What Happens When Intentions Are Shared By Thousands?

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Mingtong Gu

What Happens When Intentions Are Shared By Thousands ?
A Conversation with Tibetan Scholar
 
 
The following except is from and interview with Dr. Marina Illich, an Indo Tibetan scholar from Columbia University and teacher of Wisdom Healing Qigong. Marina is an executive coach and spiritual teacher.
 
Amy Cooper, M.F.T., a psychotherapist and Qigong teacher practices in San Francisco.

Marina and Amy Cooper had the following conversation in anticipation of the upcoming large Chi Center Event with Master Mingtong Gu on September 26, 2011, 11am to 5:30pm, sponsored by the Chi Center in Petaluma California.

AC: Marina and I have studied together to become teachers of Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong with Master Mingtong Gu over the past several months. We have had many conversations about how Wisdom Healing Qigong informs psychological and physical healing and how the unique experience of collective healing potentially changes consciousness as well.

Marina, can you tell me about the concept of the chi field and collective healing?

MI: Yes it’s a really good question. My answer comes in part from my training but also from the experience of my own healing. I’d say the biggest learning I’ve had is that things change when we get aligned. For much of my life my conditioning has been to be ruggedly individualistic; to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and to take care of my own healing.

In studying Qi Gong over the past few years I’ve come to think of the absurdity of “going it alone”.

Imagine being a starling flying amidst thousands of other birds in a flock and going against the energy of the wind and the collective to make it alone. Imagine the kind of chaos it would create in the alignment to fly off in the opposite direction. There wouldn’t be much functionality inside of that. Yet I think that’s the way we are conditioned to move through life on our agenda and on our terms – sort of mind over matter. But what we end up doing is bumping up against each other, physically, spiritually and emotionally. There is something about being in unison in movement. I would venture to add that unison in intent opens up a level of coherence that allow the possibility of a new fluidity.

In my own healing it opened up a capacity to relax by way of togetherness.

AC: Yeah, it’s really fascinating what you are saying. It’s as though we have defined ourselves in opposition to nature sp that if birds flock together then we are meant to do otherwise and make it on our own. You are suggesting that instead there is something we can learn from the natural wisdom of the interconnected nature of the universe.

Can you tell me why you think energetically healing together has helped you?

MI: It comes down to coherent fields. For instance if you have to make a decision about what house to buy or rent, and your mind says it’s cheap, it’s close to the highway and your heart is mixed – its kind of my dream but not really, and your gut is saying, “over my dead body”. When we try to walk through life with our head saying one thing and our heart and gut acting on there own accord, it creates a lot of confusion, and internal misalignment. And it’s a huge energy drain.

Conversely, it’s been my experience that when I can get my heart, mind and gut in alignment I have so much more energy in life. Then I feel as though I am living in integrity with my values. I think that carries over to the collective when we are functioning in unison together, it’s the same integrity of integration and flow. I don’t claim to know how this functions, but its something about relaxing within the social nervous system.

AC: So there are two things in Qigong you are embodied heart, mind and gut in the practice, and you are doing it at the same time as others. I know in my experience there is an experience of a shared field of oneness as you do the practice together. And maybe that deepens us into our own experience because we are not toughing it out alone, and our logical mind isn’t pulling us away from our experience of interconnection to all dimensions of one another and ourselves. Do you think that’s true?

MI: Absolutely there is no question in my mind – it is about fields; a coherent field inside of us and the collective body. That would have seemed very esoteric to me in the past but now it feels very real to me. I think everyone has a sense of this. It’s why we build cathedrals and temples with vaulted ceilings, which open us to the collective shared experience of ourselves in relationship to the sacred. There is something about doing that over and over in the same place.

Conversely the camps in Auschwitz have no birds there 70 years after the fact. The field there is tainted. There is some memory or imprint of the atrocities that were committed there.

Certain kinds of repeated architectural structures and intentionality to practice the same way in the same place creates a memory in our body which we entrain more easily to the interdependence of the whole. It may seem esoteric but consider that few would go to Union Square in SF or NYC to relax but they might go to the mountains. The principal is the same. The fields in those places are very different.

