Why bother going on retreat at all?
All that hassle of the travel to Spain / China / or a field in Somerset, is it really worth it?
My Chinese Teachers speak English pretty well these days.
Teacher Lu struggles to understand a long story, that much is true.
The Theory he delivers is fascinating and really easy to follow (when you get used to his delivery, usually after the first day when you’ve calmed down and opened up!)
I have long-since decided that these are the Teachers I want to follow. They are my Masters. Although, they’d hate it if you called them that!
There are plenty of other teachers doing the rounds, many of whom I’ve worked with at one time of another… but I find NONE to be of such high quality as Lu and Ling.
For me, Dr Pang’s Qigong System is head and shoulders above every other type of Qigong I have studied this past 35 years.
Many teachers follow this syllabus.
Teacher Lu studied Chinese Psychology at University and has brough his personal understanding of our mental state and layered it over the Zhineng Qigong System.
It enhances everything that Dr Pang was teaching, and to my mind would have been the closest to Dr Pang’s route were he able to have continued developing it. (Qigong was repressed in China for twenty years..)
Don’t forget, this is all my personal opinion. I suggest you try other teachers, see who matches your vibration. For me, there’s only one route to healing (from our sub-conscious) and only one teacher who really understands how to do that (Teacher Lu)
Teacher Ling is an excellent physical teacher – she understands more about the form than most, AND all the theory that Teacher Lu uses, truly a double threat!
She used to be much sharper, her edges have softened to make her a peerless thoughtful instructor.
Their hearts are as big as watermelons, and their life’s work is to teach you how to heal your life.
Teacher Lu says “Change your mind and change your Destiny!” – no small pointer!
Even if I’ve established my claim for their excellence, this still might not make you want to circle the globe to be with them.
Sometimes the framework we live in is the cage that holds us in illness.
I remember a client from the Isle of White saying to me, “the moment I set foot on the ferry home, I’m able to leave all the stress of the mainland behind me, it’s a very healing experience”
So to for retreats, taking oneself out of the norm is a huge gift, and dropping into a safe space, where you are warm, fed well and cared for will begin the healing process.
There’s always the worry about travel, but information is so readily available these days, that there’s not a step of the way that you can’t prepare for. With planning and enough time, any journey can be made simple.
What cost your health?
A retreat might cost you £1000 per week; seems like a lot if you are going for two weeks.
If you have suffered years of chronic illness and I offered to help you change the course of your illness, to give you a new perspective on your life for £2000, my bet is that you’d go for it.
I can back up the promise by telling you about thousands of other people who have achieved this with my Teachers, all over the globe, year after year.
How about the lovely lady from Israel, who spent many years “locked in” at home, in a wheelchair, and afraid to even venture out. I first met her in China!
She had spent five days with my teachers in Israel, then taken the leap of faith to spend a month in China with them.
When I met her, she’d arrived in China in her wheelchair, quickly cast that off for crutches, and was walking briskly now unaided at all, only after a month!
I recently re-met her in Spain five years later, and we danced together.
Most teachers agree that 95% of all illness comes from our subconscious.
Let’s imagine the root of an illness is a scary, drunken father, who is violent to you and your mother.
You might be tiny, and it might only last a few years, but deep in your subconscious there’s a fear of men, alcohol, and perhaps that you were the cause.
You battle through school, stumble through your teenage life, with these patterns gently reminding you that life is unsafe, or that men are all bastards.
This affects who you marry, what job you take, and what story you pass to your children.
There seems to be a magnetic pull to go to what seems familiar. You then discover that you’ve “married you father”
In my example, something from Childhood drives every choice we make, and then perhaps leads us to our own illnesses.
Chronic illness just seems to me like an inability to deal with the horrors, tedium and misery of modern life. When it all becomes too much, where do we turn?
In the West, our only choice seems to be medication, to take the edge off “life”
At least the Doctor can give you a Diagnosis – Cancer, Diabetes, Heart disease, Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis. Now you have a box, you can hide in it, and blame the illness for your life.
For Zhineng Qigong people, it’s different.
It becomes an acceptance that many things are not right in our lives, and it helps to power the change to fix this.
Many people don’t have the vision or strength to do this.
It’s easier to let the system do its best..
For us, it’s about taking back the responsibility for our own health and happiness.
Each day on retreat is exhausting to start with!
Exercises at 7:30, lectures at 10am, more practice at 11:30. Sleep, blessed sleep until 4pm.
More discussions in the afternoon, and Meditation before bed.. Sleep, blessed sleep again.
To begin with, it’s overwhelming, then your body catches the tide and things start to flow.
The rhythm carries you along.
People tell you their amazing, and painful stories, and you start to see yourself in what they say.
The Teachers explain to you how the subconscious pulls off its tricks, which have brought you low, and how to turn the corner. With a little logic and Zhineng Qigong science, you start to see the path out.
Things change inside you, as you talk with friends old and new, and discuss “big” thoughts with your teachers.
Every stretch, every thought, every bend, every meditation moves you forward, changes your perspective of you.
This is what healing really is.
Sometimes it comes in a gush, sometimes a trickle.. but the emotions start to flow, and they are seen and understood for what they are and dealt with appropriately.
This is what healing really is.
None of this comes in a bottle or a blister-pack. Your Doctor or Psychiatrist can’t “Do” this for you, there’s only one way. Do It Yourself.
In the setting of the retreat, there’s always somebody to hold you when you falter, there’s always an angel who will say just the right thing at the right moment.
This is what healing REALLY is.
The Bump back into daily life can be rough. The decisions you made can be difficult to execute.
But you have the cocoon of your practice, now pretty well ingrained into your being, to light you along. Just Practice, practice, practice, and know that it will change you at a fundamental level.
You can’t change other people in your life, you can’t change the past, all you can do is re-invent YOU in the here and now, and watch the world change around you as you do.
The resonance of Logroño, will ripple through fifty people’s live and their family and friends lives for ever. This extraordinarily beautiful pebble dropped into a still pond will send ripples of healing out through many lives.
It’s with deep love, affection and thanks that I dedicate this piece to my Teachers Lu and Ling, but also to the wonderful people who made this retreat an astonishing time.
I’ve been working on myself for thirty fives years, and always assume that there’s nothing left to come up for me. How naïve I still am… Fragments of my adoption still stick into my heart, like broken shards of a smashed mirror. Spending time in this safe happy space, quietly picking them out, is the best choice I have ever made for myself.
Maybe next time there’s a retreat going on, you’ll be brave enough to face your life, and come with me?