Come to Class ! No Longer Make Excuses!

By Raven Cohan

One great belief I share with my students is to come to classes even during times when one isn't at top level. (There certainly are exceptions to this advisory, such as during a total non-ambulatory state, or within some low times during chemo-therapy, and when being anywhere but in a bed is contra-indicated. Through my training I feel that germs are only spread if you believe they spread. Any fearful fellow students can be told if you have a cold to simply stay away. High fevers might well be an exception.) How about this one! You might have sprains or broken bones, but you might CONSIDER coming on your crutches!

The teachings I share are about developing the best ability to learn through the imagination. While we are actually performing a movement of qigong, tai chi or doing meditation, the imagination used during the moves enhances the practice. When we cannot physically perform a movement due to a weakened condition in my experience, feeling it only in one's imagination is as good as or better than actually performing it!

Imagination comes from a more empowered mind located in the abdomen. Many neurons reside there. This actual brain needs to be developed quite more fully by us human beings because we are extremely overly dependent upon our ‘monkey minds’ through habit. A great many people generally use this monkey mind residing in the skull, for nearly everything. As children we had a much better imagination and gut brain, (another name for the mind in the abdomen.) We knew things as kids, without having to ‘figure things out’. But many of our parents were embarrassed when we would see or know things they were no longer in touch with. Many parents discouraged us to use our gut brain. So did many school and religious teachers.

The monkey mind that likes to do that 'figuring out' often does so based upon ‘facts’ which to that monkey are simply repeated mantras, be they negative or positive. Science is now proving that belief is what actualizes our experiences. Most people are crammed with negative mantras. If these people learned to slowly develop the ability to find the truth that lies in their gut feelings, and not through ego confuse the two, they might experience freedom from negative beliefs.

Qigong as taught to me by Mantak Chia and others is a practice of greatly enhancing energy as color, sound, light, and nectar that can be touched and tasted as well as real movement. We need our imagination to lead us toward finding it all. This is a way in which we develop our chi most fully. It can be how we can get away from being attracted to any co-dependencies that are not freely given to us in our pharmacopoeia that exists in our cells and blood stream. I think the only empowering dependency to learn to have is to get user friendly with the nectars in our own bodies. People don’t easily take to foreign substances such as tobacco, alcohol and drugs without introducing them into their bodies. One must even get used to over-eating. It’s not natural. What IS natural is becoming able to be in a state of joy and bliss where it is easier to heal. We learn to cook up our most dynamic and healing DNA in the laboratory our bodies are during Qigong and Tai Chi classes!

So especially when we are feeling less whole than we might like, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually or energetically, we can often do well to get ourselves to class. Even if we sit completely still we can put our mind-eye-hearts and guts into feeling chi with the other students and the teacher. We go to a still place in the laboratory of our own being-ness. We have a support system where instead of over-focusing on our poor feelings and confinement, instead we can be free to explore the most powerful gushers of chi located in our bellies. The potent power growing there might continue being elusive for years and years. I say... SO WHAT!!! That’s not a criterion to stay at home and be abandoned. There is no student I can recall who ever said they were sorry they came to class and they should have stayed home under the covers. All are glad they came because they feel better afterwards. Every class is a practice, p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e, PRACTICE! Our life force called Chi is encouraged to come out of hiding and develop more and more freely for speeding our healing experience.