Time to breathe

Last week I spent Thursday to Sunday just filling up with energy at Qigongcamp by the sea in Pietarsaari. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to sleep in a tent, next year I'll give it some more thought...didn't sleep much during the first night due to hard wind and threatening clouds and just a general "hype" after the first afternoon of training. It did rain at some point, but the little piece of plastic I had attached to the tent helped, but I was a bit cold. The next two nights I slept well - but the nights were short, we had our first training session at seven in the morning and I didn't get to relax until around midnight.

But it was really lovely - most of the people I knew from before and due to the meditative training, everyone are relaxed and happy (well, maybe the others are like that all the time, the training makes me relaxed and happy :). The food was vegetarian and there were a few lectures about mindfulness and how to handle stress. Nothing new really, but really wonderful to have time to think about my life and what I could do to make it less stressful. One direct change has been our meals - I'm really trying to make them into a calm event. Everyone at the table, no tv, even I try to sit down and not run around doing a lot of other things. I've also tried to involve D - and was surprised to find out he already knew how to set the table (well, the cutlery :) - they had learnt that in daycare!

I've tried to begin the mornings with meditation and a qigongseries we learnt, but D has again a period of restless sleeping, so I've just slept as late as possible. But my aim is to get up a bit earlier and get a good start...

One good sign was also that I really didn't feel like taking any photos at all, just focus on how I felt and the training! The ones I have are from the first night, and then I took a few at the farewell party on Saturday night. I'll let the photos speak for themselves - I hope you can feel the calmness and "qi" through them. It really was magical!