We’re now heading into one of my favorite times of the year. Festive holidays, parties, meals with old friends, gifts exchanged, thanks given, and a deep sense of gratitude and abundance rejoicing. For many people, this also means lots of family gatherings, which can be good, bad or neutral depending upon your family.
Shaolin training benefits us in myriad ways, not the least of which is the mental clarity to steer the dinner table conversation away from politics to more pleasant things. Indeed, it doesn’t take much time training to see a shift in your mood, pain and old blockages fading away, and life just generally getting better all around. So, it can be easy to think that since our training has been so great for us, then by extension our family would love it too. Except all too often stories about how our training has made our lives better are greeted with a raised eyebrow, or an ‘oh, that’s nice’. What?! Why wouldn’t everybody want the secret to joy, zest, and vitality? What the…
Occasionally our stories do intrigue family and friends, who then go on to make their own transformations, which is awesome. But what about Uncle Ed and Cousin Jimmy? Why aren’t they interested?
It is said that when the student is ready, the master appears. For many people, they are not in a place where they are ready to commit to a practice which will radically shift them, even if they want to be happy and healthy. This is okay. They may or may not arrive at that readiness on their own and that’s okay too.
So how do we do right by friends and family who we know would benefit from qigong but just aren’t interested? Simple, we envelop them with all of those positive things we have gained from our training. We show up to dinner joyful. We engage in attentive conversation. We’re good listeners. We laugh, we smile from the heart, we have fun, we genuinely enjoy their company. Our friends and family needn’t engage in their own training to benefit from ours (though it would certainly help!). As we grow and break through blockages, we become happier, healthier, and more energetic. People notice. They can’t help but notice. In some cases, it rubs off on them enough that they finally want to see what this qigong stuff is all about. In others, they simply get to have our happiness rub off on them, which is still helpful for them. As you sit down to dinners and go to parties with your loved ones this year, I suggest refraining from convincing anyone. Simply be yourself, smile from the heart, at let the qi flow take care of the rest. Happy Holidays everyone!
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