AC: And yet there have been practices of meditation in the center of DC where the crime rate dropped following the practice. So it seems there is also a way to inform the field with new intentions. The upcoming event at Pt. Richmond will bring together hundreds of people to practice the form together for the first time in a new location. How might that inform healing as well?

MI: It’s portable. I used the example of the external environment because I thought it might be easier to imagine a shared experience of interconnection and shared intention. For me accessing the healing chi field is as easy as bringing to mind the somatic experience of grounding myself in the specific exercises we do. It’s almost as if the mere memory of the field awakens it again.

On that point, one of my greatest insights through this practice is that reality really happens in our hearts and minds, it doesn’t really happen anywhere else. I can do my practice on my own and I can do it in community to revitalize the practice. It’s the ultimate portable practice. We don’t need any props, just our body, mind and heart and the intention to do it for healing.

AC: You know it makes me think about a newborn baby. A baby comes into the world ready for relationship and is waiting for a welcoming environment that says I accept and welcome your true nature. As I am listening to you, it makes me realize that it is a similar kind of welcoming that has been really healing for you. In psychology we think about how we internalize loving relationships for our emotional growth and what you are really emphasizing is that physical healing is also born out of a loving relational field.

MI: I’d say there is no question that this is one of the most integrated, healthy advanced communities I’ve ever been inside of. I’ve studied with many Tibetan masters and been with phenomenal people for 20 years now, and the thing about the WHQ community is there is so much goodwill. So much commitment to the light, to healing one self and one another,
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as supported as I do inside of the Qigong community.

AC: It makes me smile because it awakens within me the essential idea of building this community so that it is not just a group of individuals but available to everyone. It reminds me of how Dr Pang, who developed this tradition of Qigong, would bring thousands of people together to heal. The love that was shared in the practice of healing was extended to larger and larger groups of people.

MI: Yes. I see that not as a distinct possibility but as a very likely eventuality of this practice.

AC: What’s exciting about that is this idea of consciousness changing through diverse people coming to practice in a place beyond right and wrong, which is neutral and open and loving, inviting the flow of energy you spoke of that is free flowing and coherent like the starlings in shared flight.

MI: I think the Qigong community is so powerful in this way because it’s not really about words. It’s about learning a new state of consciousness with the body that comes from a place of responsiveness rather than reactivity.

This is the second nterviews this week with luminaries in the field of Wisdom Healing Qi Gong culminating on September 25, 2011 at the major gathering of the Qigong For Healing Practice. The international Day of Peace will be honored with a Healing Spiral Practice for Peace at Craneway Pavilion. The event starts at 11:00am and ends at 5:30pm. (see chicenter.com for registration)

1 Comment     Comments

Rebecca Tarver, Oakland, CA , January 9, 2012 at 9:41 PM | Reply Thanks Amy and Marina. This puts into words much of what has drawn me to WHQ but that I hadn't been able to articulate. Beautifully shared.

A Conversation with a Professor of Spirituality and Politics

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Mingtong Gu

What Happens When Intentions Are Shared By Thousands ?
A Conversation with a Professor of Spirituality and Politics
 
Jaelle Dragomir, scholar and author, collaborated with Master Mingtong Gu on his book Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong Activate and Embody Energy. Her book, Two Revelations With A Miracle on the Side: Our Spiritual Path to a New Political Paradigm, will be available later next year. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.
 
Amy Cooper is a psychotherapist in San Francisco and a teacher of Wisdom Healing Qigong at Flourish Studio.

Jaelle and Amy met at a Qigong retreat and have been in conversation over the past year about an upcoming radio show they will produce: The Emerging Field of Transformation: A discussion with cutting edge scholars and activists who are changing consciousness and our perceptions of what is possible.
 
The following interview was conducted in anticipation of the September 25th Chi Center Event: Awakening the Power of Joy and Vitality, and the launch of the radio show starting in October 2011. The largest Chi Center event to date is this coming Sunday; it will take place at Craneway Pavillion in Richmond, California. Registration and details are online at www.chicenter.com.

This event will be a unique chance to for everyone to embody the experience of interconnection through practices similar to some of the cutting edge thinkers’ theories. Many of these thinkers are integrating the ancient Eastern philosophies and practices embodied in Qigong into present day Western inquiry, in the fields of science, health and environmentalism.


