The Dragon's Head Blog: Exploring the feeling inside – in person
We embarked on a seven day journey of discovery, exploring working from the inside with the feeling. We were encouraged and reminded to enjoy the move, and that it was not about the external form.
With just a few of the instructions delivered in a gentle way that helped us to let go of the form and worry less.
In the dan-yu we were helped to make the movement much quieter. This resulted in many feeling the effects more deeply, connecting the turning of the hands to the feeling inside.
The feeling and learning gained was then applied to a number of moves, including brush knee, cloud hands, ward off monkey, and part wild horses mane. As the retreat progressed we were able to relax and let go more, feel the movements more deeply, gaining a little more understanding of the internals.
The frequent requests to articulate and reflect on “how do you feel?” and the willingness of participants to share were an important part of this process of working deeper.
We were fortunate enough to join the chanting and discussion zoom session on Saturday afternoon. This was a very natural thing to do and perfectly complemented the retreat content. In fact the whole retreat felt like a natural extension of the Saturday zoom sessions we have been able to share over the last couple of years, including personal storys of how the sessions helped us reduce the worry in our lives.
It was wonderful to meet in person once again and have the opportunity to explore the Taoist arts together, through the practice, sharing and volunteering. All participants engaged in the tasks supporting the retreat activities, and a number of full time volunteers gave their time to support the event, allowing us to engage and experience this caring aspect of the training.
We all felt that we gained a deeper understanding of Mr Moy’s teachings.