Daily Intentions

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Watching someone like Lee Holden, who has inspired me to practice Qi Gong every morning - I can clearly see someone who is truly happy with what they are doing in life. Success has followed happiness and Lee, it seems, is becoming the ambassador for an ancient eastern art form that brings health and vitality to himself and into the lives of millions. 

Having partners, family, friendships and work commitments to maintain/keep, means we're compromising ourselves a lot of the time. This means our fun, companionship and family/work relationships and all the responsibilities they entail, can temporarily detract us from where we are aiming to go in our lives. 

Everyone has intentions, but for most, they are not clearly defined. They are led by desires and easily changed through lack of focus, manipulation from others, or lost through intoxication. It takes extra effort to stop ourselves from being pulled off the day's intended path. It's that feeling, waking after an unplanned, late night of alcohol-fuelled shenanigans that the things you'd planned to do, got thrown out of the window. It's these situations in particular that we all wish to be more in control of – always seems like a good idea at the time...

Letting oneself down, feeling weak-willed and a failure - these are very negative thoughts that need to be avoided. Fun is an easy detractor from a path of intention, so there have to be pre-thoughts for the day to make allowances for these times when we're more susceptible to losing track of the day. A simple few minutes to think through possible scenarios and levels of flexibility for the day is all is needed to avoid having those dreaded feelings of self-loathing. There's always going to be other opportunities for fun.

Every evening, I will look at the following day's calendar of proposed events, my intentions and what I want to get out of the day. These intentions will then be discussed with my partner to better understand her intentions for the day too and we'll look at the possible factors that could scupper plans. This way, we will know what it means if we fall too far from our intended paths and already have a plan B to fall back on.  

Universal Energy

THE POWER WITHIN

There's some real-life X-Men/Women out there that have learned to harness the power of the universe to do great things. Through their focus and dedication to self mastery, they can use their body and minds to achieve seemingly supernatural feats. Monks practicing ancient energy harnessing techniques, appear to have these supernatural powers. They repeatedly train their minds and bodies to do some amazing physical acts through using Tummo breathing techniques and energy harnessing Qi Gong.

Meditation techniques have shown that we can raise our body temperature to withstand the cold. This isn't just exclusive to monks either. Anyone can do it through practice. Dutchman, Wim Hof has trained (and actually changed) his body over the last 20+ years to withstand extreme cold through using meditation. He's proven that we can obtain supper human powers through the practice & learning the techniques, focussed/applied training, and shown that we can even survive in extreme life-threatening temperatures, as his climbing mount Everest in just a pair of shorts and sandals shows!

These monks demonstrate the Tummo technique which is used to raise their core temperatures enough to dry a wet shirt - even in a cold environment:

Other masters have chosen different ways to harness and accomplish super-human feats. Take this real life ninja who can chop a pellet in half with his Samurai sword that's been fired from a gun:

There's many other examples of people with super powers out there - either inherited or developed through dedicated training. Some masters like Iron Shirt and other martial artists have closely studied different fighting styles to emulate the speed, balance and strength of animals like tigers, snakes, cranes and in this bizarre example, a praying mantis.

Whether it's in the realm of difficult to explain phenomena like telekinesis & echolocation, practiced feats of strength, endurance, speed, flexibility or just a dedication & focus for a longer life through eating/exercise for increased wellbeing, it's evidence that we all have the capabilities to learn how to absorb universal energy and potentially become super humans ourselves.

Reality

WHAT IS REALITY?

To you and I, reality is what we've inherited from our parents, society, the environment and our senses.

We follow our realities. We fit in and don't question too much what alternative realities could be. Things like where we're brought up, the school we attend and friends we keep, will mould our realities. If you think it's impossible to switch from one reality to another, watch this documentary on bare knuckle fighting where violent realities have been created but where one guy called James, decided to choose a different life. You can read about James Lambert who made a conscious decision to be happy. I just bought his book: Be Happy in 24 Hours (available for only £3.44 on Kindle). We all have the power to change our realities. By understanding our surroundings and others, we learn that everything is just made up from our personal understanding of the world around us and we can educate ourselves to make better, more positive decisions.

Quantum Reality
I watched this BBC documentary: What is Reality (full version), and this programme has completely warped my perception of what reality is! In it, they talk about wacky scenarios, like for instance, how our existence may just be a reflection of a hologram projected from a black hole or our existence. This universe being just one of an infinite number of existences from parallel universes. Well if this has any solid foundation to it, anything is likely it seems. It certainly poses two ways of looking at it. Either the answer is too far out of comprehension that we cannot ever understand - or it's so absurd that we should laugh it off and just get back to trying as hard as possible to enjoy as much life as we possibly can. Whatever the case may be, quantum theory discussed in this doc indicates that we still have a lot to learn but ultimately, mathematical equations may one day have the answers.

So, if these scientists are throwing such out-there concepts of reality at us - what's to say that other cosmic realities don't exist? I watched a video of a man setting fire to paper by focussing Chi (or Qi) energy from his palm and pushing a chopstick through a thick wooden table yesterday (full doc available here 24:50) - so, it pays to keep an open mind to what reality is...

Practicing Daily Rituals

MORNING RITUALS SET UP YOUR DAY

If you start the day on the right track - the rest of your day has a better chance of success. Try forming morning habits and rituals that you can stick to and they will help with forming other positive habits. I watched a few video clips on martial arts yesterday and became really interested in learning more about harnessing life energy (Chi or Qi). I'm now doing this 10 minute QiGong morning practice (below) every morning. I'll be checking my local yoga centre for when the Qigong sessions are on - looking at doing a couple of classes to complement the yoga as it really seems to help get the body energised.

Qigong Master
If you want to see what powers harnessing Qi energy can give us, do a few internet searches. I watched this video clip on Qi the other day and now have the 4-part series called: The Ring of Fire in my list of things to watch. One of the series talks about this martial arts master John Chang (video below) who uses Qi to heal people - amazing footage....