Good morning, folks! I am Jin with Morning Mindfulness Podcast. I hope you are doing great in your corner of the World!

My listeners and my students ask me various questions, and some of them, most frequent ones, I will answer in my Podcast.

Today’s question is: “Are you still doing Yoga?”
It depends. If you’re referring to fitness on the yoga mat, the answer is No. Let me elaborate.

Why did I stop practicing Yoga?

I started practicing Hatha Yoga in 1983, and had been teaching since 1986 until about 2008. The number one reason I stopped was time limitation. In 1980s and early 90s I could practice one hour of Yoga and four hours of martial arts every day. But I don’t have this luxury at this time. Since the foundation of my practice has always been martial arts, I chose to take that Path.

I think Yoga is a great system. It helps to develop body, mind and Spirit. However, Martial Arts do exactly the same thing, but with additional benefit of learning self defense. That’s why I chose it. Qigong is a foundation of martial art practice. It can be used for physical conditioning, just like Yoga, but also for fighting and for spiritual development. Don’t forget, the energy flow and meridians are the basis for Chinese Medicine. For me, practicing Qigong and Tao Yin, which was a precursor of Qigong, is like combining martial arts, yoga, kundalini, reiki, tantric and even medical practices in one nice package.

My points for today are:
1. I can do anything, but I cannot do everything. I have to make a choice, and not just in training, by the way.
2. Get the maximum return on investment. Yoga is great, no doubt, but with Taoist practices I can get 5-6 applications of one system. So I don’t have to learn several ones. But that is just me, that is my Path.

So, back to the question. Did I stop practicing Yoga? I don’t practice or teach specific asana sequences. But I do practice Qigong and Tao Yin, which is referred to as Taoist Yoga. Basically same stuff. Hope this makes sense.

Thanks for tuning in! And thanks for the question! You can ask them or subscribe to my podcast on my site HPLN.org.
Now let’s breathe and smile. I will talk to you next time.

PEACE!
Jin

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