This June, my qigong teacher Bruce Frantzis will be offering a two-week Dragon and Tiger Qigong instructor training on Maui. Over the past 10 years, I’ve attended most of the instructor trainings that he has offered, as well as many weekends and week-long retreats. Being in an intensive learning environment at these events is great for your personal practice. ...
One of the major goals of standing qigong is to develop a strong downward flow that clears stagnant energy out of your system and strengthens your natural restorative abilities. When you begin to work on this process, though, it’s natural to wonder how strict you need to be able sticking with the downward flow and what to do if you start to notice other things happening in the body. Recently, I got this question via email that nails the exact issue: ...
In this case study, you’ll see how Kevin improved his Cloud Hands and Swings through video feedback. While you can follow a guided practice for the standing qigong portion of Energy Gates, doing a follow-along for the moving exercises doesn’t really help you improve your practice, so feedback is key. Going through the process of not only getting a correction, but watching yourself before and after, helps you internalize the new movement pattern. If you are just told to change the way you are moving, sometimes the new pattern is so different from what you are used to that you can’t feel the difference, and the correction doesn’t stick. ...
Just a quick note to let you know that if you missed Sunday’s webinar on the Three Swings from Opening the Energy Gates, you can check out a replay here.
I’m sure you’ve spent time looking around YouTube for qigong and tai chi videos. According to their website, people upload 24 hours of video to YouTube every minute! No doubt you’ve seen some crazy stuff. So how do you sift through all of it and more importantly, are there any qigong videos on YouTube worth watching? The good news is, of course there are. And I’ve put together a list of 5 good ones to get you started. ...
The Three Swings from Energy Gates are some of the most challenging exercises to do well in the entire Energy Arts curriculum. You have to relax, maintain good alignment, and coordinate stepping and turning while moving faster than most other qigong exercises. Let’s talk a little bit about why the Three Swings are important and what you need to integrate to do them well. Getting Started with the Three Swings In the Tai Chi Classics, it says, “the motion should be rooted in the feet, released through the legs, controlled by the waist and manifested through the fingers.” Think of practicing the swings as a way to test this concept. You will get much clearer feedback from the swings about how the motion you generate from the feet travels out to your fingertips than you will from solo form practice. ...
There is no other book I return to more for my qigong practice than Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body by Bruce Frantzis. It’s the one I consistently recommend to students and anyone who emails the school to inquire about starting a qigong practice before they have access to a teacher. Here’s how to get the most out of it, whether or not you have someone who can give you regular feedback on your practice: ...
As you explore layers of relaxation through standing qigong, you’ll hit a point where everything starts to feel fluid, as if you’ve dug down deep enough to find a rich aquifer, filled with nourishing water. We describe the experience with words like “sinking” and “soaking” the mind into the body, and that’s literally what’s happening. Remember the qigong expression, “your mind moves your chi and your chi moves your blood”? When they say “blood”, they mean all the fluids in the body. When you truly start to fuse your mind and your body, your insides start to feel more wet, fluid, and connected. ...
You can encourage your body to relax just by paying attention to it the right way. Using standing qigong, you can build up a relaxation feedback loop between your feeling awareness and the body’s natural ability to soften when circulation improves. The qigong expression, drawn from Chinese medicine, is, “your mind moves your chi and your chi moves your blood”. In the first lesson on standing qigong, we worked on creating a buffer between “real life” and “practice time” with five minutes of settling in. Now we want to move a little deeper into the body and explore how increased you can trigger relaxation with increased feeling awareness. ...
Do you include a “settling-in” phase each time you practice? If not, you’re wasting time and energy resolving issues from your day when you could be going deeper into your practice. A settling-in phase acts as a buffer between your busy day and the place you’d like your practice to take you. Standing qigong is one of the best buffers between “real life” and “practice time”. You could jump right into your tai chi form, but you’d need to do 10 or 15 minutes of “cold” tai chi, with no warm-up, to arrive at the same place, ready to practice, after 5 minutes of standing and settling in. ...