I’d been practicing Qi Gong since November 1998.1 I started with a Daoist Priest, a Daoshi.2 I worked with him every week for a minimum of 30 minutes over a six-month period. And I practiced Qi Gong everyday during that time from 30 minutes to six hours every day on my own. Yes, I worked full-time and as much as 80 hours in a week, but I made the time for that practice and my husband and my athletic long-distance career as well. It was prior to having children.
As 1999 rolled along I practiced the meditation/movements of Qi Gong less. I would practice ten minutes to forty minutes four days per week near the end of 1999. Then I began to keep to 5-10 minutes per day 4-5 days per week. I maintained some semblance of Qi Gong practice over the years till about 2017 on my own even if for only a few days a week for 5-15 minutes each practice. Then it was once a week, as I’d become more distracted with family, business and the like.
I’d gone back to yoga practices at home and stretching more in 2017, which was similar to what I had done after spinal surgery in 1993. I increased the time of stretching, feeling and breathing in my yoga practice to 20-30 minutes per day, every day. I have not missed a day since 2017. And every now and then I’d practice Qi Gong for 5-10 minutes afterwards.
Post-Covid life changed drastically, as my husband had passed, one child was getting ready to go to college as one was in the beginning of her high school years. My therapy business of nearly 30 years I began to slowly shut down as I began a writing business about a year later. As well, I hadn’t been in a gym to grapple or box since near end of 2019, when my husband became ill. I practiced Qi Gong here and there during the Covid shutdown in between my many hours per day of writing and caring for my husband in the last months of his life.
As I scrambled during covid to make certain I’d visited enough colleges with our children, I still maintained a daily yoga-stretching practice, in hotel rooms or at home. I’d throw in Qi Gong meditation as well. When I hadn’t done much Qi Gong meditative practice, I’d revert back to the ‘tree’ standing position for five minutes and feel and breathe.3 Just when I’d thought I’d learned all I could about the positive effects of Qi Gong meditation and standing like a tree, this morning another lesson arrived whilst doing the tree standing position for five minutes after I’d done yogic breathing and stretches for a shorter session of sixteen minutes, then to chores and drank 20 ounces or so of water.
1 https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/qigong-what-you-need-to-know
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daoshi
3 https://justbreathetaichi.com/2011/07/stand-like-a-tree-qigong-chi-kung/
Then Zi Fa Gong arrived.4 When it had, I felt it come from the root chakra incredibly strong. This is something I’d never experienced in all my practices of Qi Gong. An involuntary shaking equally through both legs coming up through me, yet I knew it was from the root chakra5.
After I’d allowed this unusual event to take place during the five-minute Qi Gong meditative stance, I had more water with my organic greens. Finished my chores, then looked up what I’d just experienced minutes before. It was Zi Fa Gong and it was something that my body wanted to experience. It was something my body needed on many levels.
When I slowly got out of the tree position, my body which had still been doing this involuntary shaking, stopped. Intuitively I felt I knew why this shaking occurred, yet I looked it up. There was comfort in the feeling of it, but I knew not to stay there for longer than five minutes, because I’d never experienced it and was still feeling a calm essence as before when I’d lit up an incense of palo santo to pray.6
Upon reading up and finding that Zi Fa Gong was what I’d experienced. I then knew the traumas of my past and present needed repairing. Too, I knew what set it off as well. Tomorrow will be another day to feel and repair. When Zi Fa Gong arrives again it’ll be a curious comfort.---Jody-Lynn Reicher
4 https://www.reddit.com/r/longtermTRE/comments/1934g3f/zi_fa_gong_tre_according_to_damo_mitchell/
5 https://blog.mindvalley.com/7-chakras/
6 https://sacredwoodessence.com/pages/benefits
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