Some thoughts on change.

Hold fast to the great form within

And let the world pass as it may

Then the changes of life will not bring pain

But contentment, joy and well being

TAO TE CHING Verse 35
Laozi

Most mornings, before breakfast, I practice qigong. Every morning is the same but different. Even though I practice at roughly the same time (near sunrise) and always start the day with the same fresh ginger and lemon tea, where I am and what I do is distinct. 

I may be in my little bedroom in semi darkness, in the living room with cats playing around me, outside on my balcony, or somewhere outdoors under the trees. Once I’ve picked my location, I usually spend a good amount of time standing. Standing is my ultimate ‘same but different’ practice. Same because I always have to check my alignments, and always have to sink my tailbone further than I first thought. Same because it’s always a bit of a struggle with my mind which tends to identify standing as boring initially, but also same because once I get started I feel the relief of letting go much like sliding into a warm bath, and it all becomes much easier. Different because the day always ‘feels’ different. Not only the weather if I’m outside, but my internal weather. I may be excited or apprehensive, sluggish or wired, and one of my tasks whilst standing is to notice this and respect it. If I really pay attention, the stuck places in my body will feel marginally different from day to day as will the rhythm of my thoughts, and, if I can get in deep, so will the flow of energy currents around my body. Once I am in the ‘stream’ of practice like this, I find it easier to discern what my body is suggesting it needs.  Maybe it’s a very gentle form of Energy Gates followed by some light tai chi. Maybe it incorporates an online lesson with Paul that I’m committed to practising regularly. Or maybe, as yesterday, it was three rounds of twenty repetitions of Dragon & Tiger because my mind was particularly skittish. 

This same but different approach is how I navigate during formal practice, the formula between what changes and what stays the same. By discerning the nature of this shifting balance, it is also training my response, much like a tightrope walker will make micro adjustments to their balance as each step progresses. It is also a practice that has helped me cultivate a little more ‘sung’ or relaxation, and let go of striving for big outcomes. This is was to prove useful, as I discovered recently, in another part of my life entirely.   

In my day job, I had been at the heart of a long creative project over the last eight months. This project was tough but immensely rewarding. It was nearing completion and I had taken for granted that, as usual, I would be overseeing this completion. I was looking forward finally putting the ‘finishing touches’ on the work and walking away satisfied with my team patting each other on the back. This happy outcome was not to be. For what I can best summarise as business considerations trumping creative ones, I was told one morning that I would not finishing the project and it would be handed over to someone else in Los Angeles, a whole continent away. Appropriately enough, the date was Halloween, which made the news even more grotesque. 

As I processed the news, my immediate response was anger, denial, grief, shame. I felt all the fire rise into my head and chest, my instinct was to stamp my feet and shout like a toddler, metaphorically down tools and run out the door. I did do a small version of that but after a few seconds I saw it wasn’t achieving much. I then did what I can only describe as a superfast version of sinking qi, feeling the throbbing in my head become an ache in my chest, then descend into my belly. Something loosened and released. I felt calmer. There was space around me. Within that space I was able to talk with my team and even speak to my superiors in a way that was gracious and measured, expressing my devastation and disappointment but not being entirely caught up in it. 

The ensuing day at work was ‘same but different.’ If I stopped to wallow in the implications of it being ‘my last day at work’ then I could easily get caught up in that, but strangely, I watched myself going about things in much the same mode as I had been for the last few weeks, working as hard as I could at noodly little problems, to the standard I always held myself to. I was even cracking the odd joke and laughing with my team mates, who were a little bit surprised. It took my brain a while to catch up with the fact that underlying my actions was a complete faith in the work I and my colleagues had done. We had collaborated and stretched ourselves to the best of our abilities and I was very proud of what we’d achieved. If others didn’t see it that way it didn’t matter. Much like the careful repetition of any qigong set, or the Tibetan sand mandalas that are destroyed on completion, it was the process of creation and our commitment to it that was important. 

Of course, a few days later, I am still sad, and get pangs from time to time of ‘what might have been’ but beneath all this, the pulse that I have come to recognise as life continues more-or-less at the same pace. Plus I realised, that in the absence of the goal I had been working toward for so many months, there was a delightful release of stressful obligation. And plenty of time for other things like my qigong/mediation practice!

At the weekend I was doing my tai chi underneath a copse of oak trees. Their branches were almost bare, a carpet of amber leaves beneath them. As I sat and absorbed my practice, I was struck by how little resistance trees offer to the shedding of their leaves; the beauty everyone recognises in a proper fiery Autumn/Fall display. Later that day, I helped gather sackfuls of fallen lime leaves to be used as mulch on my boyfriend’s allotment.  A worthwhile reminder that every shedding, every letting go, provides food for another endeavour. 

So whilst it’s common to stress the physical benefits of qigong and neigong in terms of an antidote to pain and blocks in the physical body, it’s sometimes in the emotional and psychological realms that I experience the most change taking place, enabling me to tackle difficulties with just that little bit more levity and grace.