Alignment with Your Soul Purpose

Spring Forest Qigong

So many people come to Spring Forest Qigong, one way or another. Some people come to our healing center in Minnesota. Some people come to us through a book or a DVD—maybe they saw Born a Healer in a used bookstore, maybe a friend gave them a Level 1 home-study course. Other people meet someone who already practices Spring Forest Qigong’s healing techniques. Usually, all these people—and you might be one of them—are looking for healing. It could be healing from depression or anxiety. It could be healing from cancer or arthritis. It could be healing from something bigger or something smaller.

And usually, these people connect with a healer to receive healing energy and then begin to practice Qigong for themselves. And what happens? Again and again, we see transformation— color comes back to the face, eyes brighten, spine straightens, symptoms fade away. All from the same simple exercises, all with the same simple healing techniques. Why? Because the body is intelligent, and it knows how to heal itself. All it needs sometimes is help balancing its energy: this is what the meditations and healing movements do, and this is how the healer helps. When energy is full, balanced, and flowing, health is the natural result.

Although Master Lin refined and concentrated it to its simplest essence, the science of Qigong and the understanding that produced these practices is thousands of years old.

A basic, ancient principle of Qigong (which modern medicine still struggles to acknowledge or understand) is that the mind, body, and emotions are one. What does that mean? A body that is sick disturbs the mind and stirs up the emotions. Wild emotions stir up the mind and eventually harm the body. An overwrought mind feeds unhealthy emotions and depletes the body.

But the beauty of this principle is that just as there are direct, predictable negative correspondences among the body’s organ systems, emotions, and states of mind, there are also direct, predictable, positive correspondences among them. What does that mean? Just as there is a certain way of feeling, breathing, holding the body, and using the mind that creates disturbance and imbalance, there is a way of breathing, holding the body, and using the mind that creates peace and balance. This is the secret behind the Five Element Healing Movements. It’s so simple that anyone can understand its principles. And even those who struggle to understand them can still practice and experience the peace and balance for themselves.

The thing is, Qigong goes even deeper than that.

Qigong has deep roots in Taoism, a manybranched practice and philosophy whose central concern is understanding and learning to harmonize with the laws of nature and the universe. Lao Tzu was a Taoist master thousands of years ago; his words come to us as the Tao Te Ching. He said, “Who can, in turbidity, use the gradual clarification of stillness?”

The question is, what happens when the body, mind, and emotions are in balance? Then what? Is there anything to us, as humans, beyond these three? If there is, how can we find it? If we find it, what do we do with it?

Have you ever been to a lake or a pond, standing or sitting on a rock near the edge, and looked into the water? If the day is still—the wind quiet, no rain, no boats, no birds on the surface or fish below—and the water is clean, you can look and see all the way to the bottom. But as soon as you drop something in, a plume of silt shoots up from the depths and a murky cloud fills the water; suddenly all you can see is muddy ripples of turbid water.

Now, imagine it is the same sunny day, and the whole bottom of the same pond is filled with gold, so that when the water is still—no rain, wind, boats or birds—you can see a golden light gleaming from its depths. And again, as soon as you drop something in the water, all you can see is mud and darkness and churning—no golden light.

From the Qigong perspective, you might compare yourself to a pond filled with gold. You might compare your personality to the water and your soul to the gold in its depths. Every one of us is a pond, and every one of us has gold in our depths. And you might compare a body that is unwell, with a mind that is disturbed and emotions that are in chaos, to a pond in whose depths someone keeps throwing rock after rock after rock. In that churning and splashing, everything is moving, and there is so much mud mixed with the water all the time that one could never imagine, looking from outside, that there is gold to be found. Just muddy water. And in that churning or splashing, it is useless to reach in and try to collect or settle every particle of debris—it is endless! All that does is make more splashing; that is no way to settle things.

Who can, in turbidity, use the gradual clarification of stillness?

Again, the principle of Taoism is that simply by allowing water to be still, all its silt will settle itself without any help; what Spring Forest Qigong gives you is the techniques to allow stillness to happen. The beauty and surprise of this, though, is that when the body settles, the emotions settle, and the mind settles, the spirit begins to purify, and little by little the ever-present soul, in all its brilliance, begins to shine forth from the depths. When this light begins to shine forth unobstructed, you are then in a position to really see it, to explore and to understand more and ever deeper dimensions of it. This might be called finding your soul purpose or aligning with your soul purpose.

So in a very real sense, to use the principles and practices of Qigong simply to balance your body’s energy is to take the first step on the most profound spiritual journey. By nourishing the body, you can give birth to the soul’s highest aspiration. This, too, is a simple understanding from nature, the simple profundity of the Taoist scientist-sages.

Just as a single seed, a plain, tiny, concentrated essence, bears within it the potential to become a mighty, expansive tree bearing thousands of branches, leaves, fruits and flowers, an explosion of color, flavor, smell, and shape, so also do we bear within our bodies the potential for an even more brilliant spiritual blossoming. Yes—in the simple body that eats, breathes, sleeps, and moves on the earth! And just like the tree that needs deep, strong, stable roots grounded in the earth to be able to throw forth branches high in the heavens, so from the Qigong perspective do we need a strong, stable, deeply grounded physical being as the foundation from which to express our highest spiritual flowering. The roots and the flowers are not two things, though appearances seem to say otherwise.

Every seed bears within it the information it needs to become a tree; it is the nature of seeds to sprout and to grow into trees. All they need is the right soil, enough water, and some light— the rest happens by itself.

If you have read this, if you have already come to Spring Forest—you are already on the right soil. If you are practicing the Qigong movements and meditations—you are watering it. And if you find your branches are budding, waiting only for a warm light to coax them open... perhaps it is time to brush the clouds aside and let it shine.

Learn Five Element Qigong Healing Movements

Five Element Qigong Healing Movements Self-Healing

Self-Learning Course and Guided Practice with Master Chunyi Lin

Combines the wisdom of the 5000-year-old Yellow Emperor's medical manuscript with Master Lin's Modern-day healing experiences.  These revolutionary new qigong techniques merge breathing, gentle movements, emotions, sounds, and visualization to help you on multiple dimensions.

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