Reblogged from Neijia Tao:

Reblogged from Pig Squash Press:

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I did a radical thing this morning. I deactivated my Facebook account.

I joined Facebook several years ago (in 2008 or 2009—who can remember?). And in that time, I have accumulated lots of Facebook friends—more than 1,300.

Facebook has been useful to me professionally for promoting my books and readings, selling books, getting invited to literary festivals and other paid gigs, and for connecting me with the global community of poets and writers.

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I will be returning to beautiful Galiano Island this weekend where I have once again been invited to offer my “Kung Fu for Writers” Workshop at the Galiano Literary Festival.

In this workshop, I combine certain Liuhebafa movements with Qigong and Creative Writing exercises to awaken the body and stimulate the mind, enabling people to tap into their raw creative energies. This is the fourth year I have been invited to come and offer this popular workshop at the Galiano Lit Fest.

Discover what happens to your creative powers when Angry Horse Turns Head Around or Green Dragon Stretches Claws!

Liuhebafa is a 1,000-year-old martial art from China. The 66 flowing movements of this ancient practice are purported to be a recipe for internal alchemy and even immortality.

Tap into your hidden creative powers. Explore your spontaneous writing abilities (“first thought, best thought,” in the tradition of the Beat poets) that are alive to the moment unfolding around you and within you.

Join me in this exciting journey into mind-body connection! No prior background in martial arts is necessary.

This workshop is part of the 3-day Galiano Literary Festival, which runs from February 22-24, 2013. You can register for just the Kung Fu For Writers workshop ($20), or take in other festival activities too.

For the full festival schedule visit: http://galianoliteraryfestival.com/programme-3/

Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in 

–Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

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Perfection. We all want it. We strive for it in our practice, our training, our execution of applications and forms. The perfectly calm mind, the perfectly weighted archer’s stance in T’ai Chi, the perfectly timed transmission of fajing in push hands. But are we missing the larger point in this quest to be seamless and error-free? Are we failing to “grok” the true nature of perfection (to borrow Robert Heinlein’s fabulous word from Stranger in a Strange Land)?

Compare the Leonard Cohen verse above to the following poem (a tanka) written one thousand years earlier by Izumi Shikibu, one of Japan’s foremost women poets during Japan’s classical period, and translated here by Jane Hirshfield:

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Perhaps these two selections are telling us that true perfection lies not in the flawless, hermetically sealed structure, but in the fractured one. For it is through the cracks that moonlight (a common Buddhist symbol of enlightenment) may enter. It is the cracks that hold the potential for personal growth and insight, for illumination. We learn nothing by being invincible at push hands. We learn everything by being knocked over. Our weaknesses, our so-called “imperfections” (as well as life’s hardships and heartaches), are in fact the grain of sand in the oyster that will become the pearl. Or that offers the possibility of a pearl.

What an awesome bunch in my Kung Fu for Poets workshop today at the Nanaimo Museum! We rocked the joint working on Liuhebafa moves #1 Stop Cart & Ask Directions, #6 Replace Star with North Star, and #31 Monkey Picks Fruit.

I matched each move thematically to a passage from T.S. Eliot’s famous suite of poems,  Four Quartets. And then we let nature (or should I say poetry) take its course with the personal poetic expression that flowed from our pens after we had physically embodied the abstract themes of time, the ‘still point’, and exploration – themes that are common to both Liuhebafa and Eliot’s Four Quartets, as shown below.

#1. Stop Cart and Ask Directions:

and:

#6. Replace Star with North Star:

#31. Monkey Picks Fruit

My Kung Fu for Poets workshop was part of the month-long celebration of Eliot mounted by the Crimson Coast Dance Society as a lead-up to Deborah Dunn’s dance performance “4 Quartets” happening on May 19.

World Tai Chi & Qigong Day has been celebrated annually around the world on the last Saturday in April since 1999. The idea is for people everywhere to make their way to a public park at 10:00 am (local time) to do their Tai Chi or Qigong – either alone or with a class – so that a Tai Chi wave will sweep the planet over a 24-hour period.

Here in Nanaimo, 17 people turned out for my free lesson in Healing Sounds Qigong this morning at Maffeo Sutton Park. We visited all five organs (heart, spleen, lungs, kidneys, liver) with sound and visualization, and then concluded with the San Jiao (Triple Burner) to unify the energies we had awakened.

My next Healing Sounds Qigong course begins on Wednesday, May 9, in a wooded location in central Nanaimo. The class will run for 6 consecutive Wednesday mornings from 10-11 am. We will work on a different organ each week. And, as with all of my Pen & Dragon courses, guided creative writing exercises are also part of the package.

$95 for 6 weeks (or just $75 if you pay before May 1).

To register: email goldberg@ncf.ca or phone 250-741-8577

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Supercharge your body and your creative powers in this extraordinary six-week course using Healing Sounds Qigong and related writing exercises amidst the majesty of forest, river, and sky. Register before May 1 to get the early bird price of $75.

(Try a free sample of Healing Sounds Qigong this Saturday, April 28, at 10:00 am at Maffeo Sutton Park, where I am offering a free lesson for World Tai Chi & Qigong Day.)

Journey through the five principal organs of your body (heart, spleen, lungs, kidneys, liver) using sound and visualization as you focus on the properties specific to each organ. After awakening each organ’s life force energy, you will have an opportunity to transmute those energies to creative output through guided writing exercises tailor-made for each organ. (Selected movements from Liuhebafa will also be introduced to enhance the bodywork experience.)

