By: Sr. Marimil Lobregat, FMM

Sr. Marimil Lobregat, a good shepherd missionary has started a marvelous care for the carer’s program in Australia. Now she has opened a center here in the Philippines: This should be a boon to returned missionaries. Read on, it is all described below in a beautiful article by Ceres Doyo.

Wounded Healers. Lost shepherds. Carers in Crisis. At some point people perceived to be strong and imperturbable, and who for a long time have been sturdy to the weak and weakening, themselves become people in need. The rock threatens to crumble, the fountain starts to dry up, and that big heart suddenly wants to cave in. Burn out.

Bleeding and broken, they taunt themselves – “Physicians, heal thyself.” By the proverbial streams of Babylon, they sit and weep, remembering the blessed past and all those years of giving, giving, giving. The moment of weakness and vulnerability has home. Who will they turn to now?

Must those in the helping profession turn neurotic at some point in their lives if only to experience brokenness? Must they be needlessly sapped of their strength? Do they have to come to that point when they can no longer help others because they are themselves breaking, if not broken? While the taste of suffering raises one’s capacity for empathy it need not be brought upon oneself. A wholesome, happy person is still the best argument for anything. As the saying goes “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

SISTER MARIMIL LOBREGAT, a nun, has discovered that indeed she can grow gracefully, serenely, painlessly into mature age. At 63, this Franciscan Missionary of Mary has likewise led other church women and men to the rejuvenating springs. “I didn’t want to age cranky,” she says wistfully.

But what all these healing arts?
These are the Chinese healing arts, geared to free the person from oppressive tension and blockages to the flow of intrinsic energy and to inner peace. The movement are designed to promote harmony within and create a healthy balance in the personality of the practitioner.
In this age of high impact bone cracking aerobics that go with brain blasting rock music, Oriental exercises make a soothing difference. Unlike in aerobics, in tai chi and the like there is no huff-puffing and gasping for breath, only silence, a slow flow of energy and heightened consciousness.

According to Lobregat, one of the main objectives of this holistic and disciplined form of healing relaxation is to reach that degree of awareness of the presence of the Creator and the Sacredness of Life that is within us, to allow this awareness to vivify our spirit, direct our mind, and energize our body our body in our daily life and activities.

Tai chi is also referred to as “the art of moving meditation,” says Lobregat. “We begin where we are right now, where our body is. In the Oriental concept, meditation means becoming aware of the Creator within us. It is an art that teaches how to use the eyes, lungs, spine, abdomen, etc. in a way that promotes both bodily health and mental/spiritual well-being. The tai chi way focusing and centering releases the natural God-given healing energize that could have been lying dormant within; through the  meditative practice of tai chi they are awakened and strengthened , giving the practitioners a sense of well being. At the same time, the person is made more aware of the source of Life itself and is encouraged to open up to transcendent and spiritual experiences. In order to transcend, one must be still.

Lobregat adds that for the ‘carers’, meaning those in the healing ministry, this “letting go” and gentle reharmonizing of oneself  with the silence and the “Breath of Life and sharing this with others, could bring about more tangible Creator/God consciousness within oneself and with others enriching the faith element that this consciousness  creates.

The Care for Carers Program is very new and the would be trainers are right now still in the process of honing up some more. They’ve just gone through a crash course (intensive trainers session) and must do more practice even after Lobregat will have gone back to Australia where she is herself a teacher of these healing arts. (She studied at the Australian Academy of Tai Chi for some 10 years. She is now connected with the Chinese Healing College.)
The other “graduates” who are not going to be trainers likewise have to keep practicing. Most of them work in ministries which demands so much of their energies. It is hoped that tai chi and the other exercises will keep the strength and stillness inside them.

Shibashi, tao yin, dayan, qi goong. Lohan gong and tai chi are all “meditations in motion” of different levels. In the Care for Carers Program the beginners doesn’t go straight to tai chi but must first master shibashi, a simpler form. The movements look like thy become progressively more and more difficult but there is more than meets the eye. Lobregat says an observer only sees movements – slow, graceful – but what he or she doesn’t see is what is happening inside the practitioner.

“I discovered so many things about myself,” gushes a nun-lawyer who is among thee first batch of practitioners. “You know, a beginner usually does the movement rather fast but as one progresses one become slower. Somethings happens inside you.”

Take shibashi, the simplest of the exercises. The 18 different movements have names that correspond to movements in nature and they make one feel in tune with the universe. Movements such as: waving, hands by lake, expanding chest on top of the mountain, painting a rainbow, circle arms and patting the clouds, sage presents peach, turn to gaze at the moon, the wind rustles lotus leaves, rolling with the waves, dragon emerging from the sea. Each movement has a particular healing effects. For example, “painting the rainbow” is effective for regulating blood pressure, aiding digestion, alleviating gastric ulcer, shoulder pain reducing fat deposit in waist.

