Well, Stefano and I are leaving tomorrow (early afternoon) for Northumberland. Ooooh, I am sooooo excited!!! Puffins, here we come!  No Internet until we get back, probably. That will be hard!

Last night Peekaboo entertained us with a series of qigong moves of her own invention. I thought I would share some of the photos I took (when will I learn to take a video with my digital camera???).

First though, a couple of words on the meaning of qigong (which I practice, by the way). 

From Wikipedia:

Qigong (or ch’i kung) refers to a wide variety of traditional “cultivation” practices that involve movement and/or regulated breathing designed to be therapeutic. Qigong is practiced for health maintenance purposes, as a therapeutic intervention, as a medical profession, a spiritual path and/or component of Chinese martial arts.

The ‘qi’ in ‘qigong’ means breath or gas in Chinese, and, by extension, ‘life force’, ‘energy’ or even ‘cosmic breath’. ‘Gong’ means work applied to a discipline or the resultant level of skill, so ‘qigong’ is thus ‘breath work’ or ‘energy work’.

The first (above, left) depicts her meditation pose. Before doing any qigong exercises, she indictates, it is important to relax and meditate for a little while. 

So do some deep abdominal breathing exercises and push the negative energy downwards and away from your body, as she demonstrates with her paws in photo number one.

Then shift slowly to one side, then to the other (see photo number two, above, right) in order to relax your paws…or arms…thereby increasing your life force.

Photo number three (above, left) gives a demonstration of just how far to the side you can go with this particular qigong exercise. By the way, I would not recommend it to those who suffer from sore backs… 

Photo number four (on the right) is Peekaboo’s final move, which provides instant relaxation: 

stand on the tip of your toes, pull your paws/arms up, focus on an invisible adversary, whatever that may be (an evil cancer stem cell, perchance?) and…POUNCE!!!