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Jun 1 • TCM & Healing Modalities
The River Inside You
Hi Everyone 👋
Let me tell you about something that saved me without making a sound.... When I was studying Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, we had to learn Qigong as part of our daily training in medicine, it was for two reasons: one for our own health, to support our long days of study (it's relentless in China, looooong, loooong days of theory, heads in books and lectures) and the second was to help us understand hi Qi is cultivated and how gentle movement works within to support our bodies.
Qigong (chee-kung). Maybe you've heard the word. Maybe it sounds like another thing to learn. But stay with me....😊
A little history first
Over four thousand years ago, somewhere in the misty mountains of ancient China, some quiet souls noticed something. They watched the mist rise from the valley. They watched their own breath mist in the cold air. And they started to see that everything moves. The rivers. The clouds. The blood in their own hands.
They called this movement Qi. Life breath. The invisible river that flows through every living thing.
No one invented Qigong. It grew like bamboo. Farmers noticed that certain stretches helped their backs. Healers noticed that sick people who moved slowly and breathed deeply got better faster. Monks in the mountains noticed that sitting still all day made their joints stiff, so they started moving before meditation.
Over centuries, it became a map. A map of the invisible river inside you.
The medicine connection
Traditional Chinese Medicine isn't like Western medicine. We don't just treat the symptom. We look at the whole garden.
In TCM, illness is not a broken part. It's a blockage. A place where the Qi got stuck like a log in a stream.
Qigong is the gentle hand that moves the log. Not forcing. Not pushing. Just inviting the river to flow again.
Depression? Often stagnant Qi in the liver.
Anxiety? Qi rising when it should settle.
Fatigue? Qi that leaked out and never came home.
You don't need to believe this. Just watch what happens to your own body when you slow down and breathe. That tightness in your chest? After five minutes of slow, soft movement? It loosens. Every time.
What it does for your mind
Here's what Western science is finally catching up on....
Qigong lowers cortisol. That's the stress hormone. It calms the amygdala, your brain's alarm system. It changes your vagus nerve, the one that tells your whole body you're safe now.
But you don't need science to know what peace feels like.
I've seen people come to Qigong with minds that never shut up. The worry machine. The loop of shame. The replaying of every mistake. And after a few weeks of just moving like water, slow, soft, no goal, something shifted. The thoughts didn't disappear. But they stopped owning them.
That's the Daoist way. Don't fight the river. Become the river.
A simple invitation for you...
You don't need an hour. You don't need special clothes or a teacher or a temple.
Stand up. Feet shoulder-width. Knees soft. Shake your hands like you're drying water off them. Now breathe in slowly, raise your arms like you're lifting a feather. Breathe out, let them fall.
Do that ten times...... That's Qigong.
Your ancestors knew this. Your body remembers.
Your turn
Here's my challenge for you this week..
Do 5 minutes of slow, simple movement every morning. Before coffee. Before phone. Just move and breathe. No right way. No wrong way.
Then come back here and tell me one thing you noticed.
One thing. "My shoulders dropped." "I yawned." "I felt sad." "Nothing happened." "I felt relaxed"...etc
With Love ❤️
Always
Mark
Note:- Ohhh I've packed on so much weight with my continued bouts of illness, the steroid medications and total lack of exercise...Slowly, slowly, I will come back to self again 😊
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The River Inside You
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