As we age, or become “less young” as a friend of mine likes to put it, many of us become more focused on doing what we can to have as much time here on this planet as possible. We may question whether that in itself is a worthy goal, and I may throw out my thoughts about that in a future post, but for now let’s accept that we all do want to live as long life as we can.

Interestingly, Master Liu said that the Chinese character for a longevity has both “long” and “short” in the charter, meaning life should be long and death should be short. So many people in our society suffer many years before passing away, and that is not the path any of us would choose. So it really is not just a question of how long we live, but those years that we live we want to be fruitful and happy.

So how do we live more fully for the time we are here? For me, qigong is a brilliant answer because it supports and enhances health without expense or negative side-effects. Qigong is immensely practical for taking care of the body we were gifted. There is so much more to qigong than taking care of the physical body, but we do start there because without energy and vitality, we are not able to accomplish more lofty aspirations.