Let me just men­tion that the draw­ing for this series of arti­cles comes from work done by Ben Wong and Jock McK­een. I’ve fid­dled around a bit with the word­ing and the arrows, but the con­cept is theirs.

Today, we move to the upper right of the chart. (The full chart is here)

Last week, we looked at how the “norm” is to learn cul­tur­ally accept­able behav­iour, and then to spend the rest of your life defend­ing what you learned. And peo­ple do this, despite being mis­er­able, and stuck, and pro­fess­ing a burn­ing desire for “things” to be different.

The draw­ing here is the upper right quad­rant of the chart I drew a few weeks ago.

This is the Wis­dom Path.

I’ve writ­ten about this path in many ways, includ­ing talk­ing about reach­ing it through a leap of faith. In many arti­cles, I’ve talked about how you must leave the bag­gage behind. The bag­gage is mostly the junk, the sto­ries, and the lim­i­ta­tions placed upon us as we grew up. We take it off by fac­ing down our fears, exper­i­ment­ing with paths unfa­mil­iar and scary, and by “open­ing up” our bod­ies, minds and spirits.

Robert Frost described this deci­sion to go another way in his poem,

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yel­low wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one trav­eler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And hav­ing per­haps the bet­ter claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the pass­ing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morn­ing equally lay
In leaves no step had trod­den black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet know­ing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Some­where ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Wis­dom Path is about step­ping out­side of both the Cul­tural Norm, and your com­fort level regard­ing who and how you are. Part of this game is the recog­ni­tion that the dis­com­fort itself is not real.

Our con­di­tion­ing has set us up to have a “dis­com­fort” reac­tion when mov­ing toward a bound­ary. What flashed through my mind was those dog col­lars that work with the buried wire. As the dog approaches the wire, there might be a sound from the col­lar, or a tin­gle. If the dog gets too close to the wire, there’s a shock. The dog “learns her bound­aries,” and is soon con­di­tioned to pull up well short of the invis­i­ble wire.

In our case, there is no shock, and there is no bound­ary. Other than the ones we main­tain. And we main­tain them as we do the same things, over and over, and those same things lead to the same results.

Exam­ple: Learn­ing to Communicate

Many clients want bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But it’s the rare per­son that just starts com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Every­thing is hedged. “Well, we’re really busy this week.” “I’ll start when she does.” We’ll start on the small ones and build up to the big ones.” (And they never do.)

In each case, the speaker thinks that the excuse is actu­ally valid. What really hap­pened was that they were get­ting close to the invis­i­ble wire of hon­esty and open­ness, and there was the tickle of, “Oh shit, what’s down that path?” and out popped a rea­son­able excuse.

No Excuse is Valid

The Wis­dom Path is the other, less trav­elled path. As in Frost’s poem, you have to choose, because you can’t walk two paths at the same time. You can vis­cer­ally feel the “sigh” of the poem. It’s right here:

“Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet know­ing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”

Tak­ing any path means leav­ing another. And in terms of what we are talk­ing about, the Wis­dom Path might as well lead to another uni­verse. In fact, I sus­pect it does.

Exam­ple: I’m sur­pris­ing and amus­ing myself over our reac­tion to our retire­ment planning.

Dar put in her retire­ment papers March 31, and will be done with teach­ing (after 35 years) the end of June. And, we just cel­e­brated (on April 5^th) our 25^th anniver­sary. The pic­ture, above, was taken that evening. We cel­e­brated at yoga class, with head­stands. Because, you know, we’re a bit odd…

The shirts we’re wear­ing say, “What’s your Drishti?” (and they’re avail­able at our tee-shirt store!)

Choose your point of focus!

In yoga, a Drishti is the place you look when doing a pose requir­ing bal­ance (like Tree pose.) You focus on a spot on the wall, a place that doesn’t move, and it helps you bal­ance. So, a Drishti is a point of focus, or bet­ter, a solid point of focus.

I was talk­ing about retire­ment with a cou­ple of clients, and as soon as I said the word I took in a big breath, my eyes filled up, I got nasal, and started speak­ing with “watery-voice.” Rather than try to escape the sen­sa­tions, I sim­ply described my fear regard­ing our plans.

Or as Dar­bella suc­cinctly puts it, “This is the scari­est thing I’ve ever done.”

Our plans involve leav­ing Canada for parts unknown (one des­ti­na­tion was to be Japan—with all the shak­ing it may have mor­phed into S. Korea.) And 3 months in Costa Rica, and we’re look­ing at teach­ing a work­shop down there (Hi Car­los! Still think­ing!)

Scary, yet walk­ing the path, set­ting things up, mov­ing along, is scary, espe­cially the Wis­dom Path, which is unpredictable .

We will both need to process our emo­tions and resis­tances as we go along, but we will keep walk­ing. The Wis­dom Path requires it.

