Picture by Spacebom

At the end of last year,  I suggested that people forgive. Forgive others and forgive themselves. And if you know you did wrong or someone else did wrong, forget the blame and emotional energy, let go and just don’t repeat it.

For this Chinese New Year we are at a time when it really pays to look over a long period of time and start changing what we all do so that things can work out much better for the long haul.

The Year of the Water Dragon is a special type of energy that only occurs every 60 years. It interesting that this falls during 2012, the supposed end of the world or the dawning of a new global spiritual awakening depending on whom you talk to. I want to give you a few perspectives on the Year of the Water Dragon that you may find interesting.

The Water Element

The water aspect of this year brings ease and good luck to practicing everything within all Taoist water method practices. When we say water practices we are not talking about jumping in a pool or the ocean. Water tradition practices in Taoism are specifically about allowing things to happen naturally and without effort. They are more about letting go to see what is already there. The opposite to this is the fire method which is about force and pushing yourself to the edge.

In our times of increasing stress and pressure, distractions, information overload and rapid change, the Water Tradition methods are the cure. So this is a year that will naturally support these types of gentle yet powerful practices. Keep this in mind this year – if something is not flowing or you are using force ask yourself, “How can I approach this differently to make it easy or just let it go?”

Right now everywhere paralysis is taking over. More than ever find ways to take small actions, rather than just living in a dark mental soup that is the status quo for many. Think a bit less and act a bit more. You can analyze problems forever but analysis is not a solution it is only the beginning of a solution.

When you begin with small things within your power and do it, you’ll find that as the year grows and the decade grows you’ll find that you will be able to do more and more positive things. Part of this is to engage in meditation in whatever way you can so you can simply let go of what is stopping your creative potential.

Small things add up. They can change the world, especially when done collectively.

Likewise in this, in all Chinese astrological water years, the best time to enhance your creativity in personal practice is between 7 am to 9 am. If you can find the time and space in the morning this would be the best time to do your tai chi, qigong or meditation practice. If you can practice Taoist outer dissolving, as I teach in Energy Gates Qigong, this is an especially useful practice this year.

The Celestial Dragon 

So we have talked about water now lets combine that with the energy of the Dragon. Ancient China’s celestial dragon represented the Emperor in power, strength, and good fortune.  It is the ultimate auspicious symbol of success, wealth accumulation, and happiness. The dragon is known as bringing great luck to everyone but only if they applied focused effort as you would do in a personal practice.  You might ask yourself what personal practice you will put in place and what conditions will you setup for yourself so that it is inevitable that you will achieve your goals this year.

Powerful and unpredictable, you can trust the dragon’s intuitive nature that is of fearless, forward looking, great at analyzing situations and then taking action. If we remember the qualities of water you’ll want to remind yourself to move forward not through force, but by constantly watching the flow and adjusting accordingly.

When you do this, you have an opportunity to make 2012 an awesome time for creating more abundant inner knowledge and understanding in many areas of life.  This time can both be transformational for world events on a macro perspective and an important tipping point for the life of the individual, through an increase in perception.

There are lots of positive energies for growth at work.  Water dragon has enough courage to both face challenges and easily find and overcome weak points.  Water calms the dragon sufficiently so he can project his energy positively, direct it sensibly, rather than recklessly and foolishly.

Dragon years are connected to new beginnings, starting a business and finding happiness and good fortune. What do you want to start this year? What one or two things can you focus on that once achieved could change your destiny? What one practice would you train and master if you knew that you could not fail?

Aligning to Your Flow

This year is also an exceptional time to resolve old issues. Make a list of any unfinished or unresolved issues and then take action to bring them to completion. I recommend starting with the easy things first. Owe someone $50 then pay it. Need to clean out a room then do it. Caught up in a crazy relationship, then end it. Once you do this you will create space for the new. Then you can focus on building a strong, new inner foundation.

The first part of this dragon year appear to be relatively uneventful.  Best to use this time to prepare for the Spring, when the dragon influence will grow in you and you will be able to move forward with ease and grace. The early months are also an ideal time to become aware of your inner weak points then decide what actions you can take to move through them.  For if you do, in the future it will greatly show you how to be resourceful and adaptable when faced with difficult external or internal challenges.

Actions begun earlier in the year will grow into fruition the second half, with a steady flow of additions, corrections, and positive developments. I wish you the best for this year and hope to see you along the way.

Gong Hei Fat Choi,

Bruce Frantzis

P.S. As many of you know we teach a powerful qigong set called Dragon and Tiger Qigong and our launching our online course soon. The Dragon and Tiger Online Course is a 10-week training program with our highly qualified Senior Instructor Bill Ryan teaching you the seven movements in seventy days. You can watch a short intro video about it by clicking here: Benefits of Dragon and Tiger Qigong

Year of the Metal Rabbit – Photo by Zanthia

The Metal Rabbit in 2011

Happy Chinese New Year of the Metal Rabbit. Last year was the year of the Metal Tiger, and it was a very rough time for many. The Metal Tiger year is known to bring problems, wild swings and much excitement. This previous year also brought things to the surface personally and collectively so that you had to deal with them.

