Mindfulness practice: For health of a whole being.

Most of us will agree that stress plays an important role in onset of diseases as well as in worsening of diseases.  Too often, however, Western medicine’s approach to cure mainly focuses on understanding and treatment of diseases at the physical domain only.  Although this approach led to many discoveries of effective medicines, it also made patients passive consumers of those medicines.  In contrast, traditional Eastern medicine sees diseases as products of an unbalanced and stagnant energy system.  Because of the flow of energy is largely influenced by one’s mind, this approach assigns active roles to patients in healing process.

 The degree of which each of us believes which approach is better may varies.  However, our experience and intuition suggest we must take a greater responsibility for our own health.  If a disease is like a fire, modern medicines may offer options to put off that fire effectively if we are lucky.  However, what we supposed to do to prevent that fire from happening in the first place, or what we need to do to rebuild ourselves after the fire is under control depend largely on how we live our lives physically and emotionally.  In other words, true health and true healing requires involvement of our whole being, our body and mind.

 Mindfulness practice is to teach us to be aware of our inner being and to focus as we engage in our lives.  Just like we need to make sure the hand of a scale to be at zero before we measure the weight of any object, to see what is happening in our lives clearly, we must know how to unclutter our mind and watch it from our zero point.  When the noises from outside and our inside chatters quieted, a grounded and clear perspective will emerge from within.  

One way to create the zero point within is to focus on “here and now”.  What is here is our physical body.  What is now is the breath that we are taking.  Therefore the simplest way to be here and now is to focus on our physical body as we also focus on our breath.  If we can do this in a sitting position, it becomes the most common method for meditation.  However, it is also possible to move our body as we focus on our breath.  Any movement can be used for this purpose, but if we move our body in a way that stimulates our energy system simultaneously focusing on our breath, it becomes a therapeutic movement and a moving meditation all at the same time.  Moving and stimulating our bodies as we focusing on breathing, it is an integral part of healing process in Eastern medicine.  Since it resets our system at the zero point, it also serves as an effective method to calm our mind and body.  Movement, breathing, and Taichi classes offered at HongIk ECO Farm are based on the same energy principles and methods.  It is our wish to help our community member to maintain and to restore the health of their body and mind through these powerful practices.