AC: You have spent your life as an activist and writer and studied with many spiritual leaders, so what about Wisdom Healing Qigong captured your attention?

JD: Right from the beginning I was drawn to Master Mingtong Gu and his ability to transmit this ancient wisdom to a contemporary audience. I felt like I had arrived home when we did the practice and the theories were more than theories for me, they were practical applications that fit my worldview.

AC: In your study of other spiritual and healing practices did you also study different forms of energy healing?

JD: I’ve practiced other forms of energy healing all my life, and was in touch with my own energy field and to a great extent the universal life force. But I, like many healers, would feel depleted by other forms of healing because I didn’t have the technology to constantly draw from anything other than my own reservoir of energy. I was drawn to this practice because it has the technology to heal one another by healing ourselves as we draw from the universal source of energy.

AC: That’s a very different paradigm than how we typically see healing in this culture. It’s typically the idea that the healer knows all and the person who is sick is dependent on them for their advice and interventions. There is no concept that the creative force of the universe would play any significant role in healing.

JD: Yes, we really got that wrong, thinking that we are separated from our own body wisdom and the creative wisdom of the universe. We are enculturated to think of ourselves as unique but not to embody our interconnection to the diversity of nature.

AC: I think of a field of flowers where each flower has its own beauty but is still part of the larger landscape. Some flowers can grow easily and plentifully but others face the challenges of their environment and have difficulty taking root. Yet each flower when supported has the source of energy to flourish.

JD: That’s beautiful, Amy. Everything about us is unique including our experience of being in this body on this planet at this time. Mother Nature abhors not only a vacuum, but also redundancy. Each of us, with our uniqueness revitalizes the very universe we live in. Individuation helped us perceive and appreciate our individual creativity, but we took it too far and now we cling to our illusion of separation. Feeling separate and alone, we’ve lost our interconnection. The practice of Qigong shifts that idea on its head and our individuality and inner wisdom are amplified by our shared wisdom.

AC: That’s another unique dimension of the Wisdom Healing Qigong’s paradigm, which posits we heal better together because we can draw from the collective knowledge transmitted energetically in words and practice as we share the intention for one another’s healing and share our own healing path with others.

JD: Fundamental to this form of Qigong is creating a chi field where we amplify the healing energy much like was done at the Qigong medicine-less hospital in China. Master Gu was inspired by his teacher, Grand Master Pang, who brought thousands of people together to heal and it’s Master Gu’s great dream that we can amplify the healing in a similar way in the U.S. where many will be healed by the shared intention of healing for everyone and everything, including Mother Earth and by extension, our political paradigm.

AC: When I traveled to China with Master Gu, we went to a small healing hospital. I walked into the clinic and I cried because, although I couldn’t understand the language of those who were frail and sick, I could feel the shared belief in one another’s healing. I didn’t know it then, but I’d been waiting all my life for a collective field with such powerful shared love and compassion. To my great delight I’ve had experiences on retreat in the U.S. with Master Gu where that same loving relational field has been co-created. I wonder how many people in America who are frail have had that experience?

JD: People can find that sometimes within their family or church or temple but its rare to have it embodied in a healing practice.

AC: That’s an important point. It’s not so much that it’s a place of sanctuary but it’s a place of sanctuary and shared embodied practice where each person’s healing contributes to the collective healing.

If someone were thinking of coming to the Wisdom Healing Qigong event with Master Gu on September 25th this coming Sunday what would you tell them?

JD: First, I’d say, “Great! You’ve taken a magnificent first step to not only heal yourself but also heal the world.” That is very important. Then I’d tell them, “It doesn’t matter what physical or mental state you’re in, or religion or ideology you practice, the more you share your individual, unique knowledge and wisdom––and everyone has a stake in this—the more you strengthen and expand the chi field, the energy field that surrounds and supports us. Amy, you and I have seen people who were despondent, disempowered, and some who were so ill they couldn’t stand, come to a Wisdom Healing Qigong event and walk away with the spark of vitality and hope and healing that had been missing in their lives. That’s powerful.