F**k It Therapy

by John C. Parkin

  1. SHAKING, STANDING, SENSING THE QI

  So, working around the fact that you’re reading a book (probably) rather than listening to this, I’ll tell you what to do, then you can do it.

  Stand and shake every part of your body. Shake for five minutes (sounds like a cocktail recipe). Then stand completely still (just like when the music stops in one of those childhood party games). As you stand completely still (after shaking) notice any sensations in your body. Put a name to those sensations. Stand for five minutes. Try to relax as you stand. Anytime tension comes up, relax. Move a little if you need to. Then bring your hands together so that your palms are facing each other, about one foot apart.

  Pretend you’re holding an accordion. You don’t have to pretend you’re French or anything, just pretend you’re holding an accordion. Then start to play your imaginary accordion, very slowly, like a romantic French accordion player. Bring your hands together very slowly, until they are very close together (but don’t let them touch, there’s an accordion in between, after all), and then start to open them again. And continue this action, closing and opening your hands. Keep the rest of your body, especially your arms and shoulders, as relaxed as you can.

  And notice what you feel. Put a name to those feelings and sensations if you can. If you’re not feeling anything, fine. Try it again later. And after a few times, you certainly will start to feel something – unless you’re dead. Zombies don’t do this exercise so often. They tend to do the other exercise where they have their arms up in the air in front of them and walk forward very slowly. Now, I’m not going to tell you what you feel just yet, because that would spoil the surprise. So, please do this exercise, and experience it (whatever ‘it’ is) yourself.

  2. SHAKING, STANDING

  Once you’ve done Exercise 1 and felt something, you can move on to Exercise 2.

  Shake for five minutes (and you can put on some music if you want; you can also do it for longer if you want). Then stand still again. This time, stand still in a very particular (and easy) way:

  HOW TO STAND FOR IMPROVED ENERGY FLOW

  A. Imagine a cord is attached to the crown of your head and is lifting your head gently.

  B. Let the tip of your tongue touch the roof of your mouth, just behind your teeth. Keep your knees slightly bent.

  C. Tuck in your chin slightly to lengthen the back of your neck.

  D. Let your arms dangle relaxed, and then let them hold an imaginary (or real, if you have one) huge belly: imagine holding a Buddha belly.

  E. Try to keep your spine straight by tucking your coccyx in (to do this just stick your butt out, then do the opposite, and you’re there – it’s called ‘tucking your tail under’).

  F. Keep your knees slightly bent.

  G. Keep your feet apart.

  Weird? Well, there’s not so much to it. But do try to follow all those points. After a little while of doing it, you’ll remember all the points very easily. And each point helps the energy to flow more, so it’s worth doing.

  Once everything is in line, RELAX. At first, it might feel difficult to relax. Your legs might start to ache. Or the straight back won’t feel natural. Or your buttocks will be clenched because of the tail-tucking-under thing. But soften and relax. That’s actually the most important thing.

  And stand. And notice how you’re feeling. Again, put names to those feelings and sensations.

  This is called ‘Zhan Zhuang Qigong’ or ‘Standing Stake Qigong.’ It is the foundation of all energy training. It is what the best (internal) martial arts masters do for hours on end to build up their (internal) power. It’s as good after decades of practice as it is after a week of practice (nay, even better).

  3. STANDING

  Just to stand like this for ten minutes a day will change things for you. Just standing like this will significantly change your levels of relaxation (for the better). Just standing like this can heal you of illness or help prevent illnesses that would otherwise afflict you.

  It’s simple. But it’s the most effective thing you can do. If your brain prefers the complicated stuff, that you have to go on courses and spend years learning, as it probably will, then go off and do those things. But don’t forget this. In fact, if you want to go away and learn something complicated, go and sign up for a Tai Chi class. Tai Chi works a treat alongside this. And, after a while of doing Tai Chi (anywhere between 40 days and 40 years, in fact), you’ll realize it’s the same thing anyway.

