This is one of my favorite practices to do, especially at this time of year, during the winter season. In fact, I always incorporate it into my annual Nourish the Flame: From Resolutions to Results because it makes such a synergistic contribution to the practices and tools I share.
My wish for you, as we move into the New Year, is vision and sustainability. This little practice might do the trick
Please tell me what happens after you have tried this for 1 day. And it’s not too late to register for Nourish the Flame. If you are coming, do go ahead and begin this water exercise today and support your qi field to maximize the benefits of what we will be doing together on Dec. 30.
“Renegade-Woo” Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, brings together East Coast Attitude and West Coast energy consciousness as a master teacher, transformative speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
One concept I work with in The Way of Joyis what I call “Integrity Activates Change”. The way I see it, in order to create change — to pivot what you don’t want into what you dowant — requires being able to acknowledge and embrace your “whole” self — including all of your history, both “positive” and “negative”. Then I believe you are better able to make self-respecting choices that integrate all of who you are, including all of your different aspects or inner voices.
The questions I often return to that guide me back to my own integrity, the embrace of my whole self are:
Do you feel aligned with your vision and your passion?
What do you do when you hit roadblocks?
Even when something frightens, angers, or demoralizes you, how might you use it?
The next performance of Living Arts Playback Theater will be Traces of the Trade: An Afternoon of Film and Interactive Theater on the Legacy of Slavery on Feb. 4.
What is a challenge you’ve grown from that contributes to who you are and what you offer others?
Do you ever have days when you find yourself railing against things that Just Don’t Feel Fair? —where it feels like the universe is conspiring in a Job-like way to keep you from doing what you want to do? How can you follow your passion when you hit the roadblocks, the nay-sayers or the voices of self-doubt that appear to drag you down? In fact, is all that appears to be bad really bad?
In an earlier blog, I spoke about The Law of Attraction and how, for me, the most interesting work is to hold the stance of accepting, even welcoming, all that happens as food for spiritual/personal growth and development.
I want to be very clear that when I say to accept what’s going on, I don’t mean submit or “there’s nothing you can do to change things so just buck up and deal with it.” For many people the idea of acceptance is so connected to submitting or enduring that they believe the choice to “accept” would result in even fewer choices than they already have.
But I mean something very different.
I’m talking about avoiding a pitfall, the trap of keeping your focus on what should be and so losing sight of opportunities embedded in what is. Focusing on “what is,” rather than on something more “ideal,” makes you better able to make clear choices about how you want to relate to a situation rather than getting stuck in a self-defeating, powerless state of “it is not supposed to be that way” or “it’s just not fair.”
When have you seen an undesired situation transform from a challenge into something that ended up being a gift?
Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
Do you ever wonder why one person might seem to have “good vibes” while someone else puts out “bad” ones? Do you sometimes feel, despite your best efforts, like you are just plain feeling negative? Ok maybe not you, but how about someone you know?
Explosion of positive energy. Photo by Łukasz Strachanowski
When our bodies, thoughts, feelings and behavior are aligned, our good energy becomes contagious. The practice of Qigong offers a powerful tool that restores and enhances that positive energy called wei qi.This is a kind of protective energy that is, in essence, open, expansive, and assertive, as though you are so surrounded by positive qi that the negative or draining becomes irrelevant.
What do you tend to do when you are around someone who brings you down? And how do you bring your energy back up when you feel like you are sinking into overwhelm, anxiety, depression or stress?
Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
As I’ve devoted energy into my own business over this last week, I’ve noticed that I’ve been living under the specter of “one more thing-itis.” It feels like I’ve been running and running yet somehow still staying in the same place. One part of me is pleased by the illusion of perpetual productivity, while another voice inside insists that it’s important to balance doing the work I love with some time for reflection and replenishment, a “space in-between,” where I might balance the expansion of my outward energy (or yang state of activity) with times of internal focus (or yin state of receptivity).
Yet I resist. Too often in that space of non-doing, I end up feeling guilty or, god forbid, non-productive. Then, because my brain has hit a wall and I just have to dosomething, I find myself sitting in front of the tube watching instant play reruns of old tv shows. While this choice may succeed in silencing the “do-do” (doodoo?) mutter in my brain, it still doesn’t feel very good nor do I end up getting recharged.
In a chapter of my book The Way of Joy, I write about a principle I call Balance Brings Harmony and how often I’ve been struck by how many students and friends have said they feel ashamed to admit they have taken time during the day to read a novel, do a crossword puzzle, or take a nap. For most people, even vacation time is barely long enough to stop the internal buzz before picking up their “real life” once again.
By contrast, Wayne Dyer, author and inspirational speaker, has said, “It is the silence between the notes that makes the music. It is out of the silence, the gap, or that space between our thoughts that everything is created, including our own bliss.” Opening internal space, then, actually gives birth to our inspiration.
I remember hearing a story by the brilliant, heart-filled Jungian storyteller, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, about Picasso in his garden…
Want to have some fun telling stories? Interested in getting up on stage and performing? Join Vicki in her Playback Theater Improvisation class beginning Jan. 28 (with final class performance May 20)
Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Book: The Way of Joy: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
This is one of my favorite practices to do, especially at this time of year, during the winter season. In fact, I always incorporate it into my annual Nourish the Flame: From Resolutions to Results because it makes such a synergistic contribution to the practices and tools I share.
