Yu Wei and Wu Wei
Two concepts you will often hear mentioned in our classes are Yu Wei and Wu Wei. Yu Wei translates as intention or action, and Wu Wei as non-action or non-doing.
When you start to practice chi kung, you will have an experience of wu wei, doing nothing. This can be a beautiful place to be, not needing to change anything and being able to rest exactly where you are.
But you might also have aims and objectives that you want to get from your practice. This is yu wei: setting an intention for a specific outcome.
Learning to use intention to direct your energy, then letting go is a useful skill in Chi Kung practice. It's also really useful in everyday life - knowing when to act, what's the right amount of action, and when to let things be.
This is a clip from one of the Friday morning Qigong for Vitality, Flow and Calm classes. If you're interested in learning these kinds of skills, you can book a month of classes for £39. Join live via Zoom, and receive all the class recordings to catch up and review in your own time.
Energy Management with Qigong
Do you find your energy levels go up and down through the day? Do you find your energy gets depleted in certain situations?
Qigong practice can give you techniques for energy management to use throughout the day, maintaining and enhancing your energy levels.
Sometimes we might want to increase our energy or focus, perhaps if we have something we need to get done. Sometimes we will want to feel more relaxed, especially when we are practicing in the evening before bed. At other times we might want more of a balance between being energised and calm.
It's useful to know how to adjust our practice so we can make it work for what we need at that particular moment.
We can use qigong as a tool for energy management by learning some simple techniques.
This is a clip from the Qigong for Vitality, Flow and Calm class, every Friday, 9-9.30am.
If you're interested in learning some skills to help you manage your energy, you can book a class here, or contact us for more details. You are welcome to join, whether you are a complete beginner or have done qigong before.
Developing health and resilience
Winter is approaching in the northern hemisphere, and here in the UK it's getting cold and damp. So it's useful to have effective ways of keeping ourselves healthy and building our resilience.
This is a time when naturally we want to do less, stay warm and hibernate to some extent. But our busy lives mean that for most of us this is impossible. Depletion of our energy and internal resources can be more likely at this time of year.
In the weekly classes at the moment, we're exploring ways we can use body, mind and energy skills to build our energy and nourish ourselves. We're using techniques that give us more energy and vitality, while being gentle and kind to ourselves.
We are really lucky to have access to these time tested mind-body-energy exercises. They have been used to keep people strong and healthy for thousands of years. And over the years these ancient practices have been refined and developed, evolving to stay alive and relevant today.
In this 3 min video, Tim talks about how in Fully Alive, we continue to explore and stay curious. We are finding simple, effective ways we can use the techniques and skills of Chi Kung and the Shaolin Arts in our everyday lives.