
We feel our strength as ever-flowing water, not as aging concrete.
We become truer.
We can be with our loved ones closer.
Our enemy can become our friend.
This is when
Happiness can build,
Endlessly.
by Claire | Sep 6, 2007 | Uncategorized
The first step qigong teaches is body awareness, this inner relaxed alartness that you see in masters of qigong, taichi and internal martial arts. In sports, we learn the concentrated body awareness. When we become unaware or in our head, it’s easy to sustain injuries. But concentrated focus does not last long. We usually forget the body awareness and get in our head right after sports. I used to be a dancer, practicing everyday and also performing. I had very good balance and elegance of movement, but I got many injuries in and out of dancing. It’s not due to lack of balance or bad motor movements. It is the lack of the relaxed, sustained awareness. This is what qigong brings into us. This relaxed, sustained awareness will prevent future build-up of stress on our organs and injuries on our body.
When you are constantly in the sustained relaxed state, your vital energy can flow more easily, bringing blood and nutrients to all the areas that need healing. This is the beginning of our self-healing process. Then we learn to bring a slight focus, still relaxed, to our energy centers, so we can begin to gather and store energy, build up our energy level and our immune system.
This is also “the zone” many athletes, writers and artists, even scientists talk about, this relaxed openness, sustained alertness. This is the present state. When we are in our head, we are often in the past or the future. Being in the state allows us to be open to the flow of cosmic energy into our body, carrying new information, wisdom that heightens our creativity. To systematically opening our energy channels and points so we are more connected to the cosmis is part of our personal and spiritual development in qigong.
by Claire | Sep 6, 2007 | Uncategorized
Feb. 04
The mind is such an interesting character!
It wants to get in the middle of everything, here and now, past and future, and everywhere else.
I find it easier to relax the mind during standing meditation rather than sitting for novice meditators. When I practice standing meditation, my body adjusts. Different parts of the body shows discomfort, letting me know that there is something wrong there and need some healing attention. I learned along the way to hear my body, notice the subtle communication. This is when I surround the areas with relaxed awareness. Some of them let go, release. My body realigns, bit by bit.
Some areas are stubborn and continue to build to ache. This is when my mind starts to chatter. The volume gradually cranks up to a low roar, then sharp screams, all in the best tradition of “dramatizing” the pain.
This is when I relax the muscles around the brain, especially the frontal lobe, the forehead. Then the mind has to give up control. Thoughts get dropped—like puff of smoke disappearing into flowing air.
Right away, pain lessens by more than half. Tightness melts. Locked places open. Areas that were just screaming a moment ago relax, release, let go—fast.
I smile at my self-assumed busy mind. The smile naturally relaxes the muscles around the brain, takes power away from the mind. Relaxed awareness, like air leaking out of a blown-up puff fish, releases into the rest of the body—long, soft, smooth breaths, circulating and opening all the tense, not-yet-relaxed areas in the body.
The body calms. Energy flows freely and calmly. My spirit eases and comes into a stillness. The brightest clarity ensues.
When the body, energy and spirit stay calm for a while, time as we know it doesn’t exist anymore. It becomes expansive like the universe. Our physical matter becomes lighter. We feel the distant space between and within atoms in our body. We feel qi—the quantum connective tissue to all in the universe. When we feel this essence of self and everything else, a sense of elated joy permeates all of our awareness.
We are expanded into time and space, ageless and connected.
Isn’t it lucky that we have a body, that it does not let us ignore it too easily. So perhaps we will eventually learn our lessons, learn about ourselves through our tool.
by Claire | Sep 6, 2007 | Uncategorized
People come to me for healing when in crisis. I do the same. We think, “Fix me! I am uncomfortable!” “I am out of my normal range of comfort. Put me back to my comfort zone again!” What we forget is that these crises are mere reminders. There is no such thing as an accident. Behind the area where we got hurt is a long history of past incidences. Why do we have such weak areas or organs that always give us trouble? Even behind hereditary cases, there are deeper reasons, causes that we need to become aware of so we can change the family patterns and heal. No wound is too deep to heal; no illness is too late to heal. That is why we are here, that is why we have a body this time, is to use our body as a tool to heal our soul. To heal completely, to heal the integral being, my latest experience gave me more clarity on how this is possible.
