A Different Kind of Sickness
Reflections on Chi Kong: A Peacebuilding Self-Transformation Exercise
By Jan Perry B. Eugenio
I was preparing for my eight-hour travel in Cotabato City
The first day of the lecture was light. It started with a fifteen-minute Chi-kong which is a slow yet intense series of movements of the body. The short exercise loosened up my body. The lectures then proceeded. I learned that inner peace starts within one’s self. I have to unload myself from my emotional baggage and thereafter create space. Space creates inner peace.
Then, I started with the “processing” of my own self. It only required the awareness of my immediate environment and my physical body. I was made conscious of the air that enters my nostrils and exits through my mouth. I inhaled heavily, and exhaled all through out. It was quite an experience.
On the second day, I replicated the processing. This time I have to locate the pain inside my body. I thought it was my back. I had it at seven. It took me another fifteen minutes for deep breathing. The pain was down to four. But still, it was there.
The third day was significant. I processed my fear of heights. Again, deep and slow breathing. I tried to transfer the pain from my back to my arms. Then from my arms to my hands. The pain was now at three. I breathed heavily.
Eventually, the three day lecture was done. Yet, the pain was still there.
That afternoon, I traveled back to Cagayan de Oro via Sultan Naga Dimaporo. The travel was long as I sat on a fully air-conditioned Pajero. It was extremely cold for me. I arrived at around in the evening in Cagayan de Oro City. When I entered my room, I started to chill. The cold was unbearable.
That next day, I had a high fever. It was my first fever in two years and probably the worst. The pain was all over my back. I had no appetite for any food and neither could I stand for more than a minute. I slept the whole day.
Surprisingly, the next morning my fever was down. I had my appetite back. I was beginning to regain my energy. The pain on my back was gone. All gone. I felt good. I asked myself why I had that fever when I never got rained nor approached anyone who had fever. Then I realized I had my emotional baggage “processed” during the three day lecture. The social pressures, frozen emotions and push buttons were “felt” and were instinctively unleashed.
It was a different kind of sickness. One that I have never felt before. An ailment which I needed to experience in order to bring back my personal “self”. The pain on my back which I have been carrying for quite some time, several years, was mysteriously removed. My body was so light that I finally gained control over it. It felt light. Really light.
The stress, anxiety and strain were removed from my body. I was emptied. There was space inside me.
Finally, I felt inner peace.
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