Today I would like to share a little bit of a Chinese wisdom on how to stay calm and preserve our precious energy. Chinese culture, especially the path of Tao, talks a lot about energy since this is a primary element. If a body is sick, Chinese people say that energy is going the wrong way somewhere, or there is a block in a subtle energetic channel. Energy is always an area to check whenever there is any kind of health issue.
Since energy is so very precious, it is also important to know not only how to accumulate but also how to maintain and preserve it. When talking about women, they have a special remark to make: in case of women, the first thing to do to keep the energy is to pay more attention to body and stay present. As present, as possible. The state of “calm water” is when no matter what happens outside, we stay as calm as the lake. If the rock gets into the water, the water just swallows it and stay intact after that. The state of “calm water” is truly the ideal state of being for women, according to Taoism.
Another way of calling this calm state is the action in inaction. This is the highest state of being for a woman. This is when she doesn’t do anything and yet things keep happening around her, like if there is magic going on. She stays completely calm, a calm water, and everything around her keeps happening with less amount of effort from her side.
Here are three simple ways to preserve energy and to become closer to this perfect state of action in inaction, according to Taoism.
Calm your body
Whenever stress happens, try not to act on it. What does acting on it mean? It means that we start moving around, trying to fix something, trying to find a way of going through the struggle. So we walk, run, go back and forth, do somethin – anything but staying still. We create an excessive amount of activity.
Instead, try to stay still. Sit down and feel your body. What is happening right now? Ask yourself this very important question: What do you I feel? Do you feel something in your body? Where do you feel it: in your neck? Head? Shoulders? Try to trace body sensations. Then, sit with whatever you are feeling now and go to the very end of this feeling. Feel the stress or tension in the body and embrace it to its fullest. Once you get to the end of it, it will go away by itself. Without any additional physical action.
Calm your mind
Another thing we do when we are stressed, we tend to run away. If something bad happened, or someone told us something unpleasant, we get upset in our mind and stressed ,and want to erase it immediately. We decide we want to go talk with a friend, or watch a movie, or drink alcohol, something to get away from this nasty emotion we have just received.
Instead, don’t run away. Embrace it and fully live through it. Living the emotion means to completely and entirely accepting it and going to the very end. If you are upset, sit down and be upset, as upset as you can. If you are mad, go be mad. Be as mad as you can, stay present with this madness. If we don’t let that emotion go out, it will literally block our energy channels – channels that cover our complete body and provide us with vital energy, Chi or Prana. If a channel is blocked, disease can happen. And we don’t want that. So let this emotion be as strong as possible, and it will go away on its own eventually.
Feel more
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for us, women, to feel as oppose to think. And yet again, this is another way of keeping your energy with you and not letting it slip through your fingers. Feeling everything is the best way for every woman to do anything – to live, to make decision, to choose paths. Whenever you need to understand something, shut off your brain and turn on your heart. If it helps, sit down and close your eyes. And pay close attention to what it is you are feeling right now. This is the best guidance of us women out there. Too much thinking takes our energy away all the time. And we all know how we can be exhausted from full day of thinking, even if we didn’t do anything physically. Because thinking, or mental energy, is still energy, and it still goes away if we overdo something.
These three things are simple as they are, but they are truly very powerful. Staying present and staying in our body are the ways to stay healthy and to live a more simple life. It is also a way to stay a true woman, who is in contact with her body, her sensations and feelings, essentially her intuition because it never lies.
Stay true to yourself, lovelies!
I only add that when you are living through the feeling of pain or stress, or other you need to remember there should be an end of it. Sometimes knowing how to switch to some other things, to some positive things in not the running but the way to look at different point.