Qi Gong ie. Meri learns to meditate
March 27, 2010 at 15:48 2 comments
I participated a Qi Gong (Chi Kung) course last weekend, six hours all together, on Saturday and Sunday. Boy did I not know what I had committed to! But if I did, I would have skipped it so let’s just say, all developing happens outside the comfort zone. I thought it was something similar to yoga but NO. More like meditation while moving. Or meditation while standing still. Eyes closed. Horror.
I’ve always been seriously limited what it comes to being quiet and trying emptying the head from the usual mind buzz. As it appears, my low blood pressure, standing still with eyes closed and breathing super calmly equals feeling faint and losing vision. Not a nice combo but definitely one that makes one grow out of the usual level of performance. Have to admit, I’ve never gotten so close to a complete emptiness and silence of mind, at least when I’ve been trying. Sometimes it just happens doing something, like the flow phenomenon, but that’s a different story.
The Qi Gong teacher, Jarko Savonen, is an occupational therapist like myself. He’s been teaching and practicing Qi Gong even before his OT training and has carried on, tho now he also lectures as an OT. Since I’ve been combining some other areas of expertise (such as nutrition) in my own OT profession I find it interesting to meet other OTs who have expanded the limits. Like many great inventions in the world have shown, it’s beneficial when people start to reach over from their own professional expertise into stuff that passionately interests them. They come up with extraordinary ideas.
Anyway, this Qi Gong thing wasn’t really something that I’d start doing on daily basis, but it most certainly showed and proved me my ability to meditate. Reaching the state just requires a whole lotta more than I’m ready to invest so far… And be it Qi Gong, mindfulness or yoga, I really need to take action in moving towards a less stressful lifestyle. Well, luckily I already manage to sleep 8-9 hours per night, that’s a start!
Entry filed under: mindfulness, Other. Tags: meditation.
Meri Pekkanen: Occupational therapy, nutrition and other hot health stuff 
1.
OllIS | April 2, 2010 at 09:51
Nice to hear about your experiences on the intensives 🙂
I bet Chi Kung wasn’t probably the easiest way to begin a meditative practice, but in my opinion it is a very good start! And those exercises are amazingly good for the subtle body.
As for a morning practice or a workout I would sincerely recommend the “3-Body Workout” from Integral Life Practice, which is a combination of qi Gong, yoga, stretching and body weight movements covering all the three bodies we have (gross, subtle and causal).
Sleep is always good, but as on my own experience I have noticed that by medition the requirment for dream sleep (REM) is diminished and even 6 hours might be enough if there are atleast 3 sets of non-rem sleep.
Anyhow, thank you for this post 🙂
2.
Meri, Helsinki | April 17, 2010 at 08:17
Thank you for your comment and pardon me for not replying sooner! Been too qi gonded to do that 😉
I’m working on getting the ILP book read so we’ll see about 3-Body workout after that. Currently it’s been quite some issues in life so hasn’t been any energy or room to take on anything new…
Have you already read the Lights Out, btw? I believe that the amount of adequate sleep is different for different people but I still feel six hours is a little on the low side.