When you get to a certain age, it becomes harder to keep pace with things in this fast moving world. I remember my aunt commenting on this and saying that she made it a rule to keep up to date with developments in her field of work/interest but just left the rest to someone else.
I think it’s good advice. Limiting how much information to attempt to absorb can be liberating. We’re constantly exposed to ‘news’ via social media and often it has been taken from elsewhere, adapted into a meme or simply not fully researched.
However, when you do have a field of work or interest that you are passionate about, then you should be an expert and you should be open to new thinking and new developments.
So, a couple of weeks ago, in the interests of broadening my knowledge about healthy bodies, I went to trigger point pilates with Jacqui Barker for the first time. Jacqui is a local fitness instructor who covers a wide range of activities. I’ve been intrigued by pilates for a while, as I believe it works on the core muscles, much like qigong and taiji. It certainly did!
Many of the moves were similar to those recommended by various physios over the years to help with various sore bits. But these were done lying on the floor, with soft and prickly coloured balls and a giant coloured elastic band. There was a lot to take in, we seemed to rush from one move to the next but it was a good workout. I went back last Friday and found that, with familiarity, things were not so rushed and there was more time to explore the movements.
And another thing
That evening, I was really on a roll with the trying new things idea. In June I’ll be sharing a workshop with Suekali from the Cromriach Natural Sanctuary at Kilmichael. Sue combines singing with a spiritual slant at her Wild Heart Singing weekends and I shall be complementing the elemental side with qigong exercises (The Five Elements and the 6 Healing Sounds). On Friday evenings she offers a couple of hours of chanting, so I went to see how this works in with taiji and qigong.
There were four of us and Sue led the chants in her lovely (gaelic choir) singing voice. She has studied raga, which is an Indian form of singing that uses the breath in a special way so that singing becomes effortless, with no long term effects on the throat or vocal chords. She and her partner have been approached by professional singers to help them and no wonder.
Buddhist ceremonies involve some chanting but that was the limit of my experience (we won’t mention the Giffnock Primary School choir back in the nineteenfifties). Could I sit on the floor and sing/chant for two hours without wriggling, going off key, or falling asleep?
Well amazingly I could! Each chant was very different and accompanied by a different musical instrument – what a collection! When time permits I’ll go back and as the nights get milder and longer these sessions will be held out of doors, weather permitting!
The third dose of something new came that Sunday when I went to a Tina Faulkner Elders workshop in Kinross. I admire Tina greatly. Her taiji and qigong are beautiful to watch in the way that energy radiates from her perfect movements and her smile illuminates the world around her. She trained with her father, Master Gordon Faulkner then attended Beijing University and trained with a number of masters, currently Chen Lisheng, before setting up her own school in Stonehaven.
The title of the workshop was 3 Circles and 5 Bows. It turned out to be not an esoteric new qigong routine but more pilates! Well, not exactly. We were standing up for a start. But the circles consisted of the spine, shoulders and hip and the bows are the spine, two arms and two legs. So there were lots of exercises designed to strengthen our core and keep our joints flexible. These are foundation exercises that work underneath the muscle and bone directly into the soft tissue. This finer level of releasing and connecting into the soft tissue is what underpins the development and transformation of the ‘Qi body’ so we can move and guide our qi more effectively.
In between, of course, on the Saturday, I had fun in Whitehouse with the ladies who came to go over Ba Duan Jin and learn The Healing Promise of Qi.
Something old and something new. Good for me and good for you!