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?

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?