I have been praying much to overcome one of the hardest lessons in my life. Finally that day I understood why I threw out my pelvis the week before, plus all the injuries I have been sustaining from “accidents” throughout the years. It’s time to understand the connections in my body so I can finally heal.
The Healing Story
When the healer (Richard) started on my achy pelvis area, I felt that unbearable ticklish feeling under my right hipbone that says “stay away! Don’t touch!” I knew better to give in to the surface defense. By breathing into the area, I relax and defuse the defensive layer. The ticklishness fled down my legs–with it waves of a subtle sensation spread through my whole body. I knew from past healing experiences that this is how I feel fear, and I could tell that this one is big. “Stay with it. Go deep,” I tell myself and the healer.
As soon as layers of ticklishness and fear faded out, a sharp, pin-size point of excruciating pain emerged out of nowhere. I drew my breath into the pain and release, release, and release some more, like giving birth, letting go of a body memory that no longer serve me. The pain began to spread and lessen. It spread to my chest and released a well of sadness. This is the point when clients tend to shut down because the feeling is so overwhelming. I relax some more and let it come out. My right hip opened more, more grief, until the grief finally overwhelmed my breath. I couldn’t breathe. I started coughing uncontrollably. My body convulsed. My healer padded my lungs. Much coldness came out, more uncontrollable crying. When the ocean of grief subsided some, I felt anger, then intense, vehement bitterness that I much prefer not knowing.
I saw myself at forty-four years of age, in a long dress with a bonnet standing by the sea, grieving and angry over the fact that my husband didn’t return. I didn’t know if he ever would. My heart closed up by years of sorrow and layers of anger. I locked the door and threw away the key to my heart with endless bitterness. I died alone at seventy-three, anger and resentment destroyed my liver functions and caused much pain in my hips and legs.
This life prompted another, similar life during WWII when I was a beautiful dancer, much admired. I fell in love and was engaged to marry so I didn’t have to dance for money anymore. Then my fiancée was drafted. He never returned. I became nonchalant, and drank, smoked and danced with any man who would pay me, and eventually died alone, from lung and bronchial complications.
So this life I am back to the same lesson—separation—learning from my body memories in hips and lungs. It started early in life with my beloved father when I would only get to see him once a year, and see him leave again and again. At fourteen I left father for America. Our emotional lie dried up for many years. It was just in the last few years we are getting close, communicating from the heart again.
How Energy Enlivens the Physical and Carries Information
Though the issue has been clear to me psychologically for many years and I have had years of counseling on it, the physical and energetic memory of grief, anger and resentment has not yet been dissolved. They still get triggered and create more problems in my life, both emotional and physical. I know I must overcome and heal completely, physically, energetically and emotionally, to change course of my life, now and in the future. Forgive and let go and become open. (Trust that I will be fine. When I am open and loving, life will be different. My soul which is connected to the One can point me in the right direction, the direction of health and wellbeing. Without that self-fulfilling fear of my man leaving me, I wouldn’t attract that learning pattern anymore. With this lesson learned, I will love and be loved.)
With the physical and emotional pain coming out and then lessening and leaving, I experienced energy (qi) flowing in patterns in my body. Energy is the carrier of information, emotional, family, environmental, etc. When emotions are stuck and not flowing, the energy carrying it gets stuck as well. In Chinese medicine, we call it stagnant qi. When qi gets stuck for a while, the physical environment gets stuck. Blood doesn’t flow well. Nutrients and oxygen cannot get to the area. Muscles and membranes get stiff, non-elastic or numb. For example, I often find the cause of knee problems to an energy point that is on the gall bladder energy channel; I often trace right leg problems to liver, left hip to the spleen/pancreas system, low back pain to kidney/adrenal system, etc. So when there is a physical injury, like a torn ligament or a hernia, usually that area is become stiff so it cannot move in a flow with the rest of the body. To heal such physical injuries, we work specifically in that torn area to first open the blocked energy point, then the sluggish energy channel. Secondly we bring more vital qi and blood into the area to flush out the old. Thirdly, to deal with the problem from the root, we need to work with the organ system to bring all players back into full functioning.
