One of the principles of the Taoist Qigong exercises Six Healing Sounds and Inner Smile that we started in our Wednesday evening Qigong classes two weeks ago is that persons should accept responsibility for their own emotional state. Whatever the external event that triggers the emotional experience, you should experience the emotion, resolve it, let it go and return to a state of emotional calmness or equilibrium.

You may know people who seem to like outsourcing the responsibility for their emotional state.  They say,  “I can help it. It/he/she makes me so angry/sad/frustrated/worried/fearful/etc,” but the Taoists would say that you have a responsibility for the sake of your own health and the health of  those around you to eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, resolve those emotions.  We all should be aware that emotional overloads or negative emotions held for a long time are damaging to our health.

The Taoist exercises that we are now working on Wednesday evenings provide techniques for relieving emotional stress and for transforming negative emotions into positive virtues. Another technique for achieving such transformations is “Functional Meditation,” which I have mentioned in previous posts.