“I organized the seminar and have only been practicing these arts for a few months. I can testify to remarkable improvements in my health and well-being.”

Oriental Healthcare Seminar
By Bhakta Zac

Inis Rath Island, Ireland: Devotees residing in and around Govindadwipa Dhama, Northern Ireland, were privileged to have the chance to attend a seminar on a synthesis of "Tai Chi Chuan" and "Chi Gung" on Saturday 14th October- Sunday 15th October held by Mahakrama dasa.

Mahakrama Prabhu has been training in martial arts for 27 years and has been focusing particularly on Tai Chi and Chi Gung for about 10 years. These 2 "Internal" martial arts forms are widely reputed to be very fast and efficient tools to increase one's health and general well being. Even the allopathic doctors in china are well known to prescribe these exercises for patients with varying afflictions such as cancer, bad backs, rheumatism, arthritis-with an exceedingly high recovery rate.

I organized the seminar and have only been practicing these arts for a few months. I can testify to remarkable improvements in my health and well-being.

I have always been interested in the harder, more martial applications to these arts but recently, I decided to again try to practice Chi Gung as my health took a turn for the worse last year. My energy levels were extremely low, my sense of balance was so bad that at one time I had to use a walking stick for support-I am only 29 years old!

So, everyday, I would do about 30 minutes of simple stretching and breathing exercises and after a week or so I started to feel definite signs of improvement. I carried on and then realized that I needed the personal guidance of a qualified teacher and Krishna arranged that Mahakrama prabhu came to the island to help out in the deity department. Realizing the great potency and importance of these systems, I was always going around telling the devotees about it and was faced with a lot of skepticism initially. However, when 12 devotees came to the seminars and felt the benefits, their faith in the internal arts increased and many are willing to adopt this as a regular healthcare practice.

It is my strong conviction that there is a serious lack of concern and awareness of health, we tend to think that "we are not this body anyway" and it doesn't matter if we consume large amounts of prasada into our bodies. This alongside lack of sleep, pushing the body to ridiculous limits as well as ignoring the emotional self has proved to be one of the main causes of the lack of effectiveness in devotees’ lives.

Many of our senior devotees are now seriously ill due to ignoring the body's needs and have to minimize their preaching activities and instead focus on getting more rest and trying to get back up to a standard of optimum health. This should have been done in the first place and from the feedback that I have been getting, this is the view of many other devotees. If we look after our health then we will feel more comfortable about ourselves and have greater confidence -what to speak of more energy for preaching and our personal sadhana.

I believe devotees are not looking after their health and later in life they will regret it. We have so many devotees suffering from all sorts of psychophysical ailments and they go around chanting half-heartedly, I have also noticed that I am a lot calmer and the focus of my japa has improved as a result of this.

There are many simple but very effective exercises in Tai Chi / Chi Gung which anyone can learn. The exercises are accompanied by breathing techniques and as long as one does this on a regular basis then I am convinced that they will be very grateful for having learnt these arts. I am personally prepared to put devotees in touch with qualified instructors who can hold seminars at their homes or temples, if this is not possible then I can give them information for classes etc.

Bhakta Zac can be contacted at zac.podilchuk@pamho.net

© CHAKRA 22-October-2000

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