This time during healing, I was able to trace distinct qi flow patterns. I felt how stagnant qi travels from one point to next, out of which specific toe it is releasing from, and from which part of the organ the stagnant qi was being pulled out. There was once a point felt extremely painful on the inside of my right thigh. Then all of a sudden a puff of stagnant qi drained out of my left second big toe. I was perplexed why it jumped legs. Then I realized—I have a sprained ankle on the right so it wouldn’t go out that way. Another time I felt qi draining first on the outside of the leg then changed to the inside channel then changed back to the outside again. So I verbalized each change to the healer. We realized that changing from the thumb to the fore finger changed how a healer would push the stagnant qi out of either the yin or the yang channels.
What It Takes to Heal Completely
This healing session lasted three hours. And we were only able to release about ninety percent of the layers on the right side, and ten percent on the left. The complete healing process seems daunting. To uncover all the energy, physical and informational (emotional) layer by layer not only takes time, it’s a process that requires commitment and patience. As a client:
First, we need to say, “I want to heal.” We have come to a place of respect for ourselves, our body so that we are already to hear the signals. We are ready to look inward, examine ourselves and change old, unhealthy physical and emotional patterns. We are ready to let go of these old patterns.
Secondly, we need to say, “I trust the process.” We cannot hesitate on how much time and energy we dedicate to our healing. We listen to ourselves, our body’s signals, and do whatever it takes to reverse the unwell. We enlist allies, support and helpers, which is healers who support your process. Having patience means having trust that the healing process is guided by our soul, our high Self, so that we are given lessons we can handle, and we are going at a speed that is right for us. As long as we keep on at it, we will get there—wellness in our physical, energy and spiritual self.
Thirdly, we trust the power of the Oneness. We are aligned with our image of wellness. We do not affirm the illness or our past. “The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past,” a Sufi teacher once said. Let the perfection of the Oneness pull you towards it and accelerate you toward wellness.
For healers, we need to know that it’s a dynamic relationship between our client and ourselves. We ourselves need to have became aware, looked at, and healed these areas of issues. We need to recognize it before we could help another with it. And we need to be open to listen, and ready to open that door for our client. Lot of times a client is standing in front of a door, needing just a little more encouragement to walk through. We as healers offer our hand.
Present Pain vs. Memory Pain
To change and heal takes tremendous courage. We must shed many layers of pain in order to completely heal. Then you may ask, how do I know when I am actually hurting and when I am healing? I’d like to refer to a point made in the documentary “What the Bleep Do We Know?!” Scientists found that our brain cannot tell the difference between what is happening in the present versus a memory. So our brain actually cannot tell whether something is hurting us right now or something is reminding us of pain stored in memory. Then what differentiates past versus present pain? Who is the observer that makes the differentiation? Scientists have been looking for the observer in the brain for decades and found none.
As this finding ties into our emotions, there are two situations. The first is the straightforward one, when our emotions serve as a motivator to change our condition so we wouldn’t get physically hurt, such as when seeing a lion, our fear kicks in extra adrenaline so we can run for our life. Or when we see a child being hurt, our anger motivates us to do something to get the child out of the situation. These are situations when the pain is happening in the present.
Then there is the second situation when we feel overwhelming emotions such as fear, anger and grief because the current condition is triggering a pain memory. Since our brain cannot tell between present pain versus memory pain, strong emotions tend to overwhelm the “observer” and we confuse the past for the present. In these memory situations reacting from triggering painful memories, we only hear the specific triggering words instead of the overall context, then misinterpret others’ intentions, and creating unnecessary conflicts and hurting others.
