second position

In the Way to Power Lam Kam Chuen says that chi is stored in the Tan Tien, but enters the body through the heart. He also says you cannot think your way into this practice, you need to feel it. Second position is about generating a feeling for chi kung, and through this feeling a love and committment. In first position I feel the energy start to flow through my body. I might feel it under my armpits and lifting my hands and arms gently. But in second position I feel it as a balloon of energy. I feel it as an external force, pressing gently against my chest, the same chest I once held my newborn son. Gently holding this balloon how can my emotions not begin to de stress, how can my heart not begin to feel gradually full. Get this feeling everyday and how can you not be assured that you can always find happiness, at least in this?

Day 2

I agree with the students that one of the challenges for people who practice Standing is that it's so unusual and people think you're weird. After years of experiencing its benefits, I'm over that problem. But I do wish that standing were more common. For me, as a single mother, who can't really find the time to go to classes, the hardest thing has been maintaining this practice without a community.

At the same time, it would be difficult to keep it up if I didn't have a high tolerance for solitude. I'm a writer. Solitude is the foundation of my career. So it makes sense that I would choose a physical practice that would cross-train with that skill, as it were. Community it important, but you do probably have to have a strong sense of self to keep this up. And I believe it's helped me to build a stronger sense of self.

My new lifetime commitment

I'm a little flu ish this morning. Up early standing and then not sure if I really want to stand. Wrote for a bit, because my monkey mind thinks sometimes that's what I should be doing to make my writing better. Writing more. And there is truth to that. But I think it's a mistake to make writing the primary purpose. Being is the primary purpose. I think it's a more effective way to live, and to create.
That's my theory.
But the reality is that standing is hard. It is the hardest thing I've every done. To keep it up I have to believe that this really is the best thing for me to be doing. The best way to use my time. The best way to start my day.
The only way to start my day. The only way.

Distracted

A job opportunity has come up. Something I think I would be good at, but I'm not sure would be good for me. Or that doesn't quite fit in to the plan I had for myself.

It was a situation similar to this that seriously de-railed me last time I got serious about Chi Kung. I found myself obsessing about that job, which would bring me more money and more stuff. I didn't apply for it in the end. Possibly the right decision, but I never quite got back on track again.

I'm trying to stay centered as I consider this one. One I'm probably better suited for, but still, one that would derail other writing plans I have. And one that would suck me full in to the written dialogue of our culture, its obsession, which are not always healthy.

Just thinking about it de-rails me, I know.

So it sounds like I shouldn't apply or it. Or that at the very least I shouldn't let it distract me from the things I really need to do today.

I want to stay committed to my vision.

Maybe I need to ask that Jon Kabat Zinn question a few times of the universe today. What is my job?

The Ball

I'm feeling this week as though I'm in danger of drifting out of my practice.

Today I made it through half an hour. My mind is distracteded, and stressed. Argument with my son. Feeling mildly deranged.

The last couple of days I've been concentrating on the ball I hold to my chest. This focus started last week after my son had a session with his occupational therapist. They went to the park so Ben could show her the climbing course he's been mastering, a circuit of ropes, spiderwebs, bridges and other climbing challenges. She advised him that he should be concentrating on his hands and feet. Really looking at them, really looking at where they are and what they are doing in all of his activities.

I've been following this advice myself. Really looking at my hands in my practice when I'm holding the ball. I can feel this ball of magnetic energy, but right now I'm really focussing on trying to see it. Sometimes I can see what looks like waves. Mostly I see into the ball metaphorically.

This ball is like a ball of pure nurturing energy. It attaches to my heart and sends energy through that into the other areas of my body and into my brain. I can feel it, as though I'm hugging the universe.

Today this ball felt as real and as permanent as a rock. I began to see myself as a seeriels of polished boulders, sitting easily one upon the other. I felt that in time this energy would make a permanent change in my brain. Taking away this drifting addiction I seem to have to stress. Removing, making inactive all those circuits in my brain that lead me to unecessary, addictive stress. I could feel, really feel in my body the possibility that one day I could wake up and this commitment would not be such an act of will. But simply the way my brain now works.

Wouldn't that be good?

Getting my Practice back

This is hard. Harder than I thought it would be. So I'm going to start to re-build exactly the way I built this in the first place, five minutes at a time. It's actually part of the Zhan Zhuan discipline to start with baby steps. It's strongly discouraged to strike postures that your body might not be ready for, physically or neurologically. I second that. You can have some pretty intense experiences with this practice that you aren't physically or psychically. Take a challenging stance, like holding the balloon, and do that for five minutes the first week, ten minutes the next, building up to twenty.
Because I've built myself up to an hour before, and had all kinds of trippy peak experience, of course I want to start there. But I'm not. I'm going to pick a time, let's say 8:45, after I've dropped Ben off at the bus stop and do my five minutes this week. I'm going to add five minutes a week. In three months I'll be back to an hour.

How I lost my sap.

I started this blog about a year ago, feeling strong. Feeling like I was hitting a whole new level of consciousness. And then....Here I am a year later. Depleted of energy, knotted with stress, twenty pounds heaver. Here I am, once again, starting from the beginning. Somehow this practice just slipped away. My dedication to the practice just disappeared, after three years of steady commitment. And my life has kind of unraveled with it.

So what happened? Work came my way, money. I don't know, I just got more and more easily distracted every day. Found it harder and harder to just plant my feet on the floor and let the energy do its thing.

I'm happy for this blog now. To be able to look back and remember how strong that force was in me a year ago and to try and find my way back. And who knows. Maybe the process of beginning again will be more helpful to people who are curious about the path and thinking about starting it, than my breathless writing about my success and my peak experiences. As I begin again I can remember what it was like slowly building that energy, and I can reflect on why I keep being drawn back to it. Failure is part of the process. How can I know what I've accomplished, until I've lost all those accomplishments.

This blog can be like that open tai chi class I return to from time to time. Instead of a linear path, this is a circular path that starts in at any point, and anyone reading this can just jump in and start the path with me.

No big drama. Just starting again.