World events that have built up and come to fruition during the Metal Tiger year of 2010-2011, for example the current protests in Egypt and surrounding areas, will be influenced by the peace-loving and harmonious influence of the Metal Rabbit in 2011-2012.

The Rabbit together with the Metal element equals harmony. This year harmony will be pursued, and everything will be made very smooth and even. Some might find this year very boring, but sometimes that is the nature of harmony, it lacks excitement.

The wonderful Tai Chi Master William Chen of New York has been known to say that instead of getting excited, what you need to do is allow yourself to relax.

Guided by Creativity

Besides harmony, creativity will be the biggest single influence of this year.

Artists and spiritual people will find themselves greatly inspired, and creativity will simply move forward. This is a good time to trust the creativity coming out of you, whether you are trying to write a song, paint a picture or come up with grand organizational ideas for businesses.

This year the creativity inside you will be a true guide rather than play you false.

The areas of education and the environment will be emphasized and should definitely reach a level of high importance this year.

Interpersonal Peace

In your own personal life, this is a time to end wars between people. This is a good time to let go of any sort of interpersonal warfare or conflict.

It is useful to remember that deep harmony, strong harmony can develop into deep love. In the year of the Metal Tiger, many things occurred which could have ripped relationships apart, either relationships that could’ve happened, ones that were happening, or ones that were in a flux point.

During the year of the Metal Rabbit, if you seek to develop harmony with all those with whom you have had various kinds of relationships, a level of love can emerge. This ultimately leads to the relaxation of your being, which is one of the true gifts of living on this earth.

This is a year for making very good, long-term friendships and relationships, and not a time to be overly antagonistic or pushy.

The Courageous Rabbit

Rabbits generally avoid conflict. However, the Metal Rabbit has a particular quality of strength and courage and is known for being able to hold its ground.

This will be a good time to carry through and finish any projects you have started in the last year.

It’s very important to stay out of the murky waters of indecision during the Metal Rabbit year. It is better to simply decide one way or the other and then abide by it.

Very important for everyone during a Metal Rabbit year, and especially for anyone who is a Metal Rabbit, is to always keep your word. Once committed, you should make a point of honoring your promises. Avoid making a promise unless you have the necessary information and you know that you can pull it off.

The big problem all Rabbits have in this sort of year is a tendency to become semi-depressed. This happens as they take on large projects or simply work toward a greater harmony, but when things don’t go as planned this can result in a fatal loss of confidence.

In 2011 this may be the one time in the cycle of Rabbits where they can take on projects that seem larger than what they could usually handle. If they do fail for any reason, then its important for them to simply deflect or let go of the pain of the so-called failure.

Remember the key to this year is harmony, trusting yourself, keeping your word, moving forward and getting things done.

Have a great year,

Bruce

Artist Photo of Soft Gamma Repeater (SGR) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

The word Tao has many meanings. First, there is the Tao of doing anything, which is the same as the ideal way of doing something. You must travel on a particular path in order to wind up where that path leads. Going a little deeper, the word Tao considers the question: What connects everything and yet has no specific quality of its own? That’s the center of the I Ching. It has no quality and yet everything is connected to it, everything comes out of it, everything flows through it.

The word Ziran embodies a very important concept in Taoism and has a number of large meanings. If we go from the deepest to the most superficial meaning, it essentially has the same meaning as Tao. The Chinese actually call it Tao Ziran, which means “the great natural.”

Ziran means naturalness. In one sense, it is about the natural way of the Universe, so you could also refer to this natural way as the Tao. Very often Taoists do not use the term Tao and instead use Ziran, albeit making the translation Chinese texts even more difficult.

The next level of Ziran embodies a major Taoist premise that balance is a possibility. Once you become reasonably balanced the ability to tap into the ultimate source from which all the balance derives, whether regarded as Emptiness or the Tao, also becomes a possibility. So the implication of Ziran is the ultimate goal of behaving, acting and thinking naturally in both your internal practices and your external behaviors in order to arrive at Emptiness, which Taoists refer to as the Body of the Tao.

Ziran is very important in terms of the energetics of the body—yin and yang must become balanced on ever-more refined levels. The only way that balance can be maintained is if yin and yang are configured to flow freely inside of you as well as in the natural environment. Once you lose naturalness, the Taoists say you will go off into the mind of man. You get stuck on what you are thinking about. The human mind can create billions of thoughts that do not lead to any resolution or balance. The Taoists believe anything that is unnatural is ultimately unsustainable.

