Importance of rest in nei gong and life
My observations are, that we even can get to the state when forget how true rest and calmness is. It is weird as we can get used to hightened states of mind or stress level. And it becomes norm. Hype, quickness, impatience. Current digital world, machinery, everything more or less automatized dictate a higher speed of operation. There may be the chance we get drifted away so far from certain states of mind, it is more difficult to recall or even get what calmness is.
Nervous systems can – seemingly – stay in fight or flight mode for longer period of time and drain our reserves, resulting in a more alert, tiring state. But as it becomes normal to us, we get used to and never notice again the difference. It even affects the times we supposed to spend or call resting times. Ask ourselves what is resting for us.
In nei gong and qi gong perspective resting can be devided into, quality and quantity of sleep and daytime mental rest. The ability to switch of or dont get drawn forcefully into stress and pressure if not neccessary. As stress and pressure is neccessary in our life to grow and work, the questions how much, how long and why it is needed?
Practising more intricate aspects of nei gong is impossible without adequate rest in this sense. Furthermore the condition of body and mind plays huge role in it as well. This topic in itself usually comes up in courses, and is lengthy.
I rather narrow it down to something particular. When we neglect the need for proper rest, body and mind slowly build obstacles and eventually arrive to either sickness or accidents, I see them as very raw, dense frequency of information, almost the final destination. When blind and deaf to our own signal systems we only listen when sick or suffer sudden accident or turn. Either environment intervene or weird hard to explain kinda turns show up in our life.
So the ability to listen , strongly interlinked to how well we can rest our systems. If I manage to listen to more subtle signals , I will gain the chance to avoid stronger interventions, such as sicknesses, accidents or drama. Knowing when to stop and progress.
Basicly nei gong by its very nature brings the ability along in this beginning level to read signs, and lead our actions and resting accordingly. Only if we are ready, well rested, conditioned and practised, generally. Resting is bigger part of the practise as many things, and more important than fancy, marketing hyped magic words from spiritual and esoteic circles. But harder to sell. ,)
Tricky part when cannot see clearly and feel the power, to adjust effort imput and slow down, save energy for later times, adjust intensity accordingly. Another form of art to listen and learn to balance rest and activity.
Photo: was searching something matching this article but on my way got carried away and already collected a few photo for next topic.
