ICM  Institute for Chinese Medicine, acupuncture basel, chinese medicine basel,tui na Basel, tcm basel
D E F  
  • Acupuncture
    • Acupuncture
  • TCM
    • History
    • Methods of Treatment
    • Diagnostics
  • Treatment Modalities
    • Acupuncture
    • Auricular Acupuncture
    • Electroacupuncture
    • Chinese Herbal Medicine
    • Tui Na /An Mo Massage
    • Moxibustion
    • Cupping
    • Physical therapy
    • Qi Gong
    • Tai Ji Quan
    • Gua Sha
    • Chinese Nutritional Therapy
    • Wai Qi Liao Fa
  • Team
    • Elaine Yap
    • Ava Markwalder
    • Gabi Rahm
    • Frank Hediger
    • Noriko Matsumoto-Loosli
    • Olivier Schmidlin
    • Edmundo Belloni
  • ICM Treatment Information
    • Treatment Rooms
    • Treatment at ICM
    • Treatment Costs
    • Treatment Procedure
    • Documents
    • FAQ
  • Health Insurance Coverage
    • Health Insurance Coverage
    • FAQ
  • Contact
  • DEUTSCH
  • Blog
    • FRANÇAIS

Life: It's the Journey, not the Destination

26/1/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture

​Maybe this sounds familiar to you. You are sitting at an airport, waiting for your flight with a whole bunch of other passengers. You have already been through commuting to the airport from home, got your heavy luggage and yourself checked-in, went through airport security and got scanned by the metal-detector as well as body-checked by a friendly airport security member. Now, you just want to board the plane and get to wherever you want to get to - nice warm beach, be with family or friends. So you are already imagining your destination. But wait, did you stop to think about this process you are now in of getting to your destination?     
 
Most of us don't. We just seem to want to get where we want to go and forget the way in which we get there, as it may be uncomfortable, strenuous and long, not really worthy of our attention or we just want to skip it altogether, if we could. Because we imagine that the destination is more important than the journey. However, this is not the case, as you may have read in the title of this blogpost. You might think it is that cliché in those stories or songs and no one really believes it. Of course, often in our society we often focus on goals and destinations, but spend little time on the process of getting there. Take the popular sports we have, like tennis and football, where the player/team plays horribly or unfairly, but end up anyway winning in score. Thus, winning the match. Did they really truly win? Is winning the game more important than being human, by helping your fellow human being get off the ground when s/he fell or by informing the umpire that s/he called a ball out when it was in, even if it was not in their own favour? I observe that in our society, we are often not trained to be aware of the journey. We get graded on a test in school, but not often given feedback or encouragement on how we got to that grade. We allow professional athletes to misbehave or even disregard their own health, as long as they score and win. But we don't reward them for their honesty and empathy that they show  by giving them an extra point.    
 
My opinion is that the journey is very important. It is this process that we undertake and experience, which brings us to a state or a place that is the destination. If we skip this process, would we be able to be fully prepared to be at the destination and for what awaits us there? Take that example of the airport and plane ride, we may just simply skip it, if we could "disapparate," a magical means of travel where the individual disappears and reappears in her/his newly intended space, as J.K. Rowling writes in her Harry Potter books. But even in her books, the process of disapparating requires diligent study and practice, or else the consequences are devastatingly painful. If we just got to our destination without the process of travelling, would we value being at our destination as much? Maybe the time and the effort that we take to get there creates/invokes the feeling of appreciation within us of being at our destination. Maybe, a bit of exertion is needed for us to realize that the destination is special and is significant for us to even be there.
 
The journey teaches us to be in the present, to feel and be conscious of that particular moment of NOW. If we stay in this present moment, we become the moment and we are aware of who we are and what we are experiencing. When my kids play a tennis match, I remind them that the score is only one aspect of the game. I encourage them to find "excellence of self," (some wise words we learned from the movie Kung Fu Panda: The Secret of the Furious Five). This is to find their best in their physical and emotional self, fairness and respect of their opponent, as well as playing the best technique in tennis they can. Each match is always different, determined by the physical circumstances of the day, the tennis court conditions, their emotional as well as mental state at that very moment and every aspect related to their opponent of that match.
 
Next time I am sitting at the airport waiting to board my plane, I will remind myself that my journey is now. I look forward to arrive but I can be open to the now, that maybe the person sitting beside me has something interesting to share with me or I with them. I may perceive myself as being in a tight space on my seat, but my inner self can create more space whether within or around me, simply by changing my perspective of the situation. This time of travelling to my destination gives me time to reflect but also to observe my environment. It is after all quite a wonder to be up high in the sky, flying among the clouds.    
 

