The feet are never anxious
Last summer I found out that there was a free weekly Qigong class happening on Saturdays in a little piece of forest in a local park. It began at 7:30 a.m., and I slept through it several times during the busyness of moving in the first half of summer break.
But eventually I made it to a class, and I adored it. I had tried a set of Tai Chi classes earlier last year, and while it was good for me I’m sure, to be honest it wasn’t my favourite; I found it overwhelming, to say the least, to try to memorize the order the 103 forms were supposed to happen in. And trying to remember the exact positions and movements my body should be following made me tense, which I’m sure is the opposite of what was supposed to be happening. (I suspect that one simply needs to stick with it for longer than a few months before it reaches any level of ease. As with everything.)
But later last year a music student of mine mentioned feeling that playing the piano was a lot like Tai Chi in some ways, and that struck a chord with me as it were. I thought I might understand what they meant. My idea was something about the flow of energy up through the feet, the body, down the arms, into the hands and fingers (or up from the hands and down the legs into the feet); and then out to create something or to be something different, perhaps, from what it started as—sound, or movement—but holding still the same intention the whole time. Stillness within movement and movement within stillness.
When I tried Qigong, it felt to my body more natural, more aligned with the breath, the seasons, the systems of the body, the physical reality that we live in as human beings. And the teacher used the word 意 (yi), intention. I don’t know whether or not it really means what I had been thinking of intention as, but that character made its way into a poem draft last fall nevertheless. (About fifteen years ago my then-husband and I studied Mandarin for a few years, to the point that our first child as a toddler would speak in sentences mixing Chinese and English at times because we tried to use it with her as much as possible. Though I don’t know much, I still have a fascination and love for Chinese as a language and for the characters in particular.)
In the past couple of years I’ve started experiencing something that’s hard to describe in words, but I’ll try: it’s sort of like a tingling in my hands and feet that my mind processes as the feeling of something leaving, something invisible exiting my body. It happens at odd times, unexpectedly, but I can also make it happen by focusing on physically releasing unpleasant thoughts that my anxious mind tends to dwell on beyond what is useful. However, sometimes it seems to happen in the other direction: when I’m happy and relaxed in the forest, say, my hands and feet will sometimes tingle too, but the sense is that something is flowing in.
Earlier this month I saw an ad for a free 6-day online Qigong class based on something called 十八式 (shi ba shi, the 18 forms), and decided to try it out. I miss the Saturday classes, which stopped when the weather turned wet in the fall. And this online class reinspired me so much. Somehow these coordinated combinations of movement with breath can calm me down as nothing else can (and believe me, I’ve tried a lot of things in a lifetime of anxiety). Even if I need to sit still (while waiting to read poetry or perform music, for example, or while driving), imagining doing the movements while breathing is enough. I find this rather revolutionary.
My favourite quote from the online class was something along the lines of ‘The feet are never anxious’. I have reminded myself of this frequently already this month, as I have navigated several big changes, feelings about potential upcoming changes, many and varied events, and a busier than usual work schedule, have navigated all this with my feet connected and open to whatever we want to call that energy or intention moving up into them from the ground. I could call it anti-anxiety. A tangible groundedness, literally.
I’m in a constant energy exchange with the rest of the world, and when I think of life like that, I feel amazed that I exist at all, that anything exists at all. Amazed and joyful, and grateful.
Here is a small chunk of the poem draft I mentioned. Be well, and don’t forget about the support of your feet grounding you.
the potpourri of the forest floor in old August:
why fall births more poems than spring, I couldn’t say.
through this tiny warm frame can be seen
意: my good intentions,
my own will;
my old dreams, still free.
this summer my organs learned a truth
my mind had thought it understood:
that free things cannot be taken away
or lost.