When practicing tai chi or qigong (chi gung), all movement should be natural. Nothing in the human body is linear. Even your bones are slightly curved because the gravity field creates a rounding effect. Thus all movements, including the way chi moves in the body, should have the quality of circularity and spiraling. This is the natural way of working with the force affecting everything on this planet. From the Taoist perspective, you do that which requires the least amount of energy and strain to be consistent with natural forces.

You can look at any small aspect of human life and consider what may be natural about it. Maybe it is no longer natural when you subsequently connect it with larger aspects of the fabric of life. For something to be ultimately natural, it must not be in conflict with anything else. It must somehow flow smoothly both in temporary and long-term circumstances.

For example, human beings often abuse and even kill other human beings. It is natural for animals to engage in these behaviors too. So, the question then arises: Is the natural state of a human being to be an animal or to move somewhere beyond animal instincts? As long as we remain purely animalistic, there is no way in which we will ever be completely in sync or in rhythm with the entire Universe because polarization to one very tiny, specific quality takes place and conflict emerges.

As you go through the eight energy bodies of human beings, you may find that what is natural to one energy body may not necessarily be completely natural to another. Eventually you must find the ways in which the higher bodies can be integrated so that each is in harmony with all others. In Taoism there is tremendous emphasis on individuality.

Buddhists say there are 84,000 passes of the Buddha. This means that there are 84,000 different ways human beings can practice.The Taoists had a similar phrase long before Buddha was born: There are 36 million passes of the Tao.

Thus it’s true that some things are relatively natural to all beings and some things are more natural to one individual. However, this is not necessarily true at each stage of our evolutionary development because what is natural at one stage may not be natural at the next. There is relative and absolute understanding, but the Tao is the absolute. Until you consider the trillions of connections of all and everything, you are working on a purely relative basis. This is where the Taoists differ from most other traditions that have very clear rules about how to act. Taoists focus more on arriving at a natural state.

Eventually you want to have synchronicity between chi and virtuous action. However, having more chi or more virtue will not create balance if the subparts that lie between them are not in harmony with one another. Many people keep on repeating the same negative habits.

On an evolutionary scale, we need to work out the glitches that cause conflict until we find the natural connection, an integration point for our existence. How do you find it in yourself? How do you end up there? Recognizing where you’re at and being ticked off about it is not enough. Once a natural connection emerges, you realize that there is no “I should” or “I shouldn’t.”

There is only the question of integration. What is it that gives you more of a sense of being whole?

Bruce

Sumatran Tiger Photo by Brimac the 2nd

We are now getting ready to enter the Year of the Tiger and there are several things that I think are helpful for you as an update.  The first one is that we are nearing the end of winter, so within a month from now, during the winter period of time, the most valuable thing you can do is to rest so you have energy for the rest of the year.

This is so your system will regenerate, much like you leave a field fallow in the winter so in the spring it can grow again.  Now that we’ve finished the bulk of the winter and we have less than a month left before the next phase starts, you want to start just like a person who has been very, very sleepy and is waking up, very slowly.

You want your body to continue to rest, but you want to slowly start waking it up so that, when the spring time comes, rather than it being a sudden jolt like a jolt of adrenaline, you gradually slide into the activity of spring.  This is again a basic Chinese thought, a basic Taoist thought.

Along with that, we’ve also just had the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Tiger, and there are several things about this related to this time of the year.  The first one is that one of the things the tiger is known for in China, besides being an extremely powerful animal is being very directly tied to your whole muscular skeletal system. This includes everything to do with your muscles and your ligaments, etc. Tigers are also known for their bones, which are extremely heavy.

Now, referencing tiger bones is used as a metaphor by tai chi masters. For example when someone hits you and if you really have tiger bones, then that means basically the person’s arm is going to bounce off you.  If they hit you with their hand, their hand is probably going to hurt, but you’re not.

It’s the last month of the winter and you’ve just entered the Year of the Tiger. Because of this deep inside your bones and deep inside your bone marrow the energy is focused on sinking your chi. This is so it not only sinks through the tissues of your body but it literally starts sinking first into your bone matrix, the actual bone, and eventually into the marrow itself.

You would focus on the sinking of the chi with any practice you choose, for example standing Qigong or Tai Chi.  this is very useful especially with standing postures because standing is a very good practice to do in the winter . They not only give you the rest you need but also help you have the transition between the rest period and the spring when your energy is going to start turning on like a light bulb.

During this period of time, during this next month, really focus on sinking your chi and see if you can get the feeling of your chi going beyond just the sense of your flesh and your blood but actually giving you some kind of sensation in your actual bones themselves.

This would be an excellent thing to do with this final phase of the winter. We’ll re-look at the subject of the tiger when we come to the actual springtime.