World Tai Chi & Qigong Day 2004
By Bill Douglas

            

Six years ago 200 people quietly assembled on the lawn of the Nelson Atkins Art Museum near Kansas City’s scenic Plaza district. They had no idea their gathering would spread across the world educating millions about the health benefits of Tai Chi and Qigong. They were only doing something they knew was benefiting their lives, and that simple act changed the world.

This event eventually gained world attention in The New York Times, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, Russia’s Omsk Daily News, CNN, Fox News, and media worldwide influencing millions with a healing image and message.

Around the world hundreds of millions of people have the potential of changing the world, simply by finding what heals themselves, their communities, and the world. Humanity is at a critical juncture. The Chinese character for “crisis” is made of two other characters, one is “danger,” and the other is “opportunity.” We must decide whether the environmental, geopolitical, and poverty crisis in the world will provide humanity a catalyst to awaken to a better way, or lock us into a downward spiral.

The ancient Chinese health techniques of Tai Chi & Qigong provide practitioners with a highly evolved technology that can enable the practitioner to loosen mentally, emotionally, and physically to adapt and evolve into wholly new ways of living. Our entire planet desperately needs this ability. The old ways are simply not working. More weapons are not making us safer. As the world pours endless resources into armaments, the drain of resources feeds growing poverty and desperation that breeds a very unstable world. It does not have to be this way.

The famous “yin yang” symbol with the white and black wave offers us insight into how to heal our world. In a real yin yang symbol, the white dot in the black wave, and the white dot in the black wave, actually have within them another yin yang symbol, and the dots in those have another yin yang symbol, and on and on into infinity. This symbolizes that within each cell of our body is held the health or non-health of the entire body. The illness within the body holds the health or ill-health of the community, and that of the state, nation, and planet.

By each of us learning to loosen our grip on our bodies, we enable our hearts and minds to loosen, to open, and expand to larger more healing ways of living. This being done all over the world creates an opening for a new world that can evolve into a way of living which can heal us, our environment and our world.

When we tighten up ourselves, tension grows, while we veinly begin to seek peace from outside ourselves. This leads to compulsive consumption, chronic desperate fear, and obsessive behavior that can lead to irrational limited solutions to our problems exacerbating societal and environmental problems. We need more and more while finding less and less inner peace. Conversely, by loosening up we can allow the simple solutions to lilt into our minds and world.

On Saturday, April 24th, 2004, nearly 1,000 events will be held in over 60 nations. Tens of thousands of people worldwide will quietly assemble in parks and city squares to loosen their minds, bodies, and hearts, by playing Tai Chi & Qigong together.

A simple act that heals the mind, heart, and body. The world may see in this simple act a powerful symbol of what could be. Humans playing together for no other reason than . . . to heal.

Bill Douglas is the Founder of World T’ai Chi & Qigong Day,  author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to T’ai Chi & Qigong,” presenter in “Anthology of T’ai Chi & Qigong: The Prescription for the Future,” and Tai Chi Expert at www.DrWeil.com  For more information, please visit www.worldtaichiday.org

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