I want to share a story that changed the way I think about this.
Years ago, I was at the World Qi Gong Congress in Toronto. A Qi Gong master walked in wearing a yellow robe and a full Taoist top hat. He sat down in lotus position, completely still, completely serious. Class started. Fifteen minutes went by. Nobody moved. Everyone was just kind of looking at each other like... is something supposed to be happening?
Then, all of a sudden, he stood up and started wiggling his eyebrows. Up and down, up and down. He walked around the room making everyone do it with him. The translator finally explained: when you lift your eyebrows, it's hard to feel sad. It's an actual happiness practice. The topic of the class was unconditional love Qi Gong.
I tried to feel sad with my eyebrows raised. I couldn't do it.
I was so struck by this that I went home and tried it on my kids when they were little and fussy. "Raise those eyebrows!" And it worked! Until they got wise to it and started holding them down on purpose. Because if you don't want to feel good, you have to actively resist it.
That's what this quote from Mantak Chia is really pointing to. Joy isn't something we earn at the end of a hard practice. It's medicine we can bring into the practice from the very start. The smile, the soft face, the lifted brow...they're instructions for how to move energy. When we meet our bodies with warmth instead of effort, something opens up that willpower alone can't touch.
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