Why QFN?

This blog charts the progress of a recovering neurotic —me —and describes how Qigong is transforming my life.

At first I thought I needed to chronicle how and why I've been plagued by anxiety, fear, anger, depression, self-loathing, inertia etc. for most of my life. But who'd want to read a self-indulgent whinge disguised as a blog? Surely, reading about someone's healing journey toward self acceptance and empowerment would be more interesting. And if I write honestly, all those inner struggles will emerge within the posts anyhow.

I grew up in the 1950s and 60s and "neuroses" sounded like an appropriate moniker for my various problems. When my Qigong teacher and I came up with the title in June 2009, we were discussing how my writing a book about the ways Qigong has changed my life could help other people too. Qigong for Nerotics had a catchy ring like the XXXXXX for Dummies series. Back then, merely contemplating writing a book filled me with so much fear, anxiety, lack of confidence, etc. that I spent the next 10 months assiduously avoiding the issue.

Since starting in March 2009, so far I've done four one-month stints of private training with a Qigong master in Chiang Mai. We work together 3-4 hours/day, 6 days/week. (I may be neurotic but I'm also extremely diligent.) Thanks to this amazing teacher and our intense schedule, I've been releasing many of the neurosis I knew about and others I didn't know existed. Nowadays I feel like a butterfly emerging from a 62 year-old chrysalis and while writing a book remains too daunting, a blog project seems definitely doable.

As part of my healing process, I'm not writing this to please anyone except myself and thus shouldn't care if anyone reads it or not. Nonetheless, as a published writer from 1993 to 2008, I depended on the judgment and approval of editors. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be happy if someone stumbled upon this blog and was in some measure helped by reading it.

To protect everyone's anonymity on the blog I'll refer to friends by their first names or sometimes by their initials. As for my teacher, let's call him Sifu H. In Chinese, Sifu means teacher or master, especially in the martial arts field. In moments of epic struggle when we're working together and I'm sobbing as yet another layer of a mental, physical or emotional problem starts peeling away, I privately refer to him as Snafu. Of course I'd never say that to his face because Sifu H has given me the greatest gift any teacher can possibly give: the tools to understand, love and heal myself.