HIT BY AN EMPTY BOAT

Good Friday to You!

Technically, I’m taking the day off today.

Many times I’ve come to work to write my blog on Friday morning and somehow I’ve been caught in a black hole, but so far I’m not letting any darkness pull on me so soon I’ll be home doing art and working in my rock garden.

I had a lovely circuit workout of pulling exercises yesterday and managed to get a couple tai-chi sessions in with the sun.

One of the most valuable things we can do for ourselves is create sacred time in our daily schedule so we can live our own core values.

I’m grateful that my career in health care has given me the awareness of what happens to people and their lives when they make time for everything they think they “have to do” and lose time for the activities they need to do to stay healthy and vital.

Because of the number of people I interact with on a daily basis, I find that if I don’t stick to my core values and meet my individual needs, people and relationships become challenging, and I have a harder time being empathetic and compassionate.

When I take time to love and care for myself, it’s much easier to be present with others and help them meet their needs.

JADE JOHNSON IN THE LONDON METRO NEWS PAPER!

Jade Johnson, renowned British Long Jumper was recently featured in the London Metro newspaper.

Jade is doing an amazing job of preparing herself for the upcoming Olympic Games in London and now the media is starting to show interest in her come-back.

Jade’s tough, disciplined and got spirit!

Jade has faced some real challenges along the way in her journey and the odds have been stacked against her.

This will be her third time competing at the Olympic games and when you look at the challenges she’s had to work through, I’m proud of the progress she’s made since I met her Spring of 2011.

Though the article gives me a lot of credit for helping restore her health and performance, the truth is that CHEK Practitioner Warren Williams has done most of the work.

I’ve worked with Warren and Jade to help make technical adjustments to her training program and have worked privately with her to heal the emotional and mental pains she’s experienced on her path.

In a recent blog on www.jadedragonreturns.com, Jade shares some of her amazingly beautiful mandalas. I love seeing people’s healing expressed in their art.

Jade and Warren share many beautiful insights into their process on their combined and individual blogs, which you can see at Jade’s blog site.

I’m grateful that I’m able to participate with her Olympic return and I’m very proud of the work Warren and Jade are doing together.

Jade and Warren have done a lot to establish the value of the CHEK approach to health and performance and I’m very grateful for their sharing their experiences together.

HIT BY AN EMPTY BOAT

In The Second Book Of The Tao, by Stephen Mitchel, he shares a Taoist teaching about being hit by an empty boat.

Mitchel explains that if you are out fishing and an empty boat bangs into you, you are unlikely to get upset; there is no one there to be upset with so you push the boat away and go about your business.

That said, if we were out fishing and someone ran into us, chances are good emotions would flare and things could get wordy.

This Taoist teaching is simple and relevant.

The underlying message here is that most people are acting unconsciously or out of their shadow as they go around banging into boats (people).

If we take a moment to realize that getting upset when people unconsciously bang into us isn’t really ever very helpful (and doesn’t even seem to reduce the incidence of such events) because they are like empty boats, it helps us stay focused on what we want.

Usually, the damage escalates as we express our frustration with such people, and as we get wound up over such events, we end up experiencing the pain and stress of it all within ourselves.

The Taoist way is to give a person the benefit of acceptance for the fact that at that moment, they were unconscious and to the best of our ability, just get back to building our dreams without the fuss.

If you get banged into by someone this weekend, before getting upset, just ask yourself, “Is this person all there?”

If you honestly suspect they are not, then reacting politely and redirecting them may be a nice way to bring them into the present moment. I

f we get angry, we are likely to excite shadow behavior in them, and that anger may well be an expression of our own shadow.

I realize this approach can be challenging at times, but at the end of the day, all we have is each other and the world needs us to become harmonious.

It is time for us to return to our true nature. When we are in our true nature, we are loving and respectful of nature and see nature in everyone.

Hard as that may be, try it and see if you can stay centered in nature.

Enjoy your weekend!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek