black cohosh, performing chi
I’ve engaged in so many movement practices over the course of my life, I can’t even count them. From tap, ballet, and jazz, to postmodern and bellydancing, to feldenkrais and contact improvisation and butoh, the list spans pop culture booty shaking to cerebral post modern practices like moving from my fluid system. But qigong is the thing I keep coming back to as the movement practice that sustains me through my days that sometimes feel like long years. The way the practice helps me slow down, gradually, like watching a fan slowly come to stillness, is part of the medicine. The way the movement is repetitive, easy even, giving my mind room to witness itself, is part of the medicine. Qigong is a form that holds all the parts (if we were to call them that): body, mind, and spirit. Body moves, as stagnation is the peril of the body; Mind quiets, as overthinking is the peril of the mind; and spirit connects through the reciprocity of breath, which is life. Using imagery that breathes the earth back into focus - for example “parting the clouds, moving the mist” - Qigong reminds me that I am not the sum of my parts, that I am whole, of the elements. Qigong is the taproot of Daoist Medicine, the IChing, and 5 Element Theory. Through qigong, my mind makes connections of how the body falls out of balance, heals, and is a vast weather system itself. From the body, our ancestors made connections to how energy fractures and returns, is broken and restored. We are not exempt from the laws of elemental movement, and learning them through our own moving experience is the surest way to understand what we are made of and how to take care of ourselves. Practicing this form serves as a kind of memory palace, infusing the movement with the science and physiology of being well. There is so much emphasis on balance these days, being in it, staying in it, not straying from it. But balance by definition is movement, requiring the constant subtle shifting of weight. I imagine the difficulty our culture has in being in balance has something to do with our propensity towards sitting still. Qigong is not an easy practice to initiate, but once there, it’s like landing in a deep refreshing pond on a hot day - hard to leave. One translation of qigong is “remedy dancing”, which in my experience, is the most accurate.