Wild Lily Sends a Message…

Wild Lily at Hendrick’s Park 03.30.22

I 形不正 When your body is not aligned,

2 德不來。The inner power will not come.

3 中不靜 When you are not tranquil within,

4 心不治。Your heart will not be well ordered.

5 正形攝德 Align your body, assist the inner power,

6 淫然而自。Then it will gradually come on its own.

The Original Tao- Inward Training (Nei-Yeh) 300 BCE, translation by Dr. Harold D. Roth PhD., Columbia University Press.

The classical texts of the Nei-Yeh contain some really beautiful and profound wisdom on how to live our lives to their fullest. They also inform our qigong and inspire daily practice. There is a notion of coming into alignment and becoming tranquil. First by stretching our tendons and tissues and then our spines. Of softening and opening up the body and of releasing rigidity and held pattern. Patterns that we’ve woven for ourselves, inherited from our ancestors or patterns and their subsequent behaviors infused into us by our current culture of chaos.

What is this inner power? It is our spirit. We can nourish it, strengthen it and call upon it. We are not alone, we are not separate from Heaven, Earth and Nature as René Descartes (1596–1650) and others would have us believe. The wild lily sinking its roots into the Earth and stretching its petals up towards the sky, aligned and tranquil in the garden, was all that I needed to bring clarity and stillness to my heart.

I am teaching this ancient art of body movement and body alignment every Tuesday and Thursday morning live at Hendricks Park. You can even join via zoom at guruhari.org It’s me and the lilies, chickadees, nuthatch, wild current, white oak, black oak and hawks. As you can see everyone is welcome.