108 X 3

Yesterday I hit 324 days of continuous practice. This semester, it's been tough making just the bare minimum, but I managed it. So that's 3 cycles of 108 days, or 9 of 36 days. For the next 36 days, starting today, I'm going to work in 10 minutes of qigong as well. If I pick a specific qigong, I know that I'll find reasons to avoid it, say I don't have time, etc, but if I leave it open to any qigong that strikes my fancy that day, then I think I can manage it.

So my practice consists of (1) breathing exercises; (2) chanting; (3) a brief yoga routine; (4) a round of the Cheng Man Ch'ing form; (5) ten minutes of qigong. When I have time, I'd like to work in 10 minutes of empty-mind meditation as well. If I pick a relatively stationary qigong (e.g. standing meditation), I can combine those, but I'm not to the point where I could combine them for a moving qigong. And I'll be 5 days short of a year at the conclusion of this 36-day cycle. My current über-goal is now 1008 days of continuous practice, which is 28 36-day cycles. So I'm actually more than a third of the way there. ^/^

I'll be the first to admit that the numbers are artificial, and in a certain sense meaningless, but they serve as motivation for me. See, if I skip even ONE DAY, I have to restart the count at zero. That's the rule. If I break the rule, then, in effect, I will be lying to myself. There have been times when bedtime rolled around, and I groaned to realize I hadn't practiced yet; lacking my counting system, I would have skipped over it on those days. I like knowing that I've kept up my practice for almost a year now without skipping any days, and I hope to keep it up for many cycles to come.