My new practice of Yoga and Qigong

When I broke my hip, Louis, my acupuncture dude, gave me two great pieces of advice. He told me to take The Great Mender and to picture myself running full steam up and down mountains. The Great Mender is an ancient Chinese preparation to heal bones.  I sent my friend to the co-op and she bought this marvelous jar of pills for about $7. Louis told me to suspend my other healing practices like the comfrey compresses and see how the pills helped. Help they did. Almost immediately, I could feel heat around the break and a tingling in the surrounding areas. This was good. It felt good, like energy was moving. About the picturing myself running up mountains, well the first good thing was that the image made me laugh. Laughter is good. The reason it was funny was that I was never a runner. I never jogged. I am a walker. But, I am a good patient when I have trust in my medicine man, so I pictured myself running, with the wind machine blowing my hair like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohegans.

Louis was convinced from his studies that this picturing work was very fruitful. I don't know. But, I do know that I had a perfect recovery and a few years later, I burst into a run on the beach in Nicaragua with the wind blowing my hair and I thought, "There is a first time for everything."

Recently I was made aware by my friend Jane that mot people in my country who are "into" sports are really into watching them on TV or going to the games as spectators. This made me think. I have only gone back to Yoga class once or twice since I broke my hip. It was a disaster. It was probably too soon, as I didn't trust my balance or my hip. Since those classes, I have had every excuse not to go. Too expensive, too uptight, too cold, too far away, too early, too late. You get the picture.

So, putting things together the way my mind likes to do, I have begun a Yoga and a Qigong practice of watching videos of other people doing their practice. So far, I feel more relaxed and more flexible. I expect much deeper results as I get into more advanced practices. I expect to fell ONE with everything. After all, Yoga means "yoke". No yoke. I feel this is an American way to do things and I can control my environment and do my practice at my whimsy. I can increase the number of classes a day. I can even do it on a bus or train or plane. This is good.