  If you instantly understand the power and sufficiency of this standing Qigong, or you just love it as it is, or you’re just lazy-dog (lazy isn’t a bad thing my friend), then do just this. I have spent years of my life, years of daily practice, just doing this. Nothing else. At other times, I’ve diligently practiced Tai Chi and Hsing I (Google It, it’s also gorgeous).

  HAND POSITIONS

  If you want a little variation, here are some alternate hand positions:

  HAND POSITIONS: AIM TO HOLD EACH ONE FOR 10 MINUTES

  But do go slowly. Only move to another hand position once you’re able to stand for at least 10 minutes in your chosen position. And you might just want to stick with the original position. That’s fine. That’s more than fine, that’s awesome. And that will do.

  So what will happen for you if you practice this regularly? Well, as usual, I don’t really want to tell you. It’s great just to do it and see what unfolds for you naturally. But I know that some of you really, really, really want to know… and it might even motivate you to practice more. So…

  This is a genuine magic art. Read any of the great books on Qigong and you can discover the magic that ensues from regular practice: magic that has been talked about in relation to Qigong for thousands of years. Take your pick, really: spontaneous healing; the ability to heal others with touch; the ability to heal others with thoughts; psychic powers such as telepathy (hearing others’ thoughts); prescience (predicting future events); distant viewing (being able to see things in other places without ever having been there), and so on.

  This isn’t the world of Harry Potter, it’s better. There’s no school, no classes. Just standing, relaxing, feeling, and letting the magic happen.

  You might even learn how to walk through walls. Literally.

  Having done energy work (and that’s what ‘Qigong’ means, by the way: ‘work’ or ‘practice’ with ‘energy’) for more than 20 years, and having taught F**k It Therapy for more than seven years, I can say that Qigong is the most F**k It of all the arts (therapeutic, martial, magic, etc.,). It is, essentially, F**k It in form: when you let go and relax, things start to flow, and your life works (a treat).

  It is Qigong that we teach (in depth) on our F**k It Retreats. So if you want to come to an amazing place (in a luxurious setting in Italy) and stand around with people experiencing the first shoots of magic in your life, come and join us.

  Standing without standing

  In our courses we teach this form of Qigong (the Chinese energy art), which is taught by very few people, simply because it has nothing to it. Most people prefer doing ‘something,’ so most Qigong teachers teach a more complicated form.

  So, going back to nothing: There is something quite amazing about energy, which you can’t trick – if you try too hard, it doesn’t flow. The less you try, the more the qi flows. In this form of Qigong, you just do nothing and that’s it.

  Boring? Not at all. So much actually happens when you do nothing. But it all happens by itself.

  You do nothing and then the energy gets the space and permission to take over, and it all kicks in. This is why it is called Spontaneous Qigong. It happens spontaneously, without any doing. So how do you teach this nothing?

  As soon as you say something, people try to ‘do it’…

  For example, in the Spontaneous Qigong, one of the ways to set the qi moving is through simple standing. But just by telling people to stand, everyone’s heads say: ‘I will stand now.’ And the whole body gets tight.

  I find t
his amazing – it just shows me how even a simple instruction (such as standing or sitting) turns us into little soldiers. So how do you tell people to stand without them ‘doing standing’?

  What I do with the groups is this. First, I get them to lie down and relax, and only then do I get them to stand up – as if they were still lying down on a vertically placed bed. So in this way, we avoid the idea of standing up locking into our brains.

  So then, when people lie down vertically, this concept of ‘doing standing up’ disappears, and they are able to do nothing. Their bodies and minds aren’t locked. And then the spontaneous energy can move. When there is no doer, the qi does it.

  Bodies start swaying and rocking – very soon all sorts of things start moving on their own, both internally and externally resulting in warmth, pulsation, tingling.

