Thanks to Corinna

Each second that passes, two million new mature red blood cells enter the circulation to maintain normal blood supply in the body. I've known for a long time that the body is always regenerating itself but for some reason reading this yesterday just filled my Heart with Joy.

T'ai Chi takes a long time to learn in fact it's an ongoing process and sometimes it's not so easy to feel what one has learned. This week I came across a yoga book bought over twenty years ago, probably my first venture into body-mind training. Reading through the book again and then revisiting some of the postures what became apparent was the changes that had happened in me. T'ai Chi had trained my body and mind so exercises that had seemed bewildering were easily understood (even if some of the stretches were still beyond me). Trying postures I hadn't done for twenty years was like meeting the me of then but with all the insights and experience of now and I could see that all the T'ai Chi practice had brought clarity and calm.

I've been reading an interesting story about a Kurdish tribe the Yezidis. In this tribe if someone, for whatever reason ( asually malicious) , draws a circle in sand around you, due to inate fears ancient beliefs and supersticions it becomes impossible to escape, unless someone on the outside breaks the circle and lets you free. It is as though an invisible energy field surrounds the person on the inside, leaving them trapped, forever at the mercy of those outside. There are stories of people dragging a trapped Yezidi from an unbroken circle only to find that the said Yezidi fell into a deep trance that lasted until they were put back into the circle. When I thought about that 'prison' without walls or doors I became aware of the circles around me;some drawn by society and culture but mostly drawn by my own limiting fears and beliefs. It's great if someone on the outside sets you free and certainly my teachers have helped me, firstly to see the prisons and then to break out of some of them. But when we rely on external forces to change our destiny we give over all our power to those outside influences.Don Juan Matuse said that our reality is but a single room in a house of a hundred rooms and with training we could learn to access the other ninty nine. In fact, with training we could actually get out of the house. One of the ways we train is by firstly identifing our circles and then working to break through.