Clear thinking and new perspectives

January 15, 2014

Qigong combines natural movement with the breath in order to strengthen and balance our emotional, physical and spiritual aspects. Its effectiveness in corporate environments is well known in Asia but the benefits are only just now being explored in the west.

Taking time to breathe, calm the mind and improve clarity

The world in which we live has a tendency towards busyness. Although it’s possible to perform many tasks simultaneously, all too often we find ourselves compromising one task by worrying about another competing priority. Perhaps the preparation for the meeting later in the day is distracting you; maybe it’s trying to work out how to fit in everything you need to do between finishing work and getting home. We are constantly finding ourselves under pressure either from others, or from ourselves.

Qigong will not reduce your workload; it will not create more hours in the day: what it can do is provide simple techniques to find clarity and perspective. It can help us focus on what is relevant in the moment and prevent us from being distracted with worries and concerns about what might happen, it can help us to become more aware of the way in which we communicate, more aware of the consequences of our actions both on ourselves and others.

Creating time for Qigong as part of the working day

Finding a spare couple of hours to practice a new, health giving practice in our already busy day is not a viable option for many. Even if we are able to sustain a daily practice, we can still find ourselves stressed and distracted through our working day. It goes without saying that when we want to truly explore the depths of Qigong practice, there is no substitute for sustained practice, but there’s another, arguably more potent way to utilise Qigong within the modern workplace.

The embodied practice that lie at the core of Qigong become most effective when they can be easily integrated into modern life. This integration means that we can find moments of clarity and relaxation throughout the working day and not just during practice. In reality, when the purpose of the new habits that we adopt as a result of good training are seamlessly integrated into our lives, there is no separation between practice and life.

 

In practice

Corporate Qigong is not a serious or intense thing, it’s not about committing to an arduous training regime, it’s not about following a process of procedure; it is about having the opportunity to explore techniques that can make big differences in our work and home lives, it’s about perspective and observing how we respond, it’s about having fun and finding real benefits in simple ideas and techniques that we can embrace as part of our everyday life.