I like this explanation of the Yi Jin Jing excersizes
Gave a good place to start off with how to go about