The same is true with physical pain. There is pain that is currently hurting our body so we know to stop it. When an area becomes chronically painful due to qi stagnation, we tend to stop exercising this area, fearing more pain. This reaction creates more stagnation, therefore more pain. In order to heal the chronic pain, we first need to wake up the body so the body knows there is something wrong in this area. Then we can release layers of pain.
How to stop this vicious cycle of hurt? We need to strengthen our observer so that we can differentiate between present versus memory pain. Ancient practices say that our observer sits in our heart area. So sinking our awareness from our brain into our body can help us tap into our observer. Once our observer tells us that it is a memory trigger, we can let this trigger help us dissolve our past pain. To do so we need patience.
Let our entire being be involved in healing the past hurt. Pay attention not to repeat the same action from the past so to add onto the past pain, or not to absorb the current trigger event into the ball of painful memories. For example, when someone says something that triggers angry memories, try not to absorb the anger into the area of body we have been using to store the pain, like the concave area right below our solar plexus. Instead, feel how the angry sensation runs through our entire body. Then usually our observer would show us the context and we see that our sensation has nothing to do with the other person’s remark, but comes out of the ball of anger we are still holding tightly in that area of our body.
Then what to do? Give yourself time to let the ball of painful memories surface, and dissolve into the entire body. It’s often easier to start this process with the help of a healer. Later when the process becomes instinctual, you can do it on your own. Let ourselves experience the past emotions, and let it change into other emotions, going through a process. Let it go from fear to grief to anger to resentment to deeper grief again. Feel the sensations of fear leaving our kidney/adrenal area through its system of energy channels and points; feel sadness dissolving out of and leaving the lungs system; feel anger leaving the liver system; feel resentment dissolving out of the gall bladder; and then back to lung system again…
Physical: The ache is a sensation we much go through to heal the past pain. Experience that initial excruciating point of pain, then feel it coming to the surface, dissipating into a larger area with less intensity. Then finally, feel it rush down the extremities, like a puff of smoke, out of the fingers or toes. When you have experienced physical pain disappearing in the form of stagnant energy, you will know for yourself how this process works.
Integrating All Three Anatomies to Heal Completely
This spiraling of the energies cleanses the stored information out of our physical system. It will take time. Be patient with each lesson. Sometimes it could take life times before we even become aware of a repeating lesson, and it could take some time to cleanse all the layers out of our being. This is the total, comprehensive, energy/information/physical healing process we must go through to grow as a soul, to come closer to the Oneness.
We can let go of stored, stagnant energies and information just like we can with material. We need a good elimination process so what we don’t need can be bio-composed into Earth to support other forms of life.
We are each multi-dimensional capacities for manifesting the Oneness. That is why we each came from such different past and experiences. We are each an unique resonator. Whatever is in us, it is what we resonate to, what vibration draw to us, what situations, who participate—all manifest by our vibration around us. When we shed these blockages and stagnations little by little, we become less and less charged by things around us that vibrate at the same level with the same blockages and stagnations. The more we let go, we empty, the more capacity we have to let the Source, the Oneness through. The Oneness is always there. When we are blocked, the lower and denser vibrations are like clouds covering the blue sky and shining sun that is a higher and finer vibration. As soon as we release the blockage, the sun shines on us. The more we release, the greater of scope we resonate with, and our manifestation is more encompassing. We move at a faster speed. Our growth goes at an exponential rate. As we release all blockages, we are the perfect and unique resonator of the Oneness. We are inline with the Universal Energy. We are the Oneness.
The instant way to be with the Oneness is complete surrender. Realizing all our physical and emotional pain is a manifestation of our ego’s attachments, we surrender our ego to our greater Self. This is the instant enlightenment, and it takes the most courage.
In order to live a life at a normal pace in this world of duality, we need a balance of both paths, undoing the ego attachments and letting go, and keeping a continuing connection to the Oneness through a sustained practice.
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