Qigong for highly sensitive persons

Being a highly sensitive person comes with many challenges. Qigong for highly sensitive persons has helped me deal with these challenges and learn to treasure the gifts highly sensitive people bring into this world.

Parenting Highly Sensitive Children

My children spent their early years living and flourishing on a sailboat. Even two years after we had gotten our land legs back, I was often bemused by the knowledge, inspiration, and habits they had acquired at sea. For example, they still enjoyed collecting rainwater, even though we lived in a home with a tap dispensing this necessity. They filtered, siphoned, bottled, and sometimes just all out frolicked in that fresh gift from the sky. It was a great OUTSIDE game.  

After a memorable storm, when the stores were sold out of rain boots, the streams were flooded, and the gardens sang, my children’s buckets overflowed with glee. My six-year-old began intently carrying small containers of water from the rain-filled buckets at the back door, through the living room, and into the kitchen. I asked her to make that her last trip sloshing water through the house. Did I mention that water was an OUTDOOR activity? But she explained she was making rainwater tea for our house guests and continued.  

I watched her intensity as she walked back and forth with more water and began gingerly pouring it into the kettle. There was something about her focus and way of being that convinced me to let her continue. I’d seen that look before and felt that kind of intensity in my kids enough to know that I should sit back and wait.

When my husband came home, he arrived with the news that our regional officials had just issued a boil-water advisory. The turbidity of the watershed after the overdose of rain meant the health authority could no longer assure us that the water met safe drinking standards. As we sipped our tea from the safe water supply just trudged through my living room, I thought how the vast Universe still seemed to be gently carrying us along our path - just as the ocean had. 

Qifields and information

Yes, this could have been a coincidence. The many times I’d witnessed similar things with my children could have all been coincidences. But, as a Qigong teacher, I know important information resides in the Qifield around us. It was possible that my sensitive child had sensed the information about the boil-water advisory and had it all under control.

Ren Xue teaches that a Qifield is the invisible space around us that carries Qi and information. Sensing a Qifield is like walking into a room and just knowing that something doesn’t feel right. We can affect the Qifiled positively by adding positive information. With Qigong for highly sensitive persons we can learn to be more attuned to this information and feel the Qi within and around us. We can become sensitive to all of this in a healthy way without becoming overwhelmed by it. It just is.

Qigong for highly sensitive persons

Practicing and teaching Yuan Qigong has helped me with many child-rearing skills: patience to allow my children to be who they are; trust in them; trust in my ability to respond, wait, nurture, or intervene; and an ability to understand that there is always a bigger picture. I may not be able to see the whole picture, totality is not at my fingertips, but I am aware that there is often much more going on than I am capable of seeing. I have sensitive children who sometimes tune into those kinds of things. As my Qigong practice matured, I became more connected to these sensitivities.

The gift of being highly sensitive

Why does this matter? When I talk to adults who consider themselves highly sensitive, I hear a pattern in their responses. They never felt like they belonged. Their ideas were mocked. They felt misunderstood and sometimes bullied. They all wished they had someone who understood them as a child and that they hadn’t needed to hide parts of themselves. Most of them stopped allowing themselves to feel free. Many of them lost connections with their hearts and the ability to be more aware in the world. 

I’ve learned that their story was my story. It’s been a very long road back to understanding that I had these hidden parts of myself too – I had indeed been a sensitive child. I was lucky enough to have discovered Ren Xue and Yuan Qigong to help me reconnect to myself. Using the practice to develop a greater understanding of life, I was more able to allow my children to live in a softer, more open way.

My children are teenagers now. They no longer want to play Qi games with me. They are testing out who they are and how they want to be. The teen years bring new challenges as they feel the unsteadiness in the global Qifield around them. I continue cultivating peacefulness and awareness in my daily Qigong practice. I do my best to carry that gentleness into my day with them. What I hope stays with them as they continue to travel through life, is the foundation of having been seen, heard, and accepted. I hope that foundation leaves them capable of staying connected to their sensitive souls, their loving hearts, and their great capacity to see a wide and wonderful world. I think our world right now could use that. 

Are you or your children highly sensitive? Learn to connect with Qi and information to better understand and navigate life together. Qigong for highly sensitive persons is a wonderful practice to calm and strengthen your mind and nervous system.

We recommend trying Gathering and Nourishing Qi - the first 2 methods of Yuan Qigong