Living Well April 23, 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

By Teresa Griswold

A Month of wellness
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-It may be considered the slow season in Jackson, but there’s much to do about town to keep your soul soaring and body in motion, reminding us that as the snow melts new activities emerge along with the fresh, muddy earth.

World Tai Chi and Qigong Day
In April, all eyes are on the planet with Earth Day yesterday, uniting a critical mass of global citizens in building a clean environment and a healthy and diverse world for future generations.

Following Earth Day is World Tai Chi and Qigong Day. The day sets out to create a healing wave of calm around our planet, utilizing the healing benefits of the ancient arts and painting a vision of possibility for humanity.

World Tai Chi and Qigong Day brings together people worldwide to celebrate health and healing. Many people who have experienced the stress management benefits of ancient tools like Qigong realize the gifts they offer and want to share that awareness with society at large.

Qigong represents the balancing of energy with simple, flowing movements that are carried out very slowly and accurately. In a sense, you give yourself a kind of acupuncture treatment or inner massage to open up your energy paths. Symptoms that are the result of an unbalanced distribution of energy in the body begin to disappear.
Jacksonites are invited to be a part of World Tai Chi and Qigong Day as it moves across the globe. Join with acupuncturist Marcia Male in a global Qigong class from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday at the Old Wilson Schoolhouse Community Center on Main Street across from Owen Bircher Park in Wilson, Wyo. A $5 donation for the community center is requested.

Annual springtime event
Late April leaves one more week to enjoy this area’s annual spring ritual  - hiking, biking and inline skating in Grand Teton Park - without contending with cars.
The Teton Park Road is open from Taggart Lake parking area to Signal Mountain. The car-free road is a great opportunity for families to get outside without a lot of planning. As an alternative, the Moose-Wilson Road has also been plowed and opened for non-motorized use.

Leashed dogs are permitted on the Teton Park, Antelope Flats and Moose-Wilson roads, as well as on other park roadways, but are strictly confined to surfaced roads and turnouts. They are not permitted beyond 50 feet from roadbeds or in the park’s backcountry.

As a reminder, entrance stations are operating and collecting fees. Visitors are advised to be alert for snowplows and park vehicles that may be on the road.
Both the Teton Park and Moose-Wilson roads will open to motor vehicle traffic on May 1.

Poetry: songs for the mind and soul
April marks National Poetry Month, perhaps a more literary topic than a wellness one. However, for me, poetry is the universal expression that invokes the voice of my soul. With its measured words and rhythm, poetry taps out a calming chant. It is an elixir that soothes the soul, expresses hope and love, and brightens the mind.

The National Poetry Month poster features the following lines from Jay Wright’s poem, which, in a sense, expresses that all of life, when someone is connected and growing, is a poem: “I carried my life, like a stone, in a ragged pocket, but I had a true weaving song, a sly way with rhythm, a healing tone.”

The Academy of American Poets offers daily suggestions to incorporate poetry into your life. These two suggestions are akin to experts’ recommendations to improve upon mind and soul.

Improve your memory by memorizing a poem: “Getting a poem or prose passage truly ‘by heart’ implies getting it by mind and memory and understanding and delight.”
Deepen your spiritual practice by bringing a poem to your place of worship: “We define poetry as the unofficial view of being, and bringing the art of language in contact with your spiritual practices can deepen both.”

Photo by Marcia Male
Lee Holden, an internationally recognized Qigong instructor, in meditative movement.

PERMALINK:
Living Well April 23, 2008 | Planet JH News Article: Living Well

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