Every Christmas in the West, we are reminded of the Christmas Story, that’s so central to Christianity – It’s right there in the word Christmas!
Christianity’s story is a bit bleak.
Behave well, and you’ll get a nice place when you die – live life as a Libertine, and things get a whole lot nastier…
The whole of our lives are governed by the stories we are told, and the things that we accept as the “Gospel Truth.”
As my Teacher, Teacher Lu explains,
When we are born, we are as pure as we are ever likely to be.
We are then given stories of who we are, and what to believe by our parents or guardians.
Our religious upbringing adds new layers of complexity to our belief systems.
Our schools are there to fill us with nationalistic ideas, to turn us into worker drones, to sell us the story of our country (in the hope that we’ll never question it, and be good citizens..)
We are taught by twisted weirdos (and some great teachers..) and learn our street-smarts, from our crazy, perverted and badly informed friends..
Our brothers and sisters, twist and fight for their place in the family, sometimes being supportive, sometimes undermining us.
Our partners and lovers change us, reflecting their issue and problems into our lives, and often drawing out our wrongs in so doing.
Our work and our colleagues often cause us more stress than enjoyment.
Our politics can make us sick and angry, and make us feel alienated.
We also have a mind of our own. Not only are we given this vast volume of information from our societal connections, but we also “educate” ourselves, and tell ourselves stories.
Try repeatedly failing to grasp Maths and not tell yourself that you are just not cut out for numbers..
(Clearly, there’s probably a Teacher who’s also saying this, but even if you have a kind supportive teacher, you might still be inclined to convince yourself, that this is just not your thing..)
We tell ourselves stories about our abilities, our likes and dislikes, and what our character is all about.
These stories that make up you, are like an inverted pyramid.
A few pieces of core information support VAST additional stories..
I speak as an adopted person.
That start in life, can generate an astonishing amount of ideas.
I have worked with quite a few other adopted people.
The story often starts with one idea – “My mother didn’t love me, why should anybody else?”
From that spring a multitude of different ideas that are all destructive in their own way.
“I only choose partners who aren’t available to love me, because that’s what I deserve..”
“I don’t know how to connect with my child, because nobody ever showed me how…”
“I’ll never be lovable”
(The first story, most likely a falsehood (as I found out in later life) is able to govern all aspects of our being.)
How many false stories govern your life?
Have you ever stopped to question the things that operate inside you daily?
One of the MOST powerful stories that we are telling ourselves in the Western world is: –
One out of every Two people will have a brush with Cancer.
(Thirty years ago, when I started studying health, this figure was one in three.)
This is an exceptionally dangerous story, one that needs to be told in a different way.
If you are on the Underground, and somebody sneezes in your face, will you catch Cancer?
If you touch the same door handle as a Cancer patient, will you get cancer?
So how is it becoming so prevalent?
How many people were dying of Cancer in the past.
In medieval times archaeological evidence seems to suggest 3% of the population.
Preindustrial revolution suggests that we may be up to 10%
Post industrial revolution to the present day has steadily climbed to 40 and 50% of the population.
It would appear that Stress is the major contributing factor.
But what Stress?
It’s different in every case.
Our bodies can be terribly stressed by the chemicals we put in them.
Because of Industrial farming being required to feed the ever burgeoning population, our foodstuffs are filled with unnatural chemicals.
In an effort to make food last longer on the shelves, and maximise their profits for shareholder gain, and to pay huge bonuses, our food companies tamper with our food in many unnatural ways.
Do we have any idea what’s sprayed on our food and why?
Chemicals and sugar abound in our food, which we eat for years, and then find that the stress has been too much for our digestive systems.
Stress in our Drinks.
Again we encounter sugar in so many of our drinks, but also we find that a great many of them are also highly acidic.
The average pH level of Coffee, is about 5 pH; the body works best at 7.4 pH – this might seem like a small factor, but Sulphuric Acid is just below 3 pH!
When we are feeling stressed out, we often turn to alcohol to help us forget our woes. I remember working in the City of London as a broker when the Government brought out their “Guidelines” for alcohol consumption.
Their suggested weekly intake looked very much like a two-hour lunch with a client to me! (And that happened two or three times a week, and that’s before we talk about the “big nights out” …)
So many people rely on their doctors to help them through difficult patches. It would seem however that our medical system has been bought and sold. Once upon a time doctors could suggest home remedies, and emotional strategies that might help; these days, they have no path but to prescribe drugs. To be fair, the labs that they trained in have all be sold to pharmaceutical companies, how could they have turned out any other way, except pill pushers? (In the UK now, there’s a slow awakening to “Social Prescribing” of such things as Yoga, Fitness Classes and Swimming, long may this trend last. I feel sure that this won’t be happening in the USA any time soon…)
Our bodies are so often polluted by the very drugs that are supposed to be our salvation. Does anybody NOT have a story about the side-effects of some prescription?
Fewer people smoke these days, although it still seems to be thriving in the poorer areas of Europe.
There’s obviously Vaping to take it’s place, which is sold to us as a less harmful way to get Nicotine into our bodies.
(I feel sure they said the same about Lead and Mercury in Lipstick… or how about putting Fluoride in our toothpaste… Give it twenty years, and see if I’m still wrong.. )
Everything you use in your house to make sure that there’s no bacteria anywhere is toxic and deadly too.
Expose yourself to it for decades of cleaning, and see what stress detoxifying these terrible chemicals adds to your poor stressed liver.
I seem to remember parents saying that it was good to let children pick up sweets from the floor, the germs would only strengthen their immune systems..
When did we move from helpful germs to deadly bacteria?
Sitting is as big a killer as smoking “they” tend to say.
