A Lovely Solution

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

I have a lovely friend who has done qigong with me for years.  She is kind, positive, generous, funny and caring.  She inspires me every time I see her.  She practices qigong because she loves the community of women who gather each week.  They support each other, inspire each other and uplift each other when things get challenging.  Everyone benefits from a community of friends. 

She also practices qigong because she has been working at maintaining her inner mobility and strength.  We often talk in class about how there is mobility in every cell of the body and we want to maintain that as we age.  We want organs that can slide and glide with ease around each other.  We need mobility where muscles attach to bones.  We don’t want stiff, tight and sticky tissues that restrict movement.  We want mobility in all of our joints. 

The women who comes each week, who I will refer to as “Lovely,”  has been working with sore and tight and stiff hips for years.  There are causes and conditions for everything that is going on in the body, and in these practices we don’t focus on the why as much as we focus on the now and what is possible.  We work with kind awareness of whatever is going on in the body, mind or spirit.  We all have challenges whether it is tight hamstrings, a sad heart or anxiety about something going on in our lives.  We all have struggles and everything is welcome in the practice and is a part of it. We work with it all.  So Lovely has been coming to qigong for years with me.  Some weeks are harder than others.  Some weeks she is stiff and sore  and she can hardly move and others there is more ease.  She never complains and always does what she can.  

Last week she told me that she met with a doctor and is going to have a hip replacement this fall.  She is so excited about the prospect of the surgery and how it will influence her life.  The pain is tiring and restrictive.  When she met with her doctor the first thing he told her was to start spending time in a swimming pool to strengthen as much as possible before the surgery.  And so Lovely has been researching aqua size classes in the area and so far has not been able to find any.  If you are reading this article, and you teach it I would appreciate knowing so I could send Lovely your way.   I have known several people in the last year who have had hip and knee replacements.  I know several who are recovering from car accidents.  

We all want to live in a county where we can thrive, create, do good work, be inspired and recover and heal when get injured or have something like a hip replacement.  I know there are many demands on our tax dollars and all of the needs are important.  Our health and wellbeing is one of those needs.  We must all keep working to build a community where people want to come and raise their children, and we also need to take care of our seniors.  Everyone matters.