Live Zoom Qigong with Cris, March 27 - April 2, 2023
The 70% Principle and The Watercourse Way
“After a while thinking, or talking to yourself, drops away and you find that there is no “yourself”, other than everything which is going on, both inside and outside your skin. Your consciousness, your breathing, and your feelings are all the same process as the wind, the trees growing, the insects buzzing, the water flowing, and the distant prattle of the city. All this is a single, many featured “happening”, a perpetual now without either past or future, and you are aware of it with the rapt fascination of a child dropping pebbles in a stream.”
-Alan Watts, In My Own Way
Philosopher Alan Watts is credited for introducing Zen Buddhism to the U.S. He also fully embraced Taoism’s “watercourse way”, or going with the flow. Perhaps his words will encourage you to remember why we practice the 70% principle: that is, to use 70% of the effort we know we are able to exert when doing a movement. There is no need to force, to strive, to push. We embrace the laws of physics- lining up with gravity, feeling our center-and that does take some effort, but it’s always a good practice to drop the striving, the hurry, and judgement, and simply feel what we’re doing as we do it. This is a process, one that can’t be forced. As old habits of impatience and striving begin to fade, fresh energy can flow through us, growing and expanding, like the green plants and flowers beginning to spring up outside.
Free, live/online class at Millbrook Library, this Friday, March 31, 10 AM. Remember to register with the library at millbrooklibrary.org. They will send you the link. Stay tuned for news about moving the class outside, when weather permits!
Upcoming Zoom Workshop: The Top 15 Acupressure Points and How to Use Them. Saturday, April 1, 10:30-12 EST. There is still time to join. I will teach new ways to activate the points and explain how to “blend” them together to fine-tune your acupressure self-treatment. I hope you can join us! Registrants, in a day or so I’ll be emailing charts for you to down-load and print out, to help you learn how to locate the points. To Register: Write to cris@criscaivano.com. The $25 fee will include a down-loadable video of the workshop for you to use for future reference. Hope to see you there! (Payment info on the homepage at www.criscaivano.com)