​Image by David Mark from Pixabay

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Elaine Yap

    I am a Chinese Medicine practitioner at ICM, mother of 2 sons, living on my third continent. I love to share with you my perspectives on healing, TCM, gardening, social change and life.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019

    Categories

    All
    5 Elements
    5 Pillars Of Chinese Medicine
    5-pointed-star
    Abdomen
    Acupuncture
    Acupuncture Channels
    Acupuncture Points
    Adapting
    Addiction
    Adventure
    Ancestors
    An Mo Massage
    Apple
    Ask
    Asking
    Assumptions
    Autumn
    Awareness
    Baby
    Back
    Bacteria
    Balance
    Ballet
    Barefoot
    Being Thankful
    Belief
    Birth
    Blessing
    Body And Mind
    Bokashi
    Bonding
    Breath
    Breathing
    Buddhism
    Bulbs
    Camellia Sinensis
    Celtic Shamanism
    Centre
    Change
    Children
    China
    Chinese Calligraphy
    Chinese Dietetics
    Chinese Herbal Medicine
    Chinese Materia Medica
    Chinese Medicine
    Chinese New Year
    Chinese Nutrition
    Choice
    Christmas
    Circle
    Common Sense
    Competition
    Complementary
    Complementary Medicine
    Congee
    Connecting
    Conscious Living
    Consciousness
    Container
    Cooling Foods
    Core
    Courage
    Crocus
    C-tactile Afferent
    Daffodils
    Dan Tian
    Dao De Jing
    Daoism
    Death
    Destination
    Diagnosis
    Digestion
    Digestive
    Digital Media
    Dim Sum
    Ears
    Earth
    Earthing
    Eating
    Echinacea
    Empower
    Emptiness
    Epigenetics
    Essence
    Everyday
    Evolution
    Excellence Of Self
    Experience
    Eyes
    Fascia
    Fasting
    Father
    Fear
    Feet
    Fire
    Fish
    Flexibility
    Flower
    Food
    Food As Medicine
    Fruit
    Gardening
    Genetics
    Gong Fu
    Gong Fu Cha
    Gratefulness
    Gratitude
    Green Tea
    Greeting
    Grounding
    Growth
    Hands
    Handstand
    Hangover Cure
    Hay Fever
    Headstand
    Healing
    Heart
    Heaven
    Herbal Decoction
    Herbal Formula
    Herbal Infusion
    Herbal Medicine
    Heroes
    Honouring
    Human
    Humility
    ICM Garden
    ICM Garden Project
    Immune System
    Information
    Injury
    Insomnia
    INternal
    Inward Movement
    Jing
    Journey
    Joy
    Kidneys
    Labor
    Lao Zi
    Large Intestine
    Late Summer
    Leaf
    Less Is More
    Letting Go
    Life
    Life Love
    Listening
    Looking
    Lung
    Lungs
    Maple
    Martial Arts
    Massage
    Medicine
    Middle
    Migration
    Mindfulness
    Mother
    Mountains
    Movement
    Moxibustion
    Narcissus
    Natural Breath
    Nature
    Nei Gong
    News
    Normal
    Nourishment
    Nourish Yin
    Now
    Nuclear Power
    Nurture
    Oil
    Olympics
    One-Size-Fits-All
    Optical Illusion
    Pain
    Parenting
    Path
    Patience
    Pear
    Pentagram
    Peony
    Perception
    Perfect
    Permaculture
    Perspective
    Plant
    Plastics
    Post-Heaven
    Pre-Heaven
    Pulse
    Qi
    Qi Gong
    Recycling
    Resilience
    Respect
    Retreat
    Rhythm
    Ritual
    River
    Romanticism
    Roots
    Rose
    Routine
    Saffron
    Science
    Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis
    Seasons
    Seeds
    Sense Organs
    Senses
    Sharing
    Shen Nong
    Shonishin
    Simple
    Sleeping
    Snow
    Sound
    Space
    Space Time
    Spicy
    Spleen
    Sports
    Spring
    Stillness
    Stomach
    Stress
    Stretching
    Summer
    Summer-Heat
    Summer Solstice
    Support
    Survival
    Sweet
    Sword
    Tai Ji Quan
    Taiwan
    Taste
    Tea
    Teachers
    Temperature
    Third Ear
    Third Eye
    Time
    Toilet Paper
    Touch
    Touching
    Transformation
    Trees
    Tui Na Massage
    Valleys
    Vibration
    Virus
    Vision
    Walking
    Warming
    Water
    Watermelon
    Wei/Protective Qi
    Winning
    Winter
    Winter Solstice
    Wood
    Words
    Wordsworth
    Work
    Wu Ji
    Wu Long Tea
    Yang
    Yellow Emperor Classic
    Yin
    Yin Yang
    Yin-Yang
    Yoga
    Zen Buddhism

    RSS Feed

Institut für Chinesische Medizin ICM GmbH

Falknerstrasse 4 | 4001 Basel
Tel. 061 272 88 89 | Fax 061 271 42 64
info@icm-basel.ch ​
  • Acupuncture
    • Acupuncture
  • TCM
    • History
    • Methods of Treatment
    • Diagnostics
  • Treatment Modalities
    • Acupuncture
    • Auricular Acupuncture
    • Electroacupuncture
    • Chinese Herbal Medicine
    • Tui Na /An Mo Massage
    • Moxibustion
    • Cupping
    • Physical therapy
    • Qi Gong
    • Tai Ji Quan
    • Gua Sha
    • Chinese Nutritional Therapy
    • Wai Qi Liao Fa
  • Team
    • Elaine Yap
    • Ava Markwalder
    • Gabi Rahm
    • Frank Hediger
    • Noriko Matsumoto-Loosli
    • Olivier Schmidlin
    • Edmundo Belloni
  • ICM Treatment Information
    • Treatment Rooms
    • Treatment at ICM
    • Treatment Costs
    • Treatment Procedure
    • Documents
    • FAQ
  • Health Insurance Coverage
    • Health Insurance Coverage
    • FAQ
  • Contact
  • DEUTSCH
  • Blog
    • FRANÇAIS