Now, it is for ME.
Now. Right here. This moment.
It is for ME. No one else. It is for me.
Now is for ME. Because this is MY life. No one else’s.
I have manifested this moment. I have manifested everything before. And I manifest everything beyond.
This IS my life. And NOW, this moment is mine. It is for ME. I fully inhabit it. Deeply.
I breathe throughout my body. I own now.
I fully own this moment. And this moment. And this moment. And this moment…
One of my students once said to me, when doing Big Tree, she has learned to lean into pain to eventually resolve it.
This is precisely what’s effective in healing, physical pain or emotional pain. Often when a condition becomes chronic, we have learned to ignore it to some extent and numb it in our awareness. This is why the body has learned to co-exist with the condition. In order to heal it, we must bring our full awareness into it, look right into it, lean into it, wake it up, hear it, see it and experience it fully. Then the healing may start.
I have remembered to try it again this morning when my persistent stomachache finally got my attention. So it’s a meditative practice that can be done anytime in life, not only in Big Tree Standing Meditation. It’s not a “oh, it’s hurting again, oh no, oh what can I take to stop it” kind of going-outward-for-help notice, but rather, “what is it trying to tell me, and how can I change” kind of going-in-deep awareness.
This requires me not afraid of what the body is trying to say, therefore allowing it to cry out fully, which could mean at first experiencing more and deeper pain. Know that the body would not give us more than what we can take, so relax into the pain. The more I relax, I feel more spacious in my stomach area. I see, I have been tightening it chronically without notice. As I release more space for the stomach, I do feel the pain spread and intensifying. I ask, what are you trying to tell me? It says, “Give me space. Always allow space for me to work, to breathe. Protect my space even when you feel tense, nervous, worried or pressed in by outside demands.” I hear you. And this will require on going practice in life.
Then the pain begins to subside. It moved to the spleen. My spleen felt hot. I relax around my spleen and ask, “What are you saying to me?” “I am empty. I have been working too hard at times when you over ate. I need rest, too. So please take breaks.” I see. I must not over eat out of nervousness or fear. Be in the moment in my body when I eat, and stop when I feel the signal for the first time. My stomach and spleen slowly begins to calm.
This is all practice to be in the body while living life. And when we feel pain in the body, it’s a wake up call, telling us how we must change for healing to start. We are powerful. We can heal ourselves. Now take that one step and begin to really listen, really see, and begin to release that old familiar tightness pattern. This is a life time practice, and we are doing this together now.
Dear friends,
I will be flying to China tomorrow, and still haven’t found the “perfect” way to continue this blog from China. So I will try two ways, and see which may work better.
I have started a google discussion group which I like even more because then it’s a dialogue between all of us. The address is: http://groups.google.com/group/heart-centered-image-therapy?hl=en
Please email me and let me know if you would like to join us.
Another option is a Chinese site, which all of the manuvering unfortunately are in Chinese. If the google discussion site is not available to me in China, I will utilize this Chinese site to continue my writings on traditional Chinese medicine and my practice. The address is: http://blog.sina.com.cn/claireg
Either way I hope to continue to share this journey with you in the new year.
May the new year bring peace, joy and light to you all,
Claire Johnson
Dear friends,
I am finally back in the States, and eager to put more writings onto my blog. China had blocked many western sites such as youtube, facebook and google blog. This was why all of a sudden I couldn’t post any new writings anymore. That is something to be thankful for living in the North America. In the future I will find a Chinese site to host my blog so I can continue my conversations with all of you.
Thank you all for your patience. Your feedbacks are precious to me, so please leave your words! It’s good to be back!
March 10, 2009 (In celebration of the International Women’s Day on March 8th)
I finally got it! It’s such a good thing to be a woman, even when we are having our period, even when we are having our menstrual cramps and mode swings. For the first time I understand, wherever I feel pain, my body is telling me there is a blockage. And with the help of the strong flowing of blood each month, I have the opportunity to address these blockages. This could be part of why women tend to live longer than men because our body gives us a monthly check up!
Wherever it hurts, press the points, massage the areas and pound on the achy lines down the legs. It’s likely for many of us that these points and lines are on the liver and gall bladder channels. As soon as they are open, we’d feel a rush of electricity or cold qi run down the channels and out of our feet. Sometime our feet may stay ice cold for a while until all the cold qi the body could push out at this time is gone.
On the emotional end, some of us tend to have outbursts before our blood flows. Some men around us may not appreciate it. But it is precisely these outbursts that show us our suppressed upsets and anger. Like the physical body, these emotional outbursts are also signs that perhaps during the rest of the month we have been blocking, numbing and not dealing with some issues in our lives. Don’t discredit these outbursts as nonsense, rather, treasure this messenger and listen.
We have such wonderful help. If we ignore them, we waste our natural abilities to heal ourselves. Our menstrual cycles are a gift that can help us prevent future diseases such as uterine, ovarian and breast ailments. If we can promptly open our liver and gall bladder channels, we also avoid pent up anger that hurt our liver and destroy our gall bladder.
For many of us, our mind may want to avoid facing pain and doing something to change it because it does not get the body logic. But our body, our heart and soul want it, need it, flourish because of it. We have nature helping us through this process. The pull of the full moon, the push and pull of ocean tides, the pulsation of earth all nurture us women to be fully women. Accepting this natural process, celebrating it allow us to come into our full power as women, and allow the interaction between men and women to be fuller, truer and more profound.
I love my group of people! They have hearts of gold. So generous and their intention with ZYQ so pure. I am proud to claim, these are my people.
–right after our third board meeting.
It also came to me at a point in our meeting that whenever we feel confused or conflicted, we have lost our connection to our gut, our essence, our foundation, the core of what is most important to us. Then it’s time to drop the mental fog, and drop down into our dantian, and feel our core truth. This is true for the organization, for any individual’s life decisions and for me, very much.
Life extends our internal practice externally. It’s just beautiful how life unfolds.
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