Scott Free Thinking

After waking up from the endless clanging of the alarm clock over on my bookshelf, I began to lift my head only to feel a sensation of dizzying heaviness that clouded my balance and threw off my equilibrium. A feeling of bulky thickness in the inner lining of my throat stopped me from believing I was in any condition to go to school. A mild headache began to set it in as I slowly shifted from the bed to the floor, my feet being placed down and my arm used to carefully lift me up in my weak state. I had to get to that alarm clock. I moved over some of the guitar cables and boxes that lay between the three feet of my bed and bookshelf, tripping and stumbling slightly over them as I often did, only to switch off the alarm clock and make that seemingly long journey back to the bed to go back to sleep. School was not for me, not today, and I did not need to deal with this illness for any longer than I had to. Back to rest. The clock read 6:23AM. At 6:30, I was about to doze off back into a peaceful and restful state when someone banged on my door. But why say someone? I already knew my mother was coming to check on me and push me out the door.

“Scott?” she said through the locked bedroom door. “Are you awake?”

“I’m si-ick,” my voice crackled under the strain in my throat, not giving out much volume at all. “I’m going to stay home today.” The entire decision was there without opening for argument.

“Okay, I’ll let you stay home today,” my mother muttered. I had to give her credit, she trusted me enough to believe I was telling the truth. But maybe there wasn’t much need to lie when my voice was involuntarily not functioning.

Just two days before I had gotten sick, it was kind of perfect timing for the Spring Forest QiGong course to show up, and be given to me by my dad. It was the perfect opportunity to test how well this course could actually help you in personal healing. It would be one thing if I was already in a state of wellness and outstanding health and then did the movements and techniques described, but to actually see how it could benefit me, if at all, in a more weakened state of health would really be the better option in determining its effectiveness. ‘The Chinese practice of meditation and breathing,’ it is called, and already I was teeming with curiosity.

As I opened up the course and began going through it, I was fully amazed at how much effort goes into the courses from Learning Strategies. Every single time I get a new course from them, I am never disappointed. The unique spin on this course was, for one, it did not feature Paul Scheele as the main contributor, and in learning PhotoReading or going through the Million Dollar Vocabulary course, that was always a voice I was commonly used to.

My dad had tried to cut corners in my search for learning QiGong. Rather than getting me the ‘expensive’ course from LSC(Learning Strategies Corporation), he got me a set of three VHS tapes from Amazon. Well, okay, that was all well and good, but I had developed a certain trust with Learning Strategies to the point where I knew what I was getting from them was, at the very least, going to be an engaging and interesting experience. I opened up the course manual and popped in the first audio tape, and began going through the different sessions, listening to the voice of Master Chunyi Lin guide me through the different exercises.

One interesting component of Spring Forest QiGong is the fact that during these movements, during your deep and slow breathing, your legs are almost bent just slightly and your stomach is pulled in just a tiny bit. The legs being bent slightly really gets to you after a time and after only 10 minutes I was beginning to have trouble remaining standing upright. I was practicing the movements now, following along on the video, and doing everything down to the letter with what instructions were being given to me. At the same time, it was also said that the exercises do not have to be done standing. You can also do them laying down. During many of the exercises I felt a strange tingling and pleasurable wave flow through my body, and quite literally it really was a wave sensation.

The thing that really got me excited to learn the rest of the course more than anything, was one of the first exercises. Do me a favor right now, stop reading this, and give this a shot.

–Put both of your hands together, fingers straight out, palms touching each other.
–Close your eyes.
–Focus on your right hand’s fingers and say to yourself, “My fingers are getting longer, longer, still longer.” Repeat it several times.
–Open your eyes with your hands still together and see what has happened to your right hand’s fingers.

Cheap parlor trick or is there something really happening here? Personally, I could not care less! This energy stuff has me hooked! The whole concept of a collection of energy channels that run through each and every one of us is not a new idea, it has been around for thousands of years. As far as science and the general public in the United States is concerned, it is often not accepted to be fact at all, and many also look on the entire concept of chi and energy practices often as ‘new age mumbo jumbo.’ But the more I have learned about Biology, the more I have learned about cells, how they work, what makes up the human body, the more it seems like there is a vital piece of information that we are missing. Think about this for a moment.

In each and every human cell, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes, and within the nucleus, or operating center, of every cell there is our DNA. The DNA and chromosomes in our cells have already been precoded by some evolutionary process to determine, at least in part, who we are, what we like, what illnesses or non-illnesses we will have, our physical characteristics like eye and skin color, and so on. There are some things throughout this formula that do not make sense, however. Generally, the most common idea of how we become who we are within our identity is that our DNA produces some of what makes us up in physical characteristics, and our conditioning, or environment, produces most of our psychological make up. Looking at it down on a cellular level, or even a molecular level, some part of it does not make sense to me. Why do the cells function at all? According to culture’s current body of knowledge, some say that cells function largely due to a small electric charge. But why electricity? Why would electricity give rise to some complex, conscious being. Why does every cell seem to have a consciousness of its own? If mutation is truly random, why do some mutations occur in the evolutionary timeline, and not others? Why do certain alleles(or traits) exist for our DNA, but others have been lost, or never created over the 4 billion years that Earth has supposedly existed?

The entire principle of cells working together, functioning as they do, under an electric charge is just bizarre to me, and thinking about that fact will probably confuse many other individuals besides myself. Then of course, there is also certain nutrients we gather from the food we eat. The same elements that make up plants, dirt, rocks, and of course other animals are many of the same elements that make up human beings. The same compounds and elements are composing the substances of various different materials within our world. We are all ‘carbon-based,’ and even more astounding is the fact that most of the human body is composed of water.

Water has had numerous meanings throughout ancient history. But perhaps one of the most common interpretations and thoughts about water among virtually all of the energy practices, and even in many faiths or belief doctrines throughout the world, is water’s innate ability to “transfer energy.” In a pure form, water can hydrate us and keep our cells in a concentration balance. Water can quickly alter is temperature, shape, and composition. It can mix with virtually all other elements and compounds. It can flow anywhere and its density is not as heavy as other liquids.

We are composed of only a number of these common materials. What drives everything? Why does electricity get the credit for allowing a conscious being to function in a conscious way? I think there is something else at work here, and no, not necessarily some ‘divine’ thing, I am not one of these people to point the finger to God. I believe that these combined factors are forming up to produce some combination of events and systems - there seems to be a common driving force among it all. Could this common driving factor be chi? Could all of these systems and processes be looked upon as energy? Your consciousness also affects it all. Speaking scientifically, there could very well be something to QiGong.

Back to the story, I later got done with my first exercises ever and went downstairs at about 9:30 that morning or so to relax on the couch. My legs felt not tired, but very loose, without any feeling of tension. The rest of my body, my shoulders too, also felt relaxed and soothed. I was able to breathe through my nose easier than before, and able to swallow easier than I had earlier that morning. By the very next day, I went back to school feeling better than ever.

I would recommend at least looking into QiGong, and particularly that of Spring Forest QiGong, to anyone. You can take a look at it at the Learning Strategies website: www.LearningStrategies.com