Shaolin Chi Kung with Sifu Joan

The author was from Malaysia, and to be honest I had to look it up not really knowing where the country was. The next course was in January 2000, so I had three months to work out how to raise the money to get there. I first applied for acceptance on the course and luckily it was granted. There was a money back guarantee, which really helped me decide just in case and Malaysia was warm so it could be a holiday of sorts! One consultant I had attended told me that there was nothing that Western medicine could do for me as surgery was too risky and I could end up quadriplegic. Instead he advised that I live with the pain as best I could and go for sun holidays! Not a great plan when you are on disability benefit!

 How it all Began: Preparation

I had lots of ‘fear’ moments wondering if I was crazy, as did my family! I didn’t know the author and I knew very little about Malaysia except what I was reading online. It sounded like a very strict country from what I was reading, especially for women, so I spent hours upon hours checking out as much as I could. At the end of the day, I wasn’t worried so much about my safety as rightly or wrongly, if something did happen to me at least the pain would be gone. I was more worried about the culture and etiquette!  It sounds bizarre now but at the time that was the mind -set that I was in.

I was in constant pain so my mental clarity was pretty bad to say the least and I just wanted the pain and the limbo to end.

I applied for a loan to my local credit union and was accepted and to this day I am not sure how that went through as I was only on disability at the time. I then booked my flight and got the second last seat with Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong, it all sounded so exotic to me, which made me even more nervous but one thing that helped is Susan Jeffers book on Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway which I was reading at the time. I am always amazed how the right books have always fallen into my hands at the right time. Books are such a wonderful blessing.  Louise Hay’s You can Heal your Life was also a wonderful help at the time.

I mentioned that I didn’t practice anything from the book, Chi Kung for Health and Vitality, but I did reread it four times before going on the course and I read every one of the Questions and Answers on the author’s website. Luckily I only had a few years to catch up on as they started in 1997, now new people have 20 years to read over! The Q and A’s are a fantastic resource and full of information three times a month.

The Testimonials on the author’s website also really helped me. I think reading about somebody else who has overcome an incurable illness/pain gives us such tremendous hope and determination to succeed ourselves even if it is not the same problem. These problems had been deemed ‘incurable’ by Western medicine and it is often our own feelings of inadequacy, fear or ignorance that stops us from pursuing another way of healing. We do ourselves such an injustice by blindly following just one way or paradigm, when there is so much out there. We deserve so much more for ourselves.

I also knew from the website that the author was a Grandmaster but as I had never been involved in martial arts, I didn’t know what that really meant but I knew it was important. I digested every word of ‘Respect to the Master’ on the website as again I didn’t want to offend due to ignorance. This man was willing to help me, the least I could do was learn about being respectful to him in his culture and do it as best as I could.

to be continued!