Healing Sounds Qigong is based on Five Element Theory, which is the underpinning of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This is powerful energy work that can potentially be life altering. Read some testimonials from previous students here.

We will work outdoors in a forested riverside location that embodies the particular qualities of each organ. For example, the liver’s element is wood, its colour is green, its virtue is kindness, and its deficiency manifests as anger or envy. So a grove of cedar trees is a gigantic matrix of liver energy. We are literally standing in the planet’s liver while working on our own. And the river in the outer world corresponds to the river of energy coursing through our own bodies.

If it rains, we will work under trees. Dress warmly. You may want to bring something to sit on while you write – a mat, towel or campstool.

Experience this revitalizing fusion of mind, body, and spirit as you discover the vastness of your creative powers. You need not be an experienced writer. Anyone can benefit from this course. (“First thought, best thought,” in the tradition of the Beat poets.)

Pre-registration is required. Mail or drop off cheque (payable to “Kim Goldberg) to:

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Be sure to include your phone number and email address so I can contact you with details about location.

You are welcome to contact me with any questions. Email: goldberg@ncf.ca or phone: 250-741-8577.

This course is part of my Pen & Dragon series. I offer my Pen & Dragon courses at Vancouver Island School of Writing (Victoria College of Art) and elsewhere. I have been studying Qigong and the related Taoist internal martial arts of T’ai Chi and Liuhebafa for 15 years. I am the author of Ride Backwards on Dragon and other books.

DATE:

Please join me down at the park on April 28 for World Tai Chi & Qigong Day. I will be offering a free lesson and information session on Healing Sounds Qigong. I will be leading people through the five principal organs of the body and their associated sounds, elements, virtues, and other properties.

Drop by and pick up a brochure on my upcoming Pen & Dragon courses and workshops starting in May. I’ll even have homemade cookies for you. And it’s all free! So how can you go wrong with that?

I’ll be set up at one of the picnic tables near the Lion’s Pavilion in Maffeo Sutton Park (located on the waterfront in downtown Nanaimo). Stop by to say “hi” and have a cookie. You are welcome to participate in the Qigong lesson or just visit and soak up some sun.

Qigong (pronounced “chee-gung”) literally means: “life energy cultivation”. Its roots in ancient Chinese culture date back more than 4,000 years. Qigong is an important component of Traditional Chinese Medicine where it is used to prevent and correct many health problems. In practice, it is a system of slow, fluid movements combined with focused awareness and specific visualizations to guide your Qi (“intrinsic life energy”) through your body.

World Tai Chi & Qigong Day is held on the last Saturday in April and has been celebrated annually around the world since 1999. In towns and cities across the planet, people show up in public parks at 10:00 am (local time) to do their Tai Chi or Qigong, and to offer it freely to others. The result is a Tai Chi wave sweeping the planet for a 24-hour period.

You can catch the wave right here in Nanaimo!

DATE:

4 Quartets by T.S. Eliot + 4 Liuhebafa moves by Chen Po (Tang Dynasty) + 4 poetry-writing opportunities by me = Crazy!

If you are anywhere near Nanaimo on May 12, please join me for this energizing fusion of martial arts and poetry-writing inspired by T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

The underlying themes of Eliot’s Four Quartets are: time, the universe, the divine, and our human relationship to them.

In this two-hour workshop, you will have a chance to learn and practice 4 of the 66 moves from the ancient Chinese martial art of Liuhebafa. (The complete 66-move sequence of Liuhebafa, once decoded, is purported to be a recipe for Taoist internal alchemy and even immortality.) The 4 moves chosen for this workshop each embody the themes of Eliot’s now-famous poem.

In learning these 4 movements and their encoded meanings, you will be exploring these themes physically with your body. The bodywork on each move is then followed by guided poetry-writing exercises that are linked to the same themes for the ultimate mind-body experience.

No prior background in martial arts or poetry is necessary. “First thought, best thought,” in the tradition of the Beat poets. Find out what happens to your creative powers when Rhinoceros Gazes at Moon or Phoenix Spreads Wings. You have never had a workshop like this one!

I have designed this special workshop as part of the Crimson Coast Dance Society’s celebration of Deborah Dunn’s “4 Quartets” dance performance, which will occur the following weekend on May 19.

REGISTRATION:

Mail cheques (payable to Kim Goldberg) to:

Kim Goldberg / 35 Prideaux Street / Nanaimo, BC V9R 2M3

Questions? email: goldberg@ncf.ca , or phone: 250-741-8577.

Kung Fu for Poets is part of my Pen & Dragon series of courses and workshops.

It may look like I’m leading a prayer circle. But in fact, I was sharing some Healing Sounds Qigong with participants at the Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle on the weekend, as part of my presentation on eco-poetry. (Thanks to Barbara Erwine for this great photo.)

In Healing Sounds Qigong we learn that the landscape of the private body mirrors the landscape of the planetary body:

So when you are standing in a grove of cedar trees, for example, you are standing in the planet’s liver.  When you are standing beside a river or ocean, you are standing in the planet’s kidney.

I have been conducting an experiment lately with my poetry. Namely, can an ancient therapeutic strategy designed to treat the human body (Healing Sounds Qigong) be adapted in some way to treat the planetary body? Can ecologically-themed poems, grouped under the five organs/elements of the human body, become the Healing Sounds for the planet?

I have no idea how this experiment will turn out or where it will lead me. But it feels like the path to be walking.

A small sampling of my poems from this project can be found in the recently released chapbook anthology of Eco-Poetry, Igniting the Green Fuse.

Kim Goldberg