December Self-Healing Tips

This month instead of giving you the usual one point and one food for your tcm health tips, I want to try something different.  Consider this, if you will, as an end of the year Winter Holiday treat.  Today I am going to offer an even more accessible, even more readily available, and even deeper duet of health advice that comes from our own practice here at InFocus, and from my years of training with Master Zi and NIsha.  I will offer you one piece from the tai chi canon of knowledge, and one piece from the yoga practice, and I will explain why these are so beneficial this season, this month, for you.   

Winter is the metaphorical season of the seed – it is a time to go back to the source of things, and to release the more external expressions and complexities.  It is the season when the trees have let go of their leaves and flowers for awhile, and a time when the water within the trees is withdrawn from its many branches back into its roots.  We benefit the most – our health and our hearts – when we too allow this time to be a return to the source, a return to our basics. 

Standing in Wu Chi, with the feet slightly wider than shoulder’s distance apart, knees slightly bent, spine straight, and arms by your sides as if the hands are resting on pillars, is the seed of our tai chi and chi gong practice.  This is the earth of our practice, the place of all possibility and formlessness.  Standing in wu chi for just one minute or two every day will calm the mind, align the body and the breath, and remind us of the place from which we build and cultivate all energy in the body.  This energy then gets used to fight disease, build immunity, cultivate awareness and knowledge – it gets funneled into the 10,000 things that our lives are about.  But this beginning point, the point of non-judgment and formlessness, is the nurturing of the source of all the other things we do in life.  It is important that we always come back to this place – the place before the 10,000 things.  It is essential that we nurture this place, and allow it to nurture us in return.  Just this practice, for two minutes a day, focusing on the breath and the dan tien (that space 4 finger-breadths beneath the navel) will have uncountable benefits to us all this season, and through us, to the ones we love, and to the world at large. 

Never under estimate the power of sivasana, or corpse pose.  The first yoga class I ever took was in 1993 at UC Santa Cruz.  At the end of the class the teacher had us laying in sivasana – supposedly the feel good relaxation pose of the day.  During this time I laid on my back, tried to relax, and decided then and there that I would never ever go back to a yoga class again (ha! Now I’m a true yoga lover!).  In this pose everything I was trying to run away from in myself at that was laying right there with me.  My anxieties, my fears, my need to move and be restless, my extreme intolerance of what I experienced at that time as 10 minutes of excruciating boredom - came up and became inescapable.  All of it, all of the noise of me that’s not the real me – the stuff that clouds the senses, hovered in my face like a dust storm, making it impossible to see or breathe.  At that time I did not know how to sit, or lay,  with this energy nor did I have any idea how to accept them and breathe.   

Laying in sivasana is one of the deepest practices we can have.  I invite you to give yourself 10 minutes a day of good health this December by laying on the floor, on your back, with your arms by your sides and your legs straight.  Make sure that you are warm – wear socks and a sweater, or cover yourself with a blanket.  The key to being here is the breath.  Gently close your eyes, withdraw your senses, and bring your attention to your breathing.  With every inhalation and exhalation we have the potential to be present and observe ourselves.  When we observe, we detach from being at the effect of all of the energies that move through us.  It is the place of all possibility and true power.  This is the place healing, health, and well-being begin.  With every breath there is limitless potential.  When we return to the source of life, we return to what is most important for great health.  It is the breath and its infinite ability to draw in new energy, and its infinite ability to release toxins and remove all forms of disease from the body.