What is the worst thing that can happen if you just do your job? I guess that depends on the kind of job you have. If you are a firefighter, you can get burned, blown-up, hit by a car, or catch a disease from a patient. If you are soldier, you can get into all sorts of trouble during war time. If you are a cop, you can get shot. What about if you work behind a desk?

Transformation Through Qigong (TTQ) is the program I developed to help people move more, more safely. In the United States alone, the number of people who spend more than four hours a day sitting at a desk (even if they are sitting "correctly") is staggering. And the harm this sedentary lifestyle causes those workers is well documented. The worst part is that many of those people already have pre-existing conditions that make their circumstances even more dire. Getting people out of their desk chair and moving while at work (even while working) is key to keeping people awake, focused, motivated, healthy, at work and alive.

Desk workers spend too much time sitting behind their desks (Biswas A, et. al.). In order to minimize that danger, it is necessary to move intentionally and more often throughout the day. “Physical activity is anything that gets your body moving. According to the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition, adults need to do two types of physical activity each week to improve their health–aerobic activity and muscle strengthening. (www.cdc.gov)” People who spend more than four hours a day doing desk or computer works (Buckley JP, Hedge A, Yates T, et al)

Transformation Through Qigong (TTQ) offers techniques/solutions for desk workers. Many jobs require people to spend unhealthy amounts of time sitting at a desk. TTQ will: Educate desk workers about the consequences of sitting at the desks too much, and Encourage and motivate desk workers to get up and move on a regular basis.

People who spend long periods of time (more than half an hour at a time) staring at a screen need to be informed about the dangers of eye fatigue (hopkinsmedicine.org). TTQ will teach the 20-20-20 rule: The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends the 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, shift the eyes to look at an object at least 20 feet away, for at least 20 seconds.

TTQ will teach desk workers about the benefits of standing at their desk (Creasy SA, et. al.), and how employers might enable them to do so: Stand at desk as much as possible: phone calls, reading, watching media, et. c. Prepare work space to be conducive to standing (i.e. Figure 1).

Figure 1 (standing desk accessory: monitors not included)

TTQ will teach desk workers exercises that can help reduce the dangerous effects of desk work:
-Bouncing every 30 minutes for about one minute
-Shaking every 30 minutes for at least one minute
-Counter-swings every 30 minutes for at least one minute
-Band heating every 30 minutes for at least one minute
-Standing meditation every 30 minutes for at least one minute,
-and for even greater health benefits, walk more (Smith-McLallen, et. al.).

TTQ is a set of exercises that promote mobility, circulation, strength and balance. Regular exercises scattered throughout the day is more effective then clumping it together, for example, going to the gym (van der Ploeg HP, et. al.). “Prolonged sitting is a risk factor for all-cause mortality, independent of physical activity. Public health programs should focus on reducing sitting time in addition to increasing physical activity levels (ibid.)”

TTQ techniques can be done in sequence or spread out throughout the day. The Level I program is 30 minutes long and broken into six chunks. TTQ Level I focuses primarily on the psychomotor aspect of the program. If applied to a typical 8 hour work day, learners can fit the exercises into six, 5 minute sessions, spread equitably throughout the day (i.e. for an 8-5 job: 9am, 10am, 11am, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm). Over the course of a week, this would provide the CDC’s minimum recommended daily exercises time (op. cit.).

During this time of COVID-19 it is particularly important to consider all major contributors to immune health.

The Stomach, Intestines and Colon are considered Yang Organs in traditional Chinese medicine. They are also an important part of the body's immune system. In order to optimize the immune system, it is necessary to consider gut health.

Eating sufficient amounts of fiber including fruits and vegetables as well as minimizing the intake of sugars and simple carbohydrates keeps the bacteria in the gut's microbiome happy and healthy enhancing the immune system.

A regular practice of "Swaying Taoist 5 Yang Organ Exercise" as shown on the Media Page of this website will also optimize gut and Yang organ health by stimulating the physical organs in your body in a gentle rhythmic way and activating the Yang organ meridians.

The time of the Full Moon is a time of strong Yang energy at night. It is a time to take action and do things that otherwise may be overwhelming. From the Taoist perspective, it is a time when one's creative energy is peaking for the month and creative processes should be engaged in and fulfilled.

I hope the time of this full moon tonight (June 5, 2020) finds you in a creative space and with you creative juices flowing.

Qigong practice is know to help reduce stress, enhance the immune system and increase circulation, balance and strength. I encourage everyone to continue to practice whatever form of qigong or yoga or other gentle, repetitive exercise routine they know on a daily basis. The only reason not to exercises or do qigong is if you are actually very sick. It is important to rest and drink warm liquids and not overly exert yourself. According to ancient Taoist teachings, however, it is best not to practice arts like taichi or qigong when you are sick to minimize the circulation of the disease.

Please feel free to follow along with the exercises in the media page of this website (markangelhealingarts.com). All are good ways to optimize your health and can be done as much or as little as you like depending on how you feel.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have regarding the practice of Taoist healing arts.

