Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone

“Most people would rather decorate the inside of their cage with flowers than step outside of it.”

--Kennet

When my teacher Ken Cohen made that statement in a Tai Chi class last week, the deep truth of it stunned me. It encapsulated all the little (and big) things we do to distract ourselves from the discomfort of being human in 2021.  For me, Qigong has provided an array of gentle but surprisingly effective tools to help manage angst, frustration, depression, boredom, and impatience, to name a few of the things that can cage me up. What about you? How have you been using your Qi tools?

It’s all about what we choose do with the ever-changing currents of energy flowing through us. That choice is the “gong”: the work we do with our “qi”, or life-force energy. As I was taught, as long as we keep that life force energy moving it has the potential to transform from the uncomfortable, stuck pattern it may have assumed, into more health, mental clarity, joy, and peace. In essence, by doing Qigong, the cage dissolves, leaving only the flowers to enjoy.