  If people are happy to carry on doing nothing, the energy does things itself. All sorts of things can happen, such as arms rising by themselves, spontaneous walking, and internal adjustment in the body. This carries on as long as the person feels no need to take control again. Clearly an initial reaction to all these unexpected experiences can create judgment and surprise. But as people realize that this is simply the energy doing its job (they feel better afterward), they are progressively happier to get out of the way and let the experience unfold without judging what is happening.

  Sometimes, in some people, you can see that the movement is totally ready to happen, but an unconscious idea of ‘who they are and how they function’ is holding the energy back.

  Then, all I need to do is to point this out and give permission. A lovely guy in a group recently, after being given this ‘permission,’ started walking backward with his eyes closed just moved by the energy. And he could tell it wasn’t him doing the walking. He found himself at the other end of the garden. Another guy got thrown on the floor by his qi, and some internal movement was rebalancing the right and left of his digestive system. All he did to kick this off was open up and not intervene (i.e., do nothing). The energy takes over.

  So, simply, energy stops when you concentrate, when you judge what is happening, and when you want to understand too much.

  Energy moves when you don’t try hard, when you forget what you know, and when you hang out in the experience without judging too much what’s going on.

  Still wondering why you feel stuck so often?

  NEUTRALIZE IT

  We do exercises on our F**k It Retreats that have to be seen and experienced to be believed. Imagine sitting on the floor with your legs stretched out in front of you, then three people lying across your legs – or as many people as you can have lying across them without the pain being too great. In fact, make that as many people lying across your legs that you know (by trying) that there’s no possibility of you being able to move these people off your legs and getting up. If you can even move your legs a little, then we’d ask for one more person to lie across your legs. And you try again. So you’re stuck. And it’s not very pleasant, because those people are very heavy. And it’s not very pleasant for them either. The person, or people, underneath really start to feel the weight of those above them. And your knees are jutting into their ribs. And you can feel their tension, as well as your own. But before we call the whole thing off, we ask you to try something.

  To Neutralize It is to be entirely neutral around something and, maybe, everything. You have no judgment of it; you don’t even have an opinion of it. You don’t bring any experiences you’ve had in the past to this current situation (that involves this thing). You’re not interested in what anyone else might think – of this thing or of you. You are completely fresh to the situation. It’s as if you have been born in that moment, but born as a fully functioning (physically, at least) adult human being. Like a car in neutral (or park, if you drive an automatic).

  You’re not going anywhere, you’re not looking forward or backward, and you’re certainly not traveling forward or backward. You’re just in neutral, ready. Ready, but not anticipating anything. Blank, if you want: a blank canvas; a fresh white page; a beach first thing in the morning, after the tide has washed over it, before people and dogs, joggers and beach-ballers trample the sand. That’s you – fresh, open, not engaged, but fully present.

  We ask you to get a taste of what it’s like to be neutral. We give you some words and thoughts that might edge you toward that place or no-place. We suggest that it’s possible to be unbothered by this situation. We ask you not to think about what’s blocking you (the heavy people lying on your legs), or the pain, but to think about what you want to do (get up and out) yet without it being a big thing. In fact, not only is it not a big thing, it’s the most natural thing in the world, as easy as getting up in the morning: just tossing off the covers and getting up. And if you relax, and don’t think too much, you’ll know when the moment is right to do that, and that moment is probably very soon, and you just have this impulse, it’s not a big thing, to…

  And with an ease that shocks everyone, especially those people lying on your legs, because they’re thrown off, you’re free in a second and stand up easily.

  We do many of these exercises. And all of them teach us something very profound and (probably) counter-intuitive: that we can be stronger and achieve more if we’re relaxed, at ease, and in this ‘neutral’ space. Not that, in reality, it’s so easy to pin down (just like you, when you get it right): the moment you think you’ve cracked it (i.e., you’ve got yourself into a ‘state’ that you think works), it suddenly doesn’t work. That’s because this stuff (energy) doesn’t like being pinned down (just like you).

