From the outside, standing qigong can look calm, peaceful and meditative.
On the inside, if you don’t ask yourself these 3 essential questions, standing can be grueling. Your muscles ache, you tremble and sweat, and in burning discomfort you strain to see how much longer you must endure.
It doesn’t have to be torture, though, if you adopt the right mindset as you practice.
Over the years, I have learned many different standing qigong techniques from my teacher Bruce Frantzis, but when I practice what he’s taught about mindset and attitude in standing qigong, I’ve had some of my biggest breakthroughs.
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:
Here’s a round-up of guided practice aides I’ve put together in various sections of the site.
What else would help you with your current practice? Let me know here.
To download the audio files below, right click and “save as”.
Breathing
Use these basic principles as a guide for your breathing and standing practice:
Downloads:
20-Minute Guided Practice #1
20-Minute Guided Practice #2
Standing Qigong
You can progress through longer standing sessions with these guided practice mp3s or pick one on any given day that matches your practice goals:
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.
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.
Lately, I’ve been trying to do some sinking during standing qigong, in addition to other practices, like opening and closing, but I don’t get the full calming effect of the sinking. This is a problem, because it gets a lot of energy moving and something this manifests as more anger than I would like. What should I do?
Sinking the chest while raising the spine is a key energetic alignment practiced in Tai Chi to facilitate a grounding, downward flow of energy.
Martial artists use it to develop their root and anyone who “gets stuck in their head” will find some relief employing this principle.
The question is:
Do you have a good standing position to practice sinking the chest?
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