Tao yin would have movements such as: elegant queen greets morning sun, monkey presents fruits, albatross flaps wings, old master shakes beard, peep at the moon and look at the window, catching stars in the sky, touching the waters.

Each movement or exercise is supposed to unblock blocked passages in the body and strengthen particular meridians or bodily points. Those trained in orthodox Western Medicine may scoff at all this as quackery but tai chi practitioners swears by this art which dates back thousands of years ago in ancient China.

Tai chi is based on martial arts,” says Lobregat. “It’s meditation in prayer and prayer in meditation. It’s letting – go, a disciplined kind of relaxation.” Tai chi, being the most advanced of the exercises, is not as easy as it looks.

Tai chi is ch’uan literally means “supreme ultimate fist” and is an ancient Chinese discipline of health, relaxation, meditation, self-defense and self-cultivation. An expert in Tai chi says this: “sometimes called Chinese or Taoist yoga, it emphasizes relaxation and inner calm rather than strength. As a meditation, it is a way of harmonizing body and mind dynamically. It fosters an inner quit that nourishes a continuing awareness. It blends easily with other kind of meditation. As a martial arts, it is one of the inner schools based on yielding and cultivating inner energies. It avoids use of external strength.

“The philosophy of t’ai chi chuan is rooted in Taoism, which advocates natural effort, and in the I Ching or Book of Changes. The moments and inner teaching are derived from the complementary relationship between Yin and Yang two fundamental forces that create and harmonize the universe by their interaction.”

How did Lobregat stumble upon this ancient art? Why is this nun so enthusiastic about this ancient form? Isn’t it only for athletes and health stuffs? What has it got to do religious life?

One evening 10 years ago, Lobregat attended a tai chi ch’uan class in Sydney and right away “I knew there was something in this meditative exercise arts that would make all my future ministries more meaningful and complete. Not only did it have positive physical effect on me, it has something that related closer to my (Filipino) culture, spiritual growth and my creativity at that ‘mature’ stage of my life.”
Lobregat at that time had been a nun for some 30 years. She had work among the lepers (“My first love”) in Tala, after which she was sent to Indonesia where she spent 14 years working in schools, clinics and slum areas. After that it was Melbourne, Australia, then Sydney where she worked in the Catholic Audio-visual center as a sound engineers, A-V technician and assistant producer. After 14 years in that “creative apostolate,” she became a pastoral care worker in a hospice for the terminally ill. Lobregat describes her past apostolate as having “the format and spirit of the Church’s institutionalized work and mission.”

Then while on leave from work in the hospice she discovered that “Divine Providence had something more colorful and certainly totally different for me and I yielded to His plan with complete trust and gratitude.” Tai chi came into her life. A fellow nun introduced her to it.
Recalls Lobregat: “Despite the fact that the sessions were in the evening and I had a heavy eight-hour, five/six day work week, plus hours of travel by public transport everyday, I spiritedly plunged myself into learning, practicing and absorbing the creative, mental physical aspects of the spiritually that is tai chi and the other Chinese exercise healing arts.

Lobregat says that “while others in her age bracket (she was in her 50’s at that time) complained  of aches, pains, burn-out and depression, anger in various forms, which they all blamed on ‘old age’, I felt revitalized, content and serene. I felt a healing silence within me, I was happy to be faithfully deepening my spirituality, touching the beautiful and the authentic depth levels of my personhood from which I had been separated for decades. Through these body involving Oriental movements and healing arts, I felt I was, in a way, coming back home to whom I really was and where I belonged. The feeling was good and healthy and uplifting and healing.”

After years of study and practice of the meditative exercise arts Lobregat felt she had the ability and “the mission” to pass on the gift to others. “This would be of great value especially to those who are engaged in ministries to the needy and the distressed, to those with responsibilities that are stressful who need uplifting of the physical, mental and spiritual energies. It helps in reharmonizing oneself with the God of creation and re-creation.”
Thus the Care for Carers Center, aptly located at the compound of the Good Shepherd Sister (whose apostolate is among the down-trodden the pushed aside, the lost, the wounded and the weak). The Center is under the supervision of the Association of Major Religious Superior of Women in the Philippines (AMRSWP) and will be in full swing when the people (lay and religious) trained by Lobregat are ready. The Oriental exercises decry “the fitness industry that helps perpetuate the tyranny of thinness, the hard body and the flat stomach.”

The Oriental exercises decry “the fitness industry that helps perpetuate the tyranny of thinness, the hard body and the flat stomach.”

(Excerpts from an article the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, May 26, 1991 by Ceres Doyo)