Your spiritual practice is strong: you can do marathon sessions of meditation. Your Qigong practice is not just a series of randomly sequenced set of movements: you feel the energy flowing as you direct it. Your pranayama is expansive, full, focused and complete. The seamless intertwining of Puraka (Inhalation), Abhyantara Khumbaka (Full Inhale Hold), Rechaka (Exhalation), Bahya Khumbaka (Full Exhale Hold) occurs effortlessly. Then you leave the studio, the ashram, the practice hall, the comfort of your own home. A little perturbation arises. Someone does not signal there turn in traffic. The barista does not quite season your latte in the manner to which you have grown accustomed. A child shows disrespect toward the parent (or your child shows disrespect toward you). It is at these times that your practices must be part of your being. You must not allow your mind to wander, to become agitated. You must come (back) to a Woo-SAHH moment.
We take up these internal practices for one of several reasons. Health is always a good reason. Supporting and increasing the flow of energy, improving biomechanics, and positively affecting (mental) clarity. Mental clarity is very important in that it is a quality. Part of the mental clarity includes focus. Focus is defined in psychology as n. the concentration or centering of attention on a stimulus. Whereas in Buddhism, focusing (the practice of) helps one to recognize and engage buried feelings and unconscious misapprehensions that may not show themselves in the course of meditation practice. It allows us to uncover and work through hidden wounds and deeply embedded fears lodged in our bodies. This in turn provides vital help in loosening recalcitrant habitual patterns, blocks to action, and other sources of personal suffering. Basically, one is learning about the things that they have internalized; they are the basis of the emotional triggers that causes one to react.
So how does this help in those moments of emotional relapse that the everyday world so relentlessly brings about. Not a total breakdown. Not so much a snapping. A relapse along the lines of mental outburst: someone is stupid, someone is not driving properly, some cashier incorrectly placed my order and shorted me on my change, I am angry, I am depressed . . . . . these are all turmoil facilitating, emotionally driven thoughts and states. The goal of these, all of these, internal practices is to brings about a maintained and sustained awareness of the present moment. To develop and be consistently anchored in a ‘Calm(ly) Abiding’ state in order to establish one’s self in that internal and external connectedness so that nothing can elicit, from one’s self and undue, rattled emotional reactivity.
Enter the Woo-SAH moment. The meaning and idea of Woo-SAH, from a personal standpoint, is as follows. It is the moment that one realizes that they have been thrown out of balance. They feel the instant of the instance of identification with and emotional state. They thus come back to a more balanced, unperturbed state. The use of Woo-SAH is the use of mantra. Mantra means (originally in Hinduism and Buddhism) a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation. Yet, it is of necessity that the practices which are effected in the studio, the ashram, the dojo, the zendo in the home are needed throughout the day. Woo-SAH is a way to recenter oneself. and bring those practices to the present moment.
A note: Any word, that one’s deems to be of substance, can be used to bring oneself back to a more equilibrated state. To a place of harmonious present. A word, chosen by or given to you, any word can help to bring the person back from indulging their emotionality.
Ab-Sutra Wellness and Fitness 