Bored at Home During the Epidemic Lockdown? Doctor Luo Dalun: Cherish This Rare Time With Your Family, and Use It to Focus on Learning One Thing — Improve Yourself and Change Your Life

Opening: that Spring Festival, some people rushed to the front line, some stayed home

Around the Chinese New Year of 2020, the epidemic suddenly brought everyone’s life to a halt. Doctor Luo Dalun ran a small online survey: how many friends had already gone back to work during these days? It turned out that some had already returned to their posts — hospital staff, for example, were working incredibly hard; and many government workers, including many police officers and public security comrades, were on duty maintaining order. A lot of people had already been working through the Spring Festival — these are the particularly hard-working friends.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: There is another group of friends who are at home following the government’s call and doing quarantine work, and this work is also very important. Many friends say: I won’t add trouble to the government, I won’t add trouble to the country — staying at home is itself a way to take part in the epidemic-prevention effort, and that is a glorious thing. These friends isolating at home should be the majority of ordinary people right now.

So how exactly should we spend this period of isolation — closed in, sealed off, trying not to leave the neighborhood? Doctor Luo Dalun offered several suggestions.

The first thing: precious time with family — cherish it

First of all, everyone should understand this: this is an extremely rare stretch of time to be together with your family.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Think about it — in normal life, how busy we all are! How much time do we really spend at home with our elderly parents and our family? It can be counted on one hand. These days have given us this chance to be with our family. I think we must settle our emotions — don’t create conflicts, don’t look at each other with irritation. Don’t do that. This is a rare opportunity — hug them. During this time, do your best to get along harmoniously, provide positive energy to each other, and warm each other.

Every morning when you get up, hug each other and say good morning; when you see a funny joke online, tell everyone. This stretch of time will definitely become a very unforgettable memory when you look back on it later — so cherish it. That is the first thing.

The second thing: concentrate time on learning one thing — it may change your life

Second, this stretch of time must be put to use. Doctor Luo Dalun saw many people online who were so bored they imitated worms arching along the ground to exercise — truly desperate for something to do. Exercise is of course good, but truly using this time to learn something and improve yourself is what is really worth doing.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Let me tell you — this stretch of time may only be half a month or a month, but if you learn one thing, it may change your life. That is my view. Most people in life never put real effort into seriously doing one thing to change their own lives. That’s why so many friends constantly complain: why does my life fall so far behind other people’s? I have observed a great many people — those who live really well are constantly improving themselves. Especially those who are good at concentrating their energy on one thing for a period of time: they do one thing, improve, then do another thing, improve again. People like that end up living much better lives.

The way to improve yourself is to concentrate on doing one thing for a period of time. For example, if you knew nothing about Chinese medicine before — then use this time to calm down and seriously read a few TCM books, and you may well get your foot in the door; to know some Chinese medicine is already better than knowing none.

TCM knowledge is vast as a sea. You don’t need to learn everything — just spend a few days online and study moxibustion properly: its principles, the acupoints, what it does, then practice it with your own hands. In two weeks, half a month, you can basically understand the basic methods of moxibustion — and once those two weeks pass, you will be able to use moxibustion with ease.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: TCM has a great deal of knowledge — it looks like a lot, but cut it into pieces. Learn one piece, then understand the whole, and you will understand it very well. If you want to learn everything all at once, you may not learn any of it well. So start with cupping — this holiday I’ll do nothing else, just search online for cupping videos, read the masters’ discussions, read everyone’s experiences, and try it on myself — and you may well master it. Take gua sha (scraping), or tapping acupoints — in a month you may already be very good at it. So if you can calm down and learn one thing, it will be a huge help to you later.

Zhan zhuang: boost your upright qi anytime, anywhere

Among the home exercises Doctor Luo Dalun recommends, zhan zhuang (standing meditation) is the one he especially praises.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Zhan zhuang is excellent for boosting zheng qi (upright qi), and it has one wonderful feature — you can do it any time. You don’t need to run to a sports ground, and it takes no space. For tennis you have to book a court — you don’t need that here. With just a patch of ground to stand on, you stand there, nothing else needed. I’ll go online and watch videos, read the masters’ writings, look at my own body, and adjust myself in front of a mirror — of course, having a teacher to guide you later is even better, but for now you can start trying it.

Why emphasize boosting upright qi especially at this time? Look at this pneumonia: among those who catch the same illness, the physically weak and the elderly tend to slip toward critical condition. So learning zhan zhuang and boosting your upright qi is a particularly good thing to do.

Two stories: read aloud 20 minutes a day — one or two months changes a life

Doctor Luo Dalun told two true stories, and both are about reading aloud.

The first story happened at his workplace when he was young. There was a young man — handsome, tall, fair-skinned, quite good-looking, with plenty of education — who had exactly one flaw: his ability to organize his speech was terrible. He was always muddled, his words were unclear, and sometimes you couldn’t even make out what he was saying.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Finally I had a talk with him once. I asked: would you be willing to use two months to change your life? The young man was very curious: what? Two months can change my life? What’s so important? I said: take an article — it doesn’t need to be long, three or four hundred characters is enough. Every morning when you get up, start reading it aloud, over and over, word by word, pronouncing each character clearly, with the feeling of a broadcaster — read this article back and forth; even after you memorize it, keep reading it back and forth. During these two months, every morning take 20 minutes, and use exactly those 20 minutes to read that one article aloud. Twenty minutes a day — in two months you can change your life. Do you believe it?

