Dao 導: direct, guide, lead, conduct
yin 引: to pull, draw out, attract; to stretch
The origin of movement lies in stillness and the roots of stillness lie in movement.
Experiencing stillness is what we all ultimately have experienced as it was our origin , it did already exist.
The practice of Daoyin has been said, to be a precursor of Qigong 氣功. It was practiced in Chinese Daoist monasteries for health and spiritual cultivation. An Ancient wisdom of coordinating body-posture, movement, breathing, and moving meditation which has been practiced for the purposes of health, spirituality, and martial-arts training.
Qigong was born in Chinese medicine, Philosophy and the Martial Arts.
Practicing Qigong cultivates and balances The Qi (vital force ).
Etymology of Qigong:
Qigong is made of two Chinese characters: qì (气／氣) and gōng (功).
Qi ( 气／氣) generally means air, gas or breath. In the concept of metaphysical translation as a ‘vital energy’. This Vital energy is supposed to circulate through the body.
This circulation can be experienced in different forms such as heat, light or electromagnetic energy.
When we are talking about this circulation we may consider that the energy has a relation to spirit and matter.
Gong (功) is often translated as cultivation or effort, work. A combination of practice, skill, mastery, merit, achievement, service, result, or accomplishment, This is how traditionally gongfu is underestood.
In China there are five different Qigong practices.
-Daoist Qigong
-Buddhist Qigong
-confucian Qigong
-Medical Qigong
-Martial Qigong
In my experience nourishment and cultivation of the Qi in our body is the common purpose in all of the Qigong forms. Collecting the Qi not only has a great physical aspect on us but also enhances the spiritual and mental side of us.
Practicing qigong is long and beautiful path, the more I study it the more I become aware of standing at the beginning of my journey. Knowing this not only discourages me on the opposite, it increases my passion to learn and practice more the Daoist and Martial Qigong, the one that I have chosen.
In my teaching qigong experiences, I have noticed that the main difficulty is to undo our habitual mind from doing. The letting go of expectations and cognitive thinking while doing the practice, is possibly the first challenge we might encounter. Our mind is not an enemy, It is an honest mirror to show us our patterns which possibly has become our normal or natural state.
The mind in many cultures is trained to be active, productive and always have something to do.
What is the true nature of the mind according to Daoist philosophy?
Even visualizing or imagining light or color are kind of activities for the mind. Which we can deliberately ask our mind to do or we can take even that away from the mind. The static state for the mind enters another practice in Qigong which is Nei Gong.
In daoist practice Nei Gong, We want to provide a condition for the mind so, as it would enter into a static state. But before this we need to keep practicing Qigong and not even expecting to start with Nei gong practice. The Nei gong practice only enters by itself into our practice at the right time.
Until then we stay focused on one simple task to merge the mind and the body.
I also realized how much a proper choice of word – wording is important in teaching Qigong.
The instructions should be simple, clear and precise .
My advantages of having a long history of movement research especially in Gaga language is my awareness of how the body reacts to the wording. With correct wording one can improve the posture or movement of some body so much that the flow of the Qi and blood easier take place. As each person has a different body with different physical and mental habits, the sharp eyes can make a difference in the accessibility of feeling of the Qi and its flow in the body.
I see the advantage of curiosity in my own movement, for instance because, it is possible to transmit the relaxation in the pelvis in different ways and each way ends up eventually to the relaxation of the pelvis but it might activate or deactivate different areas of the body on its way. It is about the choice and the most effective words according to the aim I am having by relaxing the pelvis.
Teaching Qigong is challenging. It enriches one’s internal skills of observations and transformation.The exercises of Qigong have been very mindfully created based on reasons and purposes.
In this Ancient wisdom, the more I repeat the same set of practice for my routine the more I am learning. In my humble opinion, in practices like Qigong it is not about knowing and learning more and more sets of exercises, it is about deepening the sensations in the body and cultivating our vital energy to not only nourish our health, body and organs but also our mental and spiritual state of being.
I would be honored to share my experiences in forms of group or individual.
You are very welcome to contact me for personal or online lessons.