OVERCOMING ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
A class in Finland
Sifu Nissa Kahila
Shaolin Wahnam Finland
13th January 2018
Dear Bernhard,
I am sure your Sifu has already given you good advice how to practice to overcome your health problems and reach your goals.
Here are a few things I’ve found useful when using chi kung in overcoming anxiety disorders or depression.
Realize you are already healthy
When you understand that health is a natural state for you, it becomes easier to use chi kung to get rid and let go of what ever rubbish or blockages are causing your health problems. It really doesn’t matter what the problems are, chi flow will overcome and clear them.
This is an important point: you don’t have to intellectualise on your problems or analyse them. If your practice correctly and consistently, you will overcome your problems.
This is also where western medicine and chi kung differ greatly in their approach to curing mental illness. While western medicine uses therapy and drugs as main methods to cure mental illness symptoms, chi kung works on a deeper and more profound level of curing the root problems that cause the symptoms in the first place.
So, by changing negative thought patterns to positive thought patterns, you are treating the symptoms. Also, focusing on every thought that arises actually creates more thoughts and confusion. From the chi kung perspective, you don’t need to change your thoughts, or intellectualise about them. You can just let them be and pass by. When you practice daily the basic chi kung exercise, you practice relaxing, keeping your mind free of thoughts (whether they are good or bad) and enjoy your chi flow.
The Three Golden Rules
Can you be anxious or depressed when you don’t worry, don’t intellectualise and enjoy whatever it is you are doing? No, you can’t. It’s the perfect antidote to anxiety, excessive negative thoughts or fears.
When you practice the Three Golden rules everyday, it becomes easier and easier to apply them to whatever you are doing.
If your used to worrying or intellectualising it may take some time to learn not to do so, but it will reward you for life.
Practical ways to use the chi kung skill with anxiety symptoms
Instead of using drugs to deal with panic attacks or anxiety, it is relative easy to deal with them using chi kung skills. It may take some time to practice, but it is well worth the effort, as you learn how to deal with panic attacks or anxiety and fear yourself.
If a strong fear or panic attack arises, you breath out gently three times, go into a gentle chi flow and say to yourself ‘I am fine and safe’. And let the panic attack pass. So simple, yet so effective!
Following your progress and perseverance
The western mindset is often: “How to get rid of this as soon as possible?” In chi kung practice, you need to put in the effort yourself and keep on practicing until you have overcome your health problems. This is also a blessing in disguise: you learn to take responsibility of yourself and of your well being.
Anxiety and fears are often build on misconceptions: I can’t do this, What if…happens, .. When you use your chi kung skills to overcome your fears and anxiety, you see fear as what it is: only fear, not reality. Every person feels fear. When the fear starts to affect your behaviour or decisions, then it becomes a trouble maker.
So, you have to accept that using chi kung as your main method of healing will take some time. But as long as you are progressing and the direction is good, you just keep going. It is helpful to understand that all healing has it’s ups and downs. Very rarely someone heals straight away. If you accept that your chi kung practice will be sometimes easy and sometimes not, it helps you to get over the little bumps on the way.
So, just keep on practicing! I am sure you will overcome your health problems.
Best wishes,
Nessa
No worries, no intellectualization, and just enjoy the practice
The above discussion is reproduced from the thread One Year of Cleansing in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
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