The next step is community

Let’s go back and look at what we’re doing here. We all have practices, Yoga, Tai Chi, Martial Arts, whatever the practice is. What I’m finding is the most effective way to deal with health care, to deal with sickness is probably not to get sick. And not to get sick, it sounds funny, it’s ironic, but it’s not – it’s actually not AS difficult as it may sound. Because it’s 90% of the lifestyle and how we go about taking care of ourselves, basically the way we use our minds and bodies.

So if we want to cultivate a sound mind and body so that it can basically house us, facilitate us until death, it’s not going to happen by accident. If you look at somebody who is in physically good shape, especially over the age of 35, it didn’t usually happen by accident. I mean there are the “gifted people” who have great genetics, but they’re a very, very small percentage. So it’s something that happens through intention and happens through persistence and long term work. More importantly it happens through a lifestyle and we see this being in the industry and we see that we’re going to have people that come in and they want immediate results. They spend 30 years basically abusing their body and they are going through some momentary inspiration and they want immediate results. It’s just like an investment portfolio, it generally doesn’t work that way. So if you were looking at it from a point of view of money, and let’s say you thought well I’m going to get immediately wealthy and you win the lottery, 9 times out of 10 you lose the money immediately anyways because you didn’t create the lifestyle, you didn’t create the mind set for that wealth.

Well the same thing happens with your health, with how you know it’s really about a mindset and more than a lifestyle. So in our centers, our goal is to hold this foundation space where people can slowly develop this lifestyle and in order to do that we have to provide these key ingredients, these key components.

Now the first one within this is obviously you need the info, you need information, you need the teachings, you need the practices. You need the teacher who’s going to take that information, take that human modality and apply it to your condition. You know the ability to look at you as an individual and through diagnosis, intake forms, whatever, to effectively say, “All right, you walked through the front door, you’re here. Based on that we need to get you there, which is going to take these steps, A, B and C.” Very important, and again a lot of people buy a self help book or a DVD or do something online with Yoga or Tai Chi or Qigong, and that’s great, but unless there’s really someone there (you know direct transmission) to sit and explain to them based on where they are on the path the chances for success are greatly reduced. So it’s imperative to get information but also we need a teacher that’s going to help us go through this process.

So you got the information, you have teacher, now you need to be surrounded by people, like minded people who share the same goals because you know human beings we have biorhythm and there are times when we’re unbelievably motivated and there’s times where we’re not motivated at all. You can even see it in a class. Let’s say, yoga class and you’re in down dog for 5 minutes, 2 minutes into it you might feel like not doing it anymore but the person next to you is still doing it. So you’ll kinda say, “Well, all right I’m gonna keep up” – it’s almost like healthy competition, and that’s ok. The community is keeping you on the horse; it’s the community that’s keeping you focused. It’s really important to surround yourself with like minded people.

~ Master Teacher Michael Leone