Qigong with Cris Caivano: May 12 - 18, 2025
You Are Here
I love to explore new places. Yesterday I finally visited the impressive FDR homestead, not far from where I live. It’s a surprisingly vast property, and luckily for a first-time visitor, well peppered with maps illustrating the layout of its many gardens, buildings, and pathways. Of course, the first thing you do with a map when you are disoriented is locate those lovely words “You are here.” After all, not until you know where you are can you determine how to get to where you want to go. Obvious, right? But we often forget to take the time to do this when exploring energy work such as Qigong.
Understanding your state of mind/body/spirit in the present moment is a fundamental requirement for changing or shaping our energy. Ram Dass wrote about it in 1971 in his seminal work Be Here Now. I first began to grasp its importance 40 years ago when a neighbor loaned me Pema Chodron’s wonderful book Start Where You Are. Now, as a Qigong teacher, I appreciate how elusive this seemingly obvious and simple task can be.
Our minds LOVE to jump away from the present! The brain is hard-wired to escape to the future, or retreat to the familiar past. It’s a real challenge to slow down enough to savor the present, the “Now, now, now!” as Pema described it in one of her Buddhist stories. But the present is where energy is. It’s the only place, in fact. The rest---the future, the past, even the near future, the recent past---resides solely in our imagination.
Be encouraged: this skill of anchoring the boat of our consciousness in the present moment gets easier with practice. Just as our muscles learn with repetition, so does our mind develop an elastic quality of returning to the bountiful, abundant present. This is what my lineage of Qigong teachers calls “Excavating the treasures within.” You can only know what to look for and where to find it, once you understand where you are.
Schedule Notes:
May Schedule for live, in-person/ Zoom Qigong at Millbrook Library: Fridays May 16, and 30, 10 AM. Open to all, and beginner friendly. Please contact millbrooklibrary.org to register and receive the link if you are joining on Zoom. Once you register, you will receive biweekly email reminders for future classes.
Save the date: Gathering Energy from Trees, Kripalu. July 20-23. I would love for you to join me and my colleagues John and Mary Platt for four rejuvenating, relaxing days in the beautiful Berkshires. Learning, meditating, practicing Qigong, sharing experiences, and hanging out together in such a gorgeous setting is a true Qi tonic!