Quantherapy

When I was about your age, I wanted to be a Kung-Fu Master. I watched Kung-Fu movies and read Kung-Fu fictions. In my memory, those fictions all tell the same story: how a naïve and kind-hearted youth grows into an invincible Kung-Fu master.

One thing about Kung-Fu masters that I learned from those fictions is that they all had to work through certain energy channels in their body so as to boost their inner energy before they could defeat their enemies and become invincible. We call it inner work in Chinese culture, but in Western world, people call it meditation.

When I grew older, I was less interested in fighting, more interested in enlightenment. Do you guys know enlightenment? Enlightenment is said to be a mental state in which you have no worries, no troubles, no stress, no anxiety, no negative emotions, you are full of happiness and wisdom. Well, I was informed that I had to do my inner work to achieve Enlightenment or Nirvana.

For whatever purpose, Kung-Fu or Enlightenment, to do this inner work, the first thing you need is a Shifu. A Shifu instructs you on your practice and delivers know-hows for your inner practice.

I was lucky enough to have met not one Shifu, but several Shifus.

My first Shifu taught me a set of gymnastic exercise which enabled me to work through energy channels in my body and open some energy windows in my body so I could exchange energy with the outside world.

My second Shifu whom I met only once told me that the most important inner work is to develop the power of heart, the energy and energy channels in the body are not important at all.

One Shifu led me to discover the power of heart.

Yet another Shifu instructed me on how to access and use the power of heart.

This secret ancient practice of inner work is now called mindfulness and is very popular around the world.

The practice we are going to do today comes from one of my Shifus. Before we proceed to the practice, please allow me to introduce the rationale behind it.

Scientists or psychologists have only found that mindfulness is effective, but they still don’t understand how and why it works. So the rationale I can give you here comes from spiritual traditions:

Our consciousness has power.

We have different states of consciousness and those different states have different powers.

Our brain consciousness or thinking consciousness is the most commonly experienced by us. It has different functions such as information processing, problem-solving, discrimination and making decision/judgment.

Our heart consciousness or feeling consciousness are less fully experienced by us and tend to be ignored. It has different functions including feeling, loving, empathizing and producing instinct. Our heart is empathetic and non-judgmental, it has great healing powers. The purer your heart is, the more healing power it has.

We will practice how to use the healing powers of our heart for self-care or self-healing. And the core of this practice is “feel your feelings/bodily sensations”.

A Three Step Mindfulness Practice

Preparation: find a quiet place, sit or stand with a comfortable posture (you may even lie down on a bed or coach if that makes you comfortable); close your eyes and relax, when relaxing, pay special attention and make sure to relax your shoulders and your heart.

1. Feel your heart/body.

The key of feeling your heart is in focusing on your feeling and in not being distracted by your thinking or your brain.

Usually, if you are anxious, your heart feel uncomfortable. Stay with the discomfort for a couple of minutes; discomfort may vanish or diminish after you feel it for a while; but if it doesn’t, then next step.

2. Scan/feel your brain.

Again, relax your shoulders relax your heart.

Try to find any tense or stuck or active place in your brain, and then feel the discomfort for a while; if it doesn’t work, then go on to next step.

3. Quietly view your brain.

Again, relax your shoulders relax your heart.

Wait until some thoughts (or images) arise. Those are the roots of your emotion (or depression, specific to you), observe those thoughts in a nonjudgmental way till they disappear.

If, after the 3 steps, your negative moods are not gone, you can do it all over again, repeat this process until there is a mood shift for the better.

* This three-step mindfulness exercise is adapted from and with the permission of Dr. Sun Zhihai in China.