Welcome to 2015 and Harmony With Nature!
Michelle Wood
Our premier 2015 issue has much information on Nature and what it means to be in harmony, as well as many ways in which you may experience Harmony With Nature.
This month’s Featured Article is A Reflection of Nature by Lilian Kluivers. Following the wisdom of Chinese medicine and Taoïsm, we would say that living in harmony with nature is the best way to take care of our chi, our life energy. But how to live in harmony? How do we read the messages that nature sends us and adapt them to our daily life? Insights from Do-In provide us with a series of simple but accurate stretchings. If you regulate your energy flow like this on a daily basis, this will help you to adapt to nature.
For the spirit, we offer Nurture Life, Discover Who You Are By Christina J Barea, DP, MMQ. Who gives examples of how we discover our essence, what does our “fullest potential” look like, and how do we apply the simple wisdom of yangsheng? Marianne Kinzer’s I Have Come To See All Living Beings As Water-beings essay shows the integral connection we humans have in common with each other, other beings and the environment, and how can we understand on an experiential level that we humans are part of nature. In Deities of Living Lands and Seas, an excerpt from his book A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization, Brian Griffith transports us to an ancient past when most Chinese people felt that wild nature was closer to the sacred and they saw their connection to the land through their devotion to local Nature Deities, mystical goddesses, and Daoist Immortals.
We expand the mind with the book review Eternal Spring by Michael W. Acton Reviewed by Sal Casano , Ph.D.(Holistic Health), Taijiquan/Qigong Instructor. Michael Acton has written a very insightful and inspiring book: Utilizing Daoist teachings and concepts the author shows how the practice of qigong and taiji increase one’s ability to live in accordance with a nature filled environment, eating natural foods and practicing harmonious techniques to connect the mind, body and spirit. In The Virtue of Patient Care. Gary Greer describes how the Daoist root of traditional Chinese medicine has been virtually erased and replaced by Westernized TCM and illustrates through the verses of the Daodejing that it is time that TCM return to its humble beginnings, and how to do that. Kevin Chen, Ph.D. compiled research information on Meditation Can Change Your Brain for Better and Longer and you will read reports on how meditation slows the aging process, rewires the brain, and how meditation can lead to actual structural changes in the brain!
For the body, and especially the palate, Ellasara Kling’s Seasonal Harmony column relates: we can open to the idea that we are not separate from Nature and actualize that awareness in our daily living in ways that are unique to each individual. We can attune ourselves to Seasonality and use this attunement to assist ourselves in attaining and maintaining true health… We can utilize Five Element theory to assist ourselves in harmonizing with the seasons and experiencing the flow within ourselves, as we also see it reflected “outside” ourselves. As always, her recipes offer the best in seasonal suggestions for delicious harmony with nature! In an article adapted from “Qigong Through The Seasons – How to Stay Healthy all Year Long with Qigong, Meditation, Diet and Herbs” by Dr. Ronald Davis describes Spring as the Wood Phase
, a heady, invigorating, sometimes disturbing season with wild fluctuations of energy surging throughout nature as birth, arousal, and movement. As an infusion of energy, the rising Qi carries benefits as well as the potential for problems. The practice of Spring Qigong centers on using qigong exercises, foods, herbs, and meditation to nourish the Liver.
To wrap up this issue, we offer a Comedy Moment in which Raven Cohen tells a fun little tale of qi cultivation through her trickster persona Huck Twin! Hurry, before Coke or Pepsi buys her out!!!