We all want to live a happy, healthy, and stress-free life. Qi Gong is one way that many of us seek to cultivate balance and nourish our well-being. As any regular practitioner knows, a daily Qi Gong routine can work wonders in helping us deal with the challenges of everyday life. However, how can we seek to bring the practice of Qi Gong into all of our daily activities? This blog post will discuss ways in which we can apply our Qi Gong wisdom in all parts of our life.
Applied Qi Gong
Qi Gong is one of the most direct ways of working with our energy. When we practice, we bring our entire attention and focus into the internal energies that live within us. Through this process, we’re able to transform stress and energize our entire being.
In daily life, there are obviously a lot of times that you’re not directly practicing Qi Gong in the way you usually think of it. In other words, you’re not always working with the postures, movements, or meditations that Lee teaches. However, this doesn’t mean you’re not still working with your internal life force energy. Everything you do has an effect on your Qi. So in effect, you’re always practicing Qi Gong in everything you do.
When we think of our lives as one continuous Qi Gong practice, it can help us to realize a new and empowering perspective. In Qi Gong, our attention is usually directed inward as we seek to work with that which lives within us. In daily life, our attention is often directed toward working with situations outside of ourselves.
Taking a “Qi Gong” approach to daily living means directing more of our attention to what’s happening within. This doesn’t mean you ignore the world around you, but rather you work with it in order to support your own internal needs. In Qi Gong we use movements, postures, and meditations to cultivate our vitality and happiness. In daily life, we can use our decisions, behaviors, and habits to do the same.
How often do you really examine how a specific habit or behavior is affecting your thoughts, emotions, or health? Even though many of us pay close attention to our internal energy during a Qi Gong training, we may not always carry this process over into everyday life.
In Qi Gong, we become acutely aware of how our practice affects our well-being. In daily life, we can use that same awareness to inform how we show up in all aspects of our life.
So, how do you go about creating a life that supports your health and happiness?
Decisions, Behaviors, and Habits
Let’s start with habits. For many of us, habits make up a large part of our day. Your sleep schedule, diet, thought patterns, communication patterns, and work routine are just a few activities in your life that you may perform on a regular and consistent basis.
Habits have a powerful influence on your health and happiness. However, more than likely, it wasn’t your health or your happiness that chose all of your daily habits. Often, our habits are the result of our external circumstances affecting us in a way that doesn’t serve us.
Instead of letting our external circumstances determine all of our habits, let’s bring our attention to what habits are actually good for us. If we do this often enough, creating good habits can become a habit all of its own.
This sounds simple enough, but it really requires you to pay attention to things that you may not normally think about. For example, what thoughts come into your mind during your commute to work? If you realize you have a habit of stressing out about everything you have to do that day, you may want to consider creating a new thought pattern during your morning drive.
Diet is another common area in which many of us could create better habits. Instead of eating what is convenient, consider prioritizing foods that really make you feel your best. Even just changing these two habits could make a big difference as thoughts and food have a huge impact on health and happiness.
Our decisions work the same way. When making decisions, really check in with yourself about what feels right on an energetic level. How does your body respond to one choice versus another? Instead of making a decision based purely on external circumstances (ex. What others may think), try to make decisions based on what will truly elevate your Qi.
When it comes to behaviors, it’s important to really pay attention to how you feel when you show up a certain way. Can you tell the difference when you’re speaking from ego verses speaking from compassion? Try bringing your awareness to how you talk and what your internal experience is of your conversations. Although internal feelings often inform how we speak, we can also choose to speak in a way that guides our emotions in a healthy direction. Not only does this make life better for those we interact with, but it allows us to cultivate love and compassion for our own health and well being.
There are really endless ways in which you can practice Qi Gong during your everyday life. The essential element to living skillfully (Gong) is the same as in the practice Qi Gong: Cultivate awareness of your internal energy, and allow it to guide you through life in a way that nourishes your health, vitality, and happiness.
The Three Treasures
When practiced daily, Qi Gong is one of those amazing habits that nourishes all parts of your being. While most practices will nourish everyone, it’s also important to be aware of what your individual needs are. Just as each person will be best served by their own unique habits, all Qi Gong practitioners will greatly benefit by knowing how to identify and address their own internal challenges.
To share the skills of personal awareness and nourishment, Lee will be holding a special immersion program called The Three Treasures. During this experience, Lee will teach students how to really check-in with and address the internal challenges that are unique for themselves. This empowers students to work with their own health and well-being rather than depend solely on others. Of course, these skills can also be applied to daily living to help create a life that is truly nourishing and fulfilling. Personal empowerment is a beautiful and rewarding thing, so check out the event page below to learn more or sign up.