A student in the Shaolin Wahnam Twin Cities weekly qigong class recently asked why things feel so different when practiced in class compared to practicing on his own. As I’ve mentioned in another post, I always welcome questions from students. They often lead to interesting discussion which is helpful for the person asking, the rest of the class, anyone reading this blog, and me too! I would bet money that those who have trained with Grandmaster Wong or any other Shaolin Wahnam instructor have had this exact same experience when they leave a course or class then return home to practice on their own.
To get more specific, you learn skills in a course. You experience a powerful, deep, sometimes completely transcendental state. You may have a remarkable healing experience right then and there. Then you go home, set yourself to practice, and it feels like nothing is happening. You feel no Qi at all. You wonder if you’re doing something wrong and pine to get back to that incredible place in the cosmos from whence you came. You are soooooo not alone. So what’s the story with this phenomenon?
Simply put, it’s like picking up a 20 pound weight after you’ve been training with a 60 pound one. It feels like nothing at all! When you’re in class, you have the benefit of training with a high-level instructor (or better still, Grandmaster Wong) and the extra boost of everyone else’s energy in the group (I’ll tease that out in a different post). Because of this, the level of your own practice is raised. By the time you return home to your personal practice, you’re only training at about 30% of that. THIS IS A GOOD THING. In class, simply because of the nature of how energy works, you are over-training. While that’s good in certain doses, it’s not good as a constant. Remember, over-training can lead to over-cleansing, which can be uncomfortable. Training Cosmos Qigong with a qualified instructor helps encourage healing in a smooth and steady way. The body can only process so much energy at once, so by returning home and practicing at 30% for a while, you are actually doing yourself a favor AND setting yourself up for further increased skill level, just at a pace you can actually tolerate.
Joining one of our classes is one of the best ways to ensure that you benefit from a genuine qigong practice in a slow, steady, and incremental way. It also helps minimize the pitfalls of incorrect practice while helping you towards your goal. So if you return home from class and find things aren’t as powerful on your own, be glad for it. Carry on practicing without worry, step back every few months and reassess your progress. You’ll quickly see that your 30% is doing wonders for you!