The young man agreed and read aloud every day. As it turned out, the more he read that little article, the smoother and faster it went, and the clearer his enunciation became — after two months, his entire way of speaking had changed: he had mastered the secret of clear speech, his words came out distinctly, and he became a well-rounded, standard talent in every way — his speech and manner all improved.

The second story is Doctor Luo Dalun’s own experience. He grew up in the Northeast, and his ability to express himself was poor and his speech unclear — because in the Northeast, people habitually use local dialect. Later, in middle school, he entered a speech contest. After writing his speech, he read and recited the script aloud for twenty to thirty minutes every morning.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In the end I knew it backwards and forwards, and I delivered it with perfect rhythm and expression — I polished that script until it was flawless and won first place in the contest. After it was over, some classmates even came to ask me for the script: your speech was so good, can you give me the text so I can study it? That incident gave me, then just a middle-school student, a huge inspiration — if you persist in doing one thing for a period of time, and work hard to improve that one thing, fixing a weakness in your abilities, then you may benefit from it for the rest of your life. The time involved can be very short — just a month or two — but you benefit for life. Tell me, isn’t that a good deal?

What else can you learn? The Dao De Jing, the Analects, history, soup-making

If you have large blocks of free time at home during the holiday, apart from the relaxation of watching TV and streaming shows (binge-watching every day gets boring, no question), Doctor Luo Dalun suggests taking one or two hours each day to learn something — after half a month you will definitely master it quite well, and it may well benefit you for life.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I suggest everyone learn some Chinese medicine knowledge, learn some useful methods — these will very likely benefit you and change you. If you stay a perpetual outsider, always leaving messages saying “Doctor Luo, I completely don’t understand this, where do I even start?” — you’ll never write a message like that again, because you will have changed that situation. What about other knowledge? For example, during this time I concentrated my energy on studying the Dao De Jing — listen to my audio, or take the commentaries of various schools and read them carefully. It may be that just these half a month of quiet reading sends your life into a whole new realm.

In normal times you’re busy at work all day; you come home, cook dinner, and by the time you’re done you’re so tired you just want to sleep — so ordinarily there is no time for these things. Now the social engagements are gone, the overtime is gone — for example, read the Analects carefully all the way through and understand it; it may be a lifelong elevation for you. Later, when people chat about it and others haven’t read it but you have, your insight will be different.

There is also plenty of niche knowledge: for instance, learn about world medical history — search online, there is abundant material. If you want history, read about how the Chinese People’s Volunteers fought in Korea; or look at the Ming dynasty’s Wanli era and how Li Rusong fought Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Japanese army. Spending a few days getting one period of history straight is both a pleasure and an improvement.

You can also learn skills related to food — therapeutic soup-making, for instance. Normally there’s never time to look into it; now you can gather the relevant information online, go into the kitchen yourself, and brew nourishing soups for your family. If for half a month you brew one nourishing soup every day, you may well become a soup expert.

Ending: staying home is also fighting

So, on the one hand, staying home and not adding trouble to the country is itself taking part in the struggle against the epidemic — very good. On the other hand, using this time to improve yourself means the days are not wasted — you won’t feel bored to death every day.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I hope everyone seizes this time. After this period is over, when you look back later, you will feel enormously gratified: I used that time to improve myself, and I feel quite happy about it — that is a wonderful feeling. Today I’ll leave you with these few suggestions. I’ll talk more with you by audio when I get the chance. Thank you all, and see you tomorrow.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lecture on making the most of home quarantine (knowledge edition of the pandemic home-isolation special).

What to take away

1. This is a rare gift of family time — normally we are too busy to count the hours we spend with parents and loved ones. Settle your emotions, hug each other, share jokes, and make it a memory you will treasure.
2. Use the time to concentrate on learning one thing — half a month or a month of focused effort on a single skill or subject can change your life; people who live well are exactly those who keep improving one step at a time.
3. Chinese medicine is the perfect thing to start — cut the vast knowledge into blocks: two weeks of study and practice can make you handy with moxibustion; cupping, gua sha and tapping acupoints can be mastered within a month.
4. Zhan zhuang boosts upright qi anytime, anywhere — a patch of ground is enough; watch videos, read the masters, adjust in the mirror. With illnesses like this pneumonia, the weak and elderly are most at risk, so raising zheng qi matters.
5. Reading aloud works — 20 minutes every morning, one article, pronounced like a broadcaster: the young man’s speech was transformed in two months, and a middle-school speech contest changed the way Doctor Luo thought about self-improvement. One or two months of persistence can benefit you for life.
6. Other doors are open too — the Dao De Jing and Analects with various commentaries, world medical history, the Korean War, the Ming dynasty’s war against Hideyoshi, or daily therapeutic soup-making: half a month of daily practice makes you an expert. Staying home is itself part of the fight, so use the time to grow — you’ll look back with pride.