What Brought Me to Qigong

To understand what brought me to Qigong and its promise of creating health, I have to go back to August of last year, 2004.

At that time, I turned 65, got notice that I had to move out of a house that I'd rented for 14 years, and lost my contract job at a toy company. I had been working at the toy company for about a year and a half. During that time, I had helped create five or six toys that made it to the shelf.

The job was 1.5 hours of commute time in each direction, by car, train and bus. Counting meals, bathing, dressing, commuting and so on, days were 12 to 14 hours of movement and motion, work and focus. Until I stopped working in August, I didn't realize how tired I was, how stressed, anxious and depleted.

I had glimpses of problems while I was still working. I found myself unable to follow conversations completely, buzzing out while I was working on tasks, and not being able to vocalize what I was thinking, coherently.

When worked stopped, I started sleeping a lot. I slept virtually around the clock for weeks.

In the meantime, I got a 60-day notice that I would have to move. I began to sort through the 14-year accumulation of debris that filled the house and garage. I knew I was going to have to move into a much smaller space and would need to sell, dump or give away much of what I owned--or what owned me. I proceeded with random lethargy. I spent one month not doing much more than sorting and resorting piles of things.

But, I just realized that I skipped over some additional triggering events. I also got things out of sequence, out of time--a normal thing for me to do. I have to go back and read my journal entries for those times and sort out the story. I just took a quick peak through my 2004 notes and can see I was having problems as early as April.

So, I'll do some research on myself. I'll untangle the history and come back to describing what led me to start doing Qigong. I need to get my story straight so I'm clear about what's happened and can be clear about where I'm going.