Here’s what I’m think­ing for the next few articles

I’m work­ing with a new client, one who has processed much of the super­fi­cial drama, and who seems poised to explore this path. My inten­tion, for her sec­ond ses­sion, is to teach her Breath­work. If you’ve been with us a while, of have been to The Haven, you’ll know what this is. I’m start­ing there with her because what she wants to do requires both courage and energy, and Breath­work is one way to build this.

Our new Web­site (more on this soon!) has one day per week for 8 weeks just ded­i­cated to manip­u­lat­ing breath. We think it’s that important.

I’ve attached a link (and the video itself, if you’re on the actual blog site) from a DVD we did for peo­ple want­ing to learn Breath­work and Med­i­ta­tion and Qi Gong. The DVD was the pre­cur­sor to the new web­site. Rather than get into a long ver­bal expla­na­tion of the pos­ture, have a look at the video, and then do it for a month.

Click on the lit­tle pic­ture, above, and you’ll get a pop-out win­dow of the video. If you are read­ing this in an RSS reader or e-mail, go here.

I’m going to be play­ing around with new approaches to Body­work and Breath­work as I work with this new per­son, and I’ll share my results here, along with things you can exper­i­ment with.

And as our plans come together, we’ll keep you posted. How­ever, if you were think­ing of com­ing here to do some work, I wouldn’t put it of for too long!

QiGong Secrets – Week 4

Week four in the home study course was an intro­duc­tion to one of the 3 core skills of QiGong—prac­tis­ing QiGong with a relaxed state of mind. Mar­cus describes this as a QiGong State of Mind. The relax­ation exer­cise intro­duced last week in the home study course appeared to be a good one for med­i­ta­tion, so start­ing this week, I begin my QiGong prac­tice sit­ting on my med­i­ta­tion cush­ion. After med­i­tat­ing, I prac­tise some of the QiGong moves I am work­ing on.

In addi­tion to improv­ing my health, prac­tis­ing QiGong also helps to calm my mind.

Tak­ing a morn­ing break from the busy mus­ings that usu­ally go on between my ears results in sense of calm­ness that stays with me through­out the day. I def­i­nitely notice a dif­fer­ence in my approach to the day’s busy­ness when I have taken time for med­i­ta­tion and QiGong in the morning.

As the week pro­gressed, I real­ized that there had been a shift in my approach to QiGong. I now have a QiGong prac­tice rather than tak­ing time every­day to prac­tice QiGong. Pre­vi­ously my focus has been on the tech­ni­cal aspects of the move­ments. I always thought that the move­ments that felt right were the ones to focus my prac­tice on. I have spent the last year with a major focus on the tech­ni­cal side of the move­ments. In three weeks, QiGong Secrets Home Study Course has taken my QiGong prac­tice to a deeper level.

Week four teaches us the first move­ment of the 18 that will be taught in this home study course, as well as an intro­duc­tion to the other two core skills of QiGong. The first move­ment was easy to learn and is good for gen­eral move­ment of chi in your body. Some move­ments in QiGong can be more help­ful than oth­ers for cer­tain ail­ments. I am learn­ing in this course, that the pri­mary objec­tive is just to get chi mov­ing more in the body. 

The sec­ond core skill for QiGong is tak­ing time for this ‘Qi flow’ to move. Chi will nat­u­rally go to areas where the chi is depleted or blocked. In the videos I filmed for the new mem­ber­ship site Wayne and I have been work­ing on, I ended each of the sets with a move called Bam­boo in the Wind. This move helps you to feel any sen­sa­tions in your body and increase aware­ness of the move­ment of energy in the body. This is also the time for the heal­ing, the build­ing, and the ener­giz­ing to take place. The mind needs to be quiet dur­ing this time for any heal­ing to take place.

Stand­ing Medi­a­tion is the third core skill for QiGong. Having medi­a­tion prac­tice helps us to sim­ply allow the thoughts to be there then let them go rather than fol­low them through an end­less spi­ral. Stand­ing like a tree devel­ops bet­ter align­ment and bal­ance, stronger legs, increased body aware­ness, and a tran­quil mind. In Stand­ing Medi­a­tion, legs and feet are nat­u­rally extended and uncrossed so blood cir­cu­la­tion is not impeded and can actu­ally improve. Stand­ing Medi­a­tion is exactly what it says. Sim­ply stand still and allow the mind to be quiet. Ken­neth Cohen, in his book, The Way of Qigong: The Art and Sci­ence of Chi­nese Energy Heal­ing
, describes Stand­ing Medi­a­tion as “a million-dollar” secret. (page 134)

A relaxed, peace­ful, and quiet mind is an impor­tant part of QiGong. It is the activ­ity of the mind that usu­ally gets us into trou­ble. Devel­op­ing a QiGong and medi­a­tion prac­tice helps us to learn to still the mind. When the con­stant noise of the mind is gone, life is a very dif­fer­ent place. Ten to fif­teen min­utes a day of mind­ful QiGong has incred­i­ble ben­e­fits. An easy way to learn these skills is the QiGong Secrets Home Study course. If you have not check it out already, click on the link to read more.