When we were younger, my siblings and I would play the “tiger game” with our dad.
The lights would go off and he would turn into a jungle animal. He would growl, chase us down and tickle us until the lights came back on again. This was his way of teaching us the role our imaginations played in informing the world around us, and that laughter was always paramount, even in tough situations. And we laughed a lot during those times. Then, one day, something happened that I couldn’t see the bright side of.
In December of 2014, I got a phone call that changed my life.
My father had been hospitalized with a liver infection and it was urgent our whole family went to be with him. On the drive there, I assured everyone he was going to be okay, as was my job as the rock of my family. We were an hour outside of Tijuana when my uncle finally told me we were driving to Mexico not to see my father, but to help my mom take care of the painful logistics that followed his sudden passing in surgery. I couldn’t believe it. He was gone.
But, he never completely left us.
My father had practiced martial arts for many years and a big lesson he emphasized was that we should never forcibly push back against a force coming toward us - the act of pushing only puts you at risk of being overpowered. Instead, he suggested that we anticipate, and then non-violently, redirect the energy away from our bodies.
He never spoke about the energy of grief. It was coming my way - that much I could anticipate - but I didn’t know how to navigate and redirect it. Where was it to go? I needed some way to deal with it.
One evening I was invited to a private Qi Gong demonstration in Los Angeles.
The invitation came through a teacher I had been practicing under for a few months. Near the end of the evening, he rose to the stage followed by another of his students. He motioned for the student to lie on his back and an assistant began stacking red bricks, one at a time, on the student’s head. Before anyone could even make sense of the scene, my master was wielding a sledgehammer.
I couldn’t help but think the laws of physics wouldn’t bode well for this guy. My teacher took aim and swung with force.
The entire stack hit the ground in pieces.
The student smiled, unfazed, and sprang to his feet. A cacophony of roars, claps, and gasps erupted around me as everyone realized they had just lay witness to logic defied. My teacher had held such control over his own energy output that he had protected the student from lethal trauma. The student, near mastery himself, had only to trust in the teacher.
After witnessing what energy could do when directed with intention, I needed to know more.
A sound healing event popped onto my radar so, naturally, I had to sign up. The class was led by a passionate woman, who opened with an exercise where we were asked to tell our neighbor the most difficult morning we’d dealt with that week. All around I could hear explanations of stubbed toes, traffic delays, spilled coffee, and then suddenly... a sound I’d never heard before. Everyone stopped talking. When the ring finally subsided, there were no more frustrated emotions in the room. Just peace and stillness.
“What was that?” I asked the facilitator, incredulous at how quickly the mood had dissipated with nothing but the sound of a bell.
“The laws of physics” she answered.
My whole life, I had used logic as a framework to understand everything.
But now, right before my eyes, logic was being bent and twisted in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Curiously, I was also starting to feel better. More in control of my own energy. More at peace with life's ebbs and flows. Logic had taken me so far, the rest was up to a leap of faith. An openness to see things in a new way… no matter how much they defied what I’d seen before.
I began to understand that the most dominant energy in any space, for better or worse, would force everything around it to match.
My younger brother had only been 15 when our father died.
I had taken on the role of supporting him, figuring it would give my mother some time to heal herself. It had been two years of supporting him practically, financially and emotionally when he said something that really tested me.
A family friend had been visiting and made a comment on how much I had sacrificed to help out. My brother quipped, coldly:
“He just pays the rent.”
A blinding rage swelled inside but before I could even react, an unusual calm followed. His comment just… didn’t matter in that moment. Not enough to ruin the mood of the room.
Later, I asked my brother for clarity on his comment and he apologized for the way it had sounded. I knew the tools for managing my own energy had begun to integrate into my life. There was harmony, even if I couldn’t control what (or who) happened around me..
And so, I wanted the world to know what was possible.
With logic and intuition working together in my life, I needed to find a way to share these tools with more people. This is where you come in! Welcome to Key on Harmony.
I invite you to test out these tools not just to get by in life, but to thrive. Settling down and properly harnessing the rational side of your brain is an ever-unfolding process, but you don’t need to get it right straight away. You just need to start. The impact will follow.