We are getting fatter, and more unfit.
The trajectory for a good worker drone is to sit at a desk all day for 40 years, then to take their medication, and die as soon as possible, so as to not stress the pension system too much.
We stopped doing manual labour a long time ago or walking long distances to work, so any of the fitness values from these have been eroded.
Now it seems that every schoolchild needs to be chauffer driven to school, when what they desperately need is exercise.
(We sold off all the playing fields to build new houses, and put up Phone Masts in the playgrounds, to get the local governments out of debt)
Every day, we are subjected to more “waves” – from Radio and TV broadcasts to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi everywhere we go.
Quantum Physics tells use that EVERYTHING is a wave, it’s banal to suggest that mobile phones and Wi-Fi have NO effect on us.
It’s just another tiny stress added to the pile.
Money creates stress. Money is a direct representation of our Qi energy.
The more work you do, the more money you have, the idea goes.
It’s a shame that creativity and art are so badly rewarded and that Maths and Science seem to be the way to generate a fortune.
So many of us feel that we are not rewarded for our contributions. (A stress in itself…)
There was a time somewhere in between the wars where a man could support his family, and his wife wouldn’t have to go out to work.
She was working hard at home educating the children and keeping a complex family life thriving.
After the second war, this dream became increasingly difficult for a family.
More and more both parents needed to work, as the cost of everything rose. This a represents stress for everybody in the family.
The general levels of stress in work only seem to have become higher and higher. There’s more pressure to perform than ever, the competition has become ridiculously high, we are feeling the effects more and more.
These mental stresses leach toxic chemicals into our bodies daily, year after year – naturally, something has to give.
Oddly, science has seemingly created more problems for us.
Problems that we didn’t know we actually had.
In order to sell you more drugs, we have to become even more granular with our pigeonholing of illnesses.
It’s only right that we take better care of our mental health, something that had never been on the agenda, but only through the application of chemical drugs? This is total folly.
We understand and speak of our emotions much more these days.
It’s exceptionally important, but can also lead to us obsessing more than we would have done in the past.
Is it better to “just get on with it” rather than constantly “unwinding” things?
The jury is out, in some cases it’s vital to dissect the issues and solve them, in some cases people would be much better served by getting out into Nature.
The advent of the Information Age, as we move out of the Industrial Age, is having devastating effects on our young.
Most older people are more cynical and clear eyed, and are not so easily consumed by the latest trends.
The latest trends aren’t pointed at this demographic anyway.
In order to make the most money, companies target the most vulnerable.
Social Media has introduced untold levels of stress into young people’s lives.
What about the casual use of recreational drugs in the young too? They want to escape the pressures of life, in their own skunk cloud…
Are you still wondering why we are facing figures of 50% Cancer rates in the population?
Once upon a time we had sanatoriums.
The coast of the UK was filled with places for people to “take the air” or “bathe in the waters”
When we finally discovered that soldiers of the First World War were not actually cowards, but had PTSD, then there were nursing homes all over Britain where these poor souls could go to recover from the horrors of their experiences.
50% of our population is now suffering from the “shellshock” stresses of Twenty First Century living.
We are still living in Stone Age bodies with Stone Age minds and driving Formula One lives at astonishing speeds!
It’s inevitable that we will crash.
We hear the sad story all too often in the local news, 18 year old boy in his new BMW, comes off the road, driving too fast, kills himself and his friends, maybe some poor innocent bystanders too.
It’s simple to see, he was totally inexperienced, and had no training or ability to deal with the reality of the situation.
How do our lives differ from this at all?
The same is true, we have these amazing resilient bodies, but they don’t come with a manual.
We have to figure out the operating instructions as we go along.
All the “fun” things seem to be dangerous..
Everything else seems boring..
It’s my privilege to work with Cancer people, to try to help direct them along a path that will turn the corner from illness to wellness.
I see daily the answer. “Simplify everything in your life – remove all the stressors” then you’ll give yourself a fighting chance to turn things around
This is not a simple thing to do.
Everybody’s story is so complex, the combination of sources for the stress, so rich and varied.
My key desire is to establish a place where people can come stay for a month or two, to make the dramatic changes that their lives require, or at least build the skill sets, determination and space that’s required to embark on this journey – I want to build a sanitorium.
I’d like to open a centre in Portugal.
In truth, I’d like to open hundreds of centres all over the world.
I’ll give away my business plan right here..
The centres will be, not-for-profit communal run spaces, which are quiet, healthy, and embedded deeply in Nature.
They will serve healthy food, teach meditation and Qigong, encourage long walks and community…
Please feel free to steal the idea, and proliferate it all over the globe…
There is one important thing we need to do, and that’s start to tell the story of our health differently.
The Qigong that I teach is about Longevity.
It’s about realising that if we start to behave differently that we’ll be able to extend the natural HEALTHY lifespan of our lives.
These days we can live to Ninety with ease, but the last years tend to be plagued by illness and mental decrepitude.
I’d like to start telling a story whereby we generate a movement of people, dedicated to Health and Longevity, not Work and Death.
I think we could co-opt the word “Naturalist”
My Chinese Teacher talks about “Natural People”
This is my hope then..
Can we start to talk about living Naturalist Lives, not Industrial or Information age lives..
Could this be the new trend, the new era?
Could we tell ourselves healthy, happy, longevity stories, not horror stories of Cancer?
If we can shift the way we think, and the way we tell stories, perhaps we can shift the course of humanity?
Hao La! (Chinese for “everything is good already”)
P.s If you wish to talk to me about investing in our future health story, either financially or personally – don’t hesitate to visit my website at www.quantumqigong.co.uk and fill out the contact form, or the Questionnaire on the therapy page.