   In order to accomplish deep transformational change, it is important to have a deep and honest understanding of the inside of ourselves: the physical/physiological inside of us; the emotional and psychological energetic part of us; and the spiritual part of us. If we don’t go deep inside it is very difficult to identify the root of the issues that we are facing that we would like to change. We can think of it like a computer program. Unless we know the coding of what makes us who we currently are then we can’t change the programing that manifests in our body, behavior and attitudes.
   Often we are distracted by the superficial experiences of physical appearance and sensations, emotional upsets and charges, psychological expectations, preconceived ideas and constructs that do not serve us, and of spiritual stagnation and limitations we have adopted throughout our lives. As your Sifu in "Transformation Through Qigong: Intentional Wellness and Life Optimization Planning (TTQ)" I may be able to briefly shine a flashlight into the dark places in your body, mind and life in general to give you a glimpse of the areas in you that perhaps remain hidden from your conscious view. These areas that may need attention and even transformation. But until the lights go on inside you and you can see them for your self without outside help, the shadows will remain stuck inside you.

   Whenever one is challenged by something in life, the challenge process itself is creating new neurological pathways and relationships in the brain and shifting the thought patterns. That process of challenging one's habitual inertia is a large part of what manifests transformation of any kind in a person. If one doesn't have to struggle at least a little, then whatever you are being exposed to or whatever you are doing is already in close alignment with your preconceived ideas and/or abilities, therefore little transformation will take place. It is this challenge to your habitual inertia and comfort zone, and one's struggle to overcome that challenge that creates new pathways and relationships in your brain that help the mind change.
   So, in this context, struggle is different from suffering. Suffering is an attitude. Struggle is the effort one puts into overcoming a challenge to ones comfort zone. Surrender your suffering in the face of a challenge, and embrace whatever sort of effort you must apply to transform life into a more joyous experience no matter what external circumstances are challenging you.
   When the challenge is physical as with sport, qigong or yoga, etc., this creation of new pathways that occurs while you struggle to learn new moves, coordination and balance works on the movement centers of your brain. The new pathways in your brain build a new relationship with your body that maybe in the past you haven’t had. That is part of the growth process. You can deny that growth and give up on the struggle, or push through the challenge and benefit from the change. You must trust the process in order to embrace it.
   What can I do in teaching TTQ is to help you trust that what I am teaching is worthy of your embrace? The exercises I teach were developed long ago by people who devoted their lives to the struggle and measured the outcomes to prove that they work, and used those exercises and activities to effectively improve health, attitude and longevity.

   Some of us are shocked when life tosses us a curve. Some of us just don’t like surprises. I know that when my wife comes home from work with a bright idea about maybe going out for dinner, and I have planned to have dinner at home, the disruption in my expectations can lead to a little emotional upset. Instead of allowing that upset to derail my peace and order, I can try to look at her idea as an opportunity to share in her joy; and shift gears inside my brain to embrace her idea.
   How can the practice of Qi Gong and Tai Chi help us to accomplish this sudden shift in direction when met with an unexpected situation in life? How can the exercises we practice like the “Taoist 5 Organ Exercises” make a real and lasting difference in how we experience our time on this planet? I submit that one example of that lies in the Heart Exercises. As we learn the Taoist 5 set, we learn to associate certain colors, movements, emotions and concepts with each exercise. This helps us develop our relationship with our body, and integrate into that relationship our mind in the form of labeling emotions and mental constructs to fit with each organ system.
   When we do this with the heart we associate the emotions of excitement and un-met expectations with the heart so that we can cultivate peace and order to balance those emotions in order to avoid overwhelming disappointment (what traditional Chinese medicine calls a stagnant state of the heart energy). Conversely, the heart also relates to upsets with shock when we are faced with something we do not expect. How do we balance the idea of unmet expectations with shock, seeming opposites in the spectrum of balance for the heart energy?
   What if we learned to maintain a sense of peace and order in our hearts, as a balance point. And what if we go ahead and look forward to see what may be coming at us, but without too much inertia of excitement or dread, just with peace and order. This practice may allow us to meet our expected outcomes with a sense of acceptance and joy, but if things don’t turn out the way we expect, we are not overly disappointed. We meet the moment with acceptance, but maybe a little less joy then we had “expected.”
   In contrast, when a something happens to us out of the blue, so to speak, we can meet it with surprise instead of shock. So, that gives us some joy that may otherwise have been “unexpected.”
   Finding a way of navigating life’s ups and downs without becoming swamped in emotional upsets is one of the goals of Taoist practices. It is the reason for developing all these mental constructs for our emotions and relating them to movements and more steady mental states. Those are the ideas that go along with each organ system like “peace and order” go along with the heart.
   So meeting an unexpected situation with a little surprise, seeing it as an unexpected opportunity—or meeting an expected situation with a little less disappointment if it doesn’t go just like planned, are both examples of using the Taoist 5 constructs as a platform for making life a little more peaceful and hopefully a little more joyful. Both are examples of attitude adjustments instead upsets.