On my walk today

Hello all,

I had an experience I thought I’d share . . .

Over the past couple of days I’ve been doing a lot
of teaching (math). My students had an extra class
last evening, and today was a two-hour class.
Needless to say, it’s been a bit of an overload–for
both me and my students–luckily it’s only a phenomenon
of this particular week, but I digress.

At any rate, today was fine for the first hour and a
half of the two-hour class, but as I was in the final
half hour, I was starting to feel the overload of the
past couple days–not to mention that I was feeling a
little subtle pressure because I was a little behind
schedule due to some unexpected questions being asked
in class–so I also felt some pressure to “rush” to
finish the scheduled material.

So because of this, and the onset of feeling overloaded,
during the last half hour of class, the area between
my shoulder blades got really tense and the area in
my neck along my spine also. I felt a big headache, and
some blurred vision. Basically, my body was saying
“OK, you’ve had enough”.

At any rate–after class–the pain, headache, tension,
crappy feeling continued through my lunch. I
decided to go for a walk. Now this, in and by itself,
is nothing unusual. I try to go for a nice long
brisk walk everyday–usually between an hour to an
hour and a half of continual walking. I do this
to supplement my day, and consider it part of
my qigong and meditation routine. It helps ground
me and get me out of my head from all the academic
stuff, and just all around makes me feel better in
my body when I do it on a continual basis.

So, anyway, I go on my walk. My head still pounding,
vision blurry, neck and shoulder blades near the spine
cramped . . . As I walk, I do what I normally do
during my walking, which is to breathe deeply and
try to feel really embodied . . . I allow my awareness
to drop down, and I also pay attention to the feeling
of my feet and heels and the feeling of them striking the
ground.

I got about 30 to 40 minutes into the walk, and all of
a sudden I felt something akin to a stopper in a filled
sink being removed. And in this instant–a sudden
release–I felt a huge mass of energy rush down my
back. It rushed down my back, down the back of my legs
(I could felt it very strongly passing down the backs
of my knees like a gushing river), down the backs of my
legs, through my heels and down into the earth.

All the tension, pain, etc. I had, ALL OF IT, gone in an
instant. Just a feeling of pure relief and bliss remained.

I smiled. I realized that by walking I developed yet another
understanding of the word “grounding”. Literally, like
a lightning rod, I channeled or “grounded” the excess
blocked-up energy into the earth.

That’s it.
Sorry if anyone expected a more “dramatic” end to the
story. No sudden instantaneous connections to the Wuji,
I can’t report. But I thought I’d share it anyway, since
not many people have reported any “practice” experiences
recently, and my daily walking I consider part of my
daily qigong routine.

Smiles to all,
Steven