Last night I went to my fifth Wild Goose Qigong class (pronounced chee-gong). Qigong is an ancient Chinese healing art, and looks a lot like the fluid, choreographed moves of Tai Chi, like you see people doing on magnificent hilltops and sunlit oceansides in the movies. I do it at night, in old sweats, in the dance studio of a junior high school down the street. But still.

For the most part, I love it. I love the slow, underwater-like movements. I love that our instructor says almost 15 times a night that you should only do what’s comfortable, that this art is not about pushing or straining or forcing, but learning to listen to your body and flow gently where it wants to flow. I love it that I showed up last week with the worst devil’s grip in my neck that I’ve ever had in my life–so bad I had gone to the doctor that afternoon thinking surely I’d have to have surgery to put something back into place, thinking how in the world will I ever make it through another day of lifting and bathing and changing and playing with a toddler when every movement hurts so bad–and left Qigong without an ounce of pain left in my neck. The prescriptions with which my doctor had sent me home were for super-charged anti-inflamatories and muscle relaxers, which she said I’d likely need to take for 2 weeks, and to this day they sit in the bucket at Walgreens, not picked up.

So I love Qigong. It’s been good to me.

Last night I showed up more tired than usual, though. I even debated not going, and stayed flopped on the couch until I knew I’d only barely make it for the first instruction after warm-up. When I showed up, as a kind of unplanned punishment, I had to traipse across the middle of the circle of classmates to get to an open spot, classmates who were all silently watching while swaying like sea kelp. I almost felt like I should walk in slow motion like them, and wave my arms back and forth at them, but that would have only made me laugh and ruin the mood.

So there I finally was, so tired that even the wood planks below me looked soft. I needed to see what they felt like on my belly, my arms, the left side of my face.

But I stayed standing.

But here’s the thing: the whole rest of the classtime, rather than flowing like kelp, or wild geese for that matter, rather than listening to the movements of my body, I had this running commentary going on in my mind.

“Oh God, she’s going to repeat that part again. She is. She is, I can tell. Oh God.

“Are you kidding me? FIVE MORE TIMES???

“Why does that guy keep getting in my way? I can’t see through you, dude. Yeah, you. Okay fine. Yes, this is me moving so I can see.

“Was that my sternum popping? Has that ever happened to me before?

“Let’s see…when I get home, I’m going to have cereal. No, fruit. No, cereal. Fruit and cereal. With yogurt. But water first. I’m so THIRSTY.”

And on and on. And the worst part was people kept farting all around me, too. That actually happens every week. There must be something about Qigong that gets the air flowing, if you know what I mean, and it is only by sheer will power that I save mine for later.

But most of the time this is fine. I actually feel about it like I feel about Elijah ripping off: great! Good for you! It seems natural, somehow, and not annoying.

But it was just too much last night. I simultaneously felt like laughing and glaring and saying, “Can everyone just tighten up a little bit??”

At one point someone asked about a move we were learning, and the instructor explained the way the movement helps energy flow up your back side, over your head, and down your front side, repeating like that in a circle. The classmate said, “Would it be a good idea to visualize that as we do the move? Would that help the energy flow better?”

The instructor paused for a second, and then said this: “The beauty of Qigong is in the way the movements themselves cause the flow of energy, and the way your body, over time, can learn to help that flow just by repeating the movements. In Western culture we tend to spend so much time in our heads that we can actually hinder the positive flow of energy by trying to force it this way or that way, or by analyzing it too much. It’s fine for you to understand why we do these movements, but probably better, when you do them, not to get stuck in your head. Just let your body move. Focus on breathing and moving with it.”

As I was just finishing deciding which book to read when I got home, I felt a little bit sheepish. And also thirsty.

But I came to this conclusion: Flowing with life–with the movements of our bodies or minds or souls–is good. Getting stuck too much in any parts of ourselves–whether focussing on our bodies all the time, or our spiritual or intellectual sides–probably means a dam is being constructed there, and the energy that wants to do it’s natural cycle is turning stagnant, getting stalled up. But–and this was the real crux of the lesson for me–flowing with anything, in a healthy way, is a lot easier to do when you’ve had enough sleep.

Qigong = good. Qigong while sleep deprived = annoying.

Maybe this formula applies to everything there is, and the first way any of us can start making the world a better place is to get to bed early tonight.

You think?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Bodies, Mindfulness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.