When illness arrives, you change your life.
You might quit your job or prioritize family. Maybe you write a book or spend more time in nature.
Perhaps you take up yoga or grow your own food. Or you go sky-diving and knock other things off the bucket list.
This has been my life. Not the sky-diving part.
- Illness or struggle arrive
- I make a change: take up yoga, meditation, nature, qigong, research
- Make a move perhaps
- Then I write
- I share my findings and experiences far and wide as a beacon for others
- Then I feel like I’m good. I’m done. Lesson learned. Thanks, Universe.
- On with life I go.
Okay, maybe I did kick the kids’ butts in downhill karting recently. My version of sky-diving.
But either my doctors have missed something, karma is playing out, or Dharma is calling.
The Qigong teacher in me says, “Practice more. Open the channels. Deepen meditation. Heal.”
The Buddhist practitioner in me says, “This is your cue to drop both body and mind. See through samsara.”
Part of me knows perfect health is possible. For everyone.
And part of me knows that’s not the point of life in a human body.
Attachment and aversion. Those are the two energies I try to notice in myself.
Does the need to heal stem from an attachment to the body/life and aversion to discomfort?
Here’s the interesting thing though: I believe when we work on one, we get the other. Not attachment and aversion, but health and liberation.
We may begin our qigong practice to improve our health and discover it results in expansion of consciousness.
That was the case for my back injury and my year of yoga I wrote about in an Accidental Awakening: It’s Not About Yoga; it’s About Family. I went to heal my back and left in a great state of awakening.
A part of me is inspired to write about POTs/dysautonomia, connective tissue disease and osteoporosis. But more of me is pulled into emptiness.
If not now, when?
When do we decide to drop the distractions and dive within?
There’s also a part of me that knows I can heal my spine and make it anew. Though I wonder if that’s the part that’s already beyond the body and the little mind. The part that knows liberation so the physical body is not an obstacle. It doesn’t matter what the actual spine looks like, that part is already in perfection.
There’s a practice in Tibetan buddhism called Kyed Pa Zhi. It is used to increase the four life forces. I’ve had the great pleasure of learning this practice from a qualified teacher through Tara Mandala. The basis is that it is important to strengthen the body’s life forces so we can better practice the Dharma.
So, around we go. Suffering as impetus to practice.
What that practice is, that’s up to you.
Where it takes you…
Stephanie Hrehirchuk - Author 