At last Winter season has slowly faded away, leaving its place for the Spring to arrive. Many days I train at a nearby park seeing everybody loves to enjoy outdoor activities with friends and family, they even love lying down on the grass under the sunshine.
For us in America, we are fortune have four different seasons very clearly comparing to other tropical countries where there only are only two specific weathers, rainy or sunny months.
Summer in some place is hot, either burning or extremely humid thus it becomes very uncomfortable even to the local residence. In our area, fortunately we find that summers are always great and equally mean a lot of fun. Even better, day light saving time allows us to spend more hours under the sun. However, at some point or for some of us, summer is the time of suffering. Hay fever, bad cases of pollen allergy could literally make a day suck and ruin all the best moments.
Just a month ago we lasted through the biggest snow storm ever recorded, up to 24 inches of pure white occupied every exposed objects the eyes could see. When spring took it role a few weeks ago, I’ve been suffering the allergy symptoms in the worse possible ways. I look up in my dictionary and no, the words doctor or medication never comes to show. I’m maybe stubborn, but I’d rather treat myself with Qigong (Internal Postnatal Energy Training, read The purpose of practicing Qigong ?). Many of my friends know the benefits of Qigong and its purpose for a better life, but Qigong itself is also the greater natural medicine to almost every sickness in the world (What is Qi and how to feel your energy ball). Yes, even cancer. However, it is still the patient’s destiny whether he or she could overcome the own death or not, even with the help of a Qigong practitioner. Master John Chang once cured 2 out of 3 patients who touched the last stage of cancer. The third one, died. Not because there was something wrong, but his belief and will power did not stay with Qigong. He simply gave up hope and did not bother to follow the master direction to help himself. Why am I saying this? If we doubt Qigong how would it ever be possible for us to understand and work with Qigong to heal problems? Throughout the history, all Qigong masters healed their illnesses using Qigong or, alternatively, because of practicing Qigong, they were never ill. It’s now to see the reason why I am so stubborn, and no matter how much more you and I have to suffer we should still practice Qigong to solve the problems.
I know the allergy or hay fever of this time in the year is pretty annoying and probably stops many of us to enjoy the day. I, too, personally have my nose and eyes itchy. Random times in a day, I could think they are trying to irritate me until my very last breath. Slowly I also realize that I’m able to handle the situation much better. In fact, allergy is more irritating than it is harming us. Of course if someone is very weak, it can still be a problem nevertheless. Look at it from a scientific viewpoint, pollen allergy is absolutely not a poison, nor virus that tends to damage us. If not so, why everyone always sprints to a local CVS or pharmacy store to get some medicine for hay fever? These medicines, whether you realize it or not, only help to stop your feeling of the irritation but do not suddenly make you invincible. They cannot block the symptoms, only try to delay it. In the end, whenever you do not take the medicines, you feel much worse than before. It is simply because your body does not know how to cope with it and becomes dependent. For us, Qigong practitioners, the training is the way our body learns how to handle diseases from nature, by the power of nature. Therefore, even if we take not any medicine we can handle a lot more different sicknesses with our strong immune system.
From that point of view, I know I should learn how to cope with allergy by myself. However, I also realize that if I am busy doing things such as training, eating, using the restroom (erm…) , I do not feel the symptom that bad. Then when I sit still or do nothing, I start to feel the irritation making its way back to laugh on my suffering butts. Mind over matter ? So I learn to keep doing other things which that makes my focus will not be on my senses, and my mind is distracted from irritation. It is the same as, “Change your mind, change your world”, and in Qigong terms we say “One thought to replace ten thousand thoughts”.
Taking the concept to the next level, our life has all kinds of problems. We simply should not complain about it if already we have nothing constructive to say. The society of today, you see people complain almost everything in life, from government such as President Obama’s health care plan or at work where a customer’s action makes they feel annoyed, from family or other people they know. If we do the same as these people who complain, we put ourselves in a room, where all problems are always because of someone else’s. If we were into the shoes of the government, the job, the position of family or other people we know and complain about, I guarantee that these things would be much worse. It is very easy to point the finger at the others, but it is hard to find a way to deal with the problems. If we see everybody as a good person then we will not have problem with others. The problem is always ourselves. It is true. But, being nice to everyone is not always easy. That’s why we need wisdom.
I wonder how my above talk has anything to do with Qigong, allergy or hay fever. It seems I have totally lost the track myself. But if you learn one thing I found, that it is still difficult to handle the allergy because irritation does not depend on the Qigong practice. One time, the more I do Qigong with my mind set for the ultimate fight against allergy, the worse my battle becomes. The more I put my attention to kill this annoying symptom, the more it becomes stronger to kick my ass. Then I found that practicing, but also concentrating on the movements and its beautiful meaning does help. That is wisdom. No matter whether it is a Karate training or Qigong practice, if you just utilize the skills without wisdom you will find that sometimes things work and sometimes things do not work. Same for kata or form of a martial arts style, if you know only the surface but not the bunkai or hidden applications, you never get to be a martial artist. “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”
Regarding the allergy I have found that changing my focus helps me feel better, I can forget the irritation and slowly my body will cope with it. After many years then, it will eventually become nothing. Some problems actually begin from within our self and it’s only us to overcome. However, some of us may think, ‘haha it’s a waste of time I don’t have any allergy why bother’, or ‘its tooo bad i jst die’. If so, you should know how natures works. If today you become stronger against the allergy or hay fever, tomorrow your children and your grandchildren will have immunity from it. Now you know how some people cope better with allergy than the others and how it will benefit not only you but your own family in the future.
In the end if I have to say something, the less we bother the fewer the problem we get. We all live our own lives. If we cannot do anything to improve or help other people’s problems, it’s better we should not bother too much. At the worst, it takes your Qi, only makes you unhappy or even ill, or makes an enemy in your life. If other people do not like us, that is their problem, we should just do our things. The world has yin and yang, has bright and dark, has right and wrong. Sometimes, we have people who loves us, and some do not. It’s not thing we have to complain about, is it? By ignoring all the other problems we live in a peaceful and happy world. But it also does not mean we are allowed to be lazy or neglect on handling our own problems. Along the way, our senses become normal and empty. Just like in meditation, think as if we have no eyes, no ears, no tongue, no nose, no body and no mind. Being in the emptiness is the high level of Qigong as well as in meditation, in fact at this level our senses become more sensitive. We see further, not just with the eyes, we hear further, not just with the ears. But if we are unable to reach the emptiness, then we are always irritated by many unnecessary problems. Sometimes we need to let go, in order to gain, to be free in order to not be bothered. We should care, but care about things in a positive way where it benefits our fellows and others. In the end, it all will come back to ourselves.
(Paul Luong)
Images are photographed by Paul and the class of Karate Martial Arts at MC – Rockville
References are from Qi Mag, Issue No. 88, pp 1-2, Jul/Aug/Sep 2008 by Michael Tse
