Accept yourself: easy to say, but what’s stopping you?

I teach healing qigong practices that can be achieved with what seems to be a very simple skill: accepting the body as it is and helping it change for the better. Sounds logical, right?

What is really happening? Each of us has certain stereotypes of what the body should be like. We look at fit people with six-packs on the press and think that we would also use cubes. How to achieve this? Do exercises on the press. Are we capable of it? Quite. Go!

Now imagine that your body is a separate entity with its own priorities, rhythms and habits. You go up to him and say: well, quickly lay down and began to pump the press 120 times in a row. Sounds a little wild, doesn’t it? We are unlikely to allow ourselves to treat another person in this way: rather, ask him how he feels, clarify whether he wants to practice at all, check how he is there in the process — is it comfortable, not painful, not scary?

We treat our body as an obedient slave: like it or not, but I need cubes! We move unnecessary emotions, we ignore pain sensations.

neutral attention

How is qigong taught to accept one’s own body? Traditional Chinese medicine is characterized by the idea that the life spirit Shen resides in the body. The word «spirit» sounds mysterious, but this is a very rough translation from Chinese. This word has dozens of meanings. One of them is “neutral attention”, which is quite understandable to a Westerner.

We know how to immerse ourselves in concentrated neutral attention, for example, in the contemplation of a sunset. Sometimes — with a good set of circumstances — in creative work. All other thoughts seem to disappear, do not cause unnecessary emotions. Only pure action remains.

As part of qigong practices, we learn to find this neutral attention. We do not evaluate ourselves — here it hurts me, here I am overweight, here it is ugly — but we simply state the fact: this is the space of my body, and it, the body, breathes.

Conversations with the body

In class, I encourage new students to accept that the body can be spoken to. So that it does not look like uniform madness, we do it to ourselves. What are we talking about?

To begin with, we must recognize the fact that our body is part of nature. Like grass, sun, birds and beetles. Grass knows well how to grow and resist external aggressive factors. But this is such a simple organic phenomenon — not like our body. Our body knows perfectly well what is useful and what is dangerous, how to resist pathogenic factors and how to become stronger. If the body is provided with favorable conditions, it will restore its ideal shape by itself, become more slender, beautiful, flexible, strong.

Assuming that this idea is correct, I suggest that my students do exercises by putting neutral attention in the body and asking it the question: what needs to be done in order to have more opening and freedom of movement in this place (for example, in the shoulder joint). After asking the body a question, give it time to react, to find the right, ergonomic movement. Watch and remember, and you will be pleasantly surprised!

In the classroom, professional athletes who are used to ordering the body to obey begin to build a trusting relationship with it, and their performance improves significantly. For example, one of my students, a professional tennis player, suddenly discovered that it was more convenient for the body to shift the weight a little on the heels. Such a seemingly trifle radically changed his stroke, and the next season he entered the first hundred tennis players in Russia.

seventh cervical vertebra

People with excellent posture — an open chest and a proud neck position — are considered self-confident. They seem to accept themselves completely, confident in every step and ready to lead.

And this is no accident! In yoga, the base of the neck, the vishuddha chakra, is associated with confidence and self-acceptance. And in Chinese medicine, it is believed that the active point in the region of the seventh cervical vertebra is able to heal the pathologies of that same Shen spirit — neutral attention.

The proud, beautiful position of the neck signals the freedom and disclosure of the region of the seventh cervical vertebra. The more flexible this place is, the more we are able to accept ourselves as we are. The more this place is tense and clamped, the more we tend to hold on to a state of sadness, anxiety and blame ourselves for various sins.

Therefore, the first three exercises of the Sing Shen Juang qigong complex are devoted to a detailed study of the neck area: our skills of accepting ourselves, our body and seeing our path are directly related to the freedom of this area.

Exercise to relax the seventh cervical vertebra

To appreciate in practice how the position of the neck and the freedom of the seventh cervical are related to self-acceptance, I propose to perform a simple exercise.

Sit on a chair without leaning on the back, palms on the belt, elbows looking to the sides. Start doing a little rotation on the seventh cervical vertebra. We all did a similar exercise in physical education. So, forget it! Imagine that the crown describes a small circle. The head does not throw back and does not hang. The neck always remains straight and relaxed, as if during rotation, someone gently pulls you up on the top of the head.

Bring neutral attention to the area of ​​the seventh cervical vertebra and ask the body what you can do to fill the base of the neck with even more freedom, make this area a little more flexible. Wait for an answer. Notice how the movement will change: maybe it will become less amplitude or slower. Maybe it will even be reduced to barely noticeable. Do not resist: in this exercise, the body leads you, not you.

As you rotate to one side and the other, note how the inner feeling has changed: how much more comfortable and calm it has become inside, and how much more trusting your relationship with the body has become.