Shit's fucked; try qigong

Well, it's 2017, a hateful warmonger is in the White House, Nazis and racists are terrorizing innocent people, facts are meaningless, and the United States is so divided it's tearing itself apart.

Shit's fucked up, and the dismaying state of the union has besieged so many of us with feelings of anxiety, fear, sadness, powerlessness, and rage.

So I've been doing qigong, the traditional Chinese practice of meditative movement. Well, I don't know if I can fairly say I've been "doing qigong" as much as I've been trying out different qigong videos on Chinese YouTube. (There are Western-produced videos available, but I wanted to check out content produced by the practice's culture of origin.)

There are myriad forms of qigong, so much so that finding concise information about it is rather hard to do. But the bottom line is that it calms the mind and gently stretches and strengthens the body. It's something anyone, in any sort of shape, can do. And it's what's helping me wind down and get to sleep these days, rather than endlessly scrolling through the bountiful evidence of our country's undoing.