  Incidentally, if you want to try any of these exercises (they are very hard to teach in a book), do join one of our F**k It Retreats or events, or do something with Master Karl Grunick: he’s the most powerful Qi Master we’ve found on this planet; he does things you really won’t believe; he’s an awesome man who lives in neutral (though he’d never be so simplistic or boastful to say so). He teaches workshops around the world, including as part of our program of F**k It Retreats.

  But this isn’t, of course, about being able to throw people off your legs. It’s not a practical everyday skill…

  You wouldn’t BELIEVE what happened to me today… I was in Starbucks, sitting on one of the leather sofas, minding my own business and Tweeting on my SmartThing, when this couple came over to me and just lay across my legs. Other people started looking – as you would. And as I started to struggle and protest and try to move my legs to get them off, and it was clear I could move my legs, another two people came over and lay across the original couple. Yes, REALLY. So I’m pinned to the sofa. And just as I’m thinking it can’t get any worse, the somewhat porky guy that works there, yes, him, he comes and lies on the four of them. It was murder. And now the four of them are in pain and complaining (not that it was anything to do with me). They even had the cheek to say I had knobbly knees. And then, like a flash, I remembered this thing I read once in one of Parkin’s F**k It books about going neutral. So I tried. Or rather, I not-tried. I turned the Frappe-Latte-Cino’d head of mine, in that moment, into a glass of crystal-clear water, and I just had the thought ‘I will get up and go home.’ And that’s what I did. And here I am. And those four dodge-heads1 are probably still sprawling on the false-aged floorboards of Starbucks where I left them.

  No, but Neutralizing It is, because you can neutralize everything, and it’s magic.

  Resistance is futile, he says swinging the bright bare bulb into your eyes. Resistance IS futile. Give into reality as it is, just as it is. Don’t bother fighting it, resisting it, judging it, questioning it, trying to plan it or learning from it, seeing its higher plan or greater purpose. Get out of gear and slip into neutral.

  Imagine someone very F**k It. And you have someone who can neutralize things at will, like a Jedi warrior with another skill to add to their force-using skills. In fact, Neutralizing It is the primary way to use ‘the force.’ Just don’t go over to the dark side.


  Tea with G. Pollini

  If they made a movie about this, it would be a very boring one. But then they could pass it off as being arty and reminiscent of Andy Warhol.

  A group of people sit around a low table, sipping tea from tiny cups. An Italian woman pours the Chinese tea (this is already a bit strange). Everyone’s eyes are slightly glazed; smiles appear on faces, expressions get soft. Someone lies back and seems to fall into a half-sleep, ’til their cup is filled again, and they come back to life to empty it.

  Occasionally someone says how time seems to have disappeared, how the tea is doing stuff to their heads, or that their hands are tingling; how they feel content and don’t know why.

  Then more tea is poured.

  This is why I make this tea.

  I think I have seen people getting this de-focused just at the beach. But perhaps only after a week, after they’ve finished all their books, done all the crosswords, and eaten all the ice creams. Then they give in to just being.

  The tea only takes a few minutes to get there.

  Brains go soft, minds get not bothered, bodies fill with energy, and then just being is the only option (really, after an hour or so, for some people speaking is a hassle).

  This is how we spent most of our early childhood.

  That was before all the prodding and pushing, teaching and guiding. After that, we agreed to spend the rest of our lives focusing, concentrating, solving, resolving.

  When I finish with the tea, no one wants to move (what is there to do anyway?). Not even when there’s another amazing Italian lunch awaiting us at the restaurant in the F**k It Retreats venue…

  So in the absence of my magic tea (not ‘magic’ in the same way as magic mushrooms – this is just tea of the purest, loveliest form), just remember that next time you get defocused, you don’t need to snap out of it in order to ‘get on with it.’ This is the most natural way to spend a fair amount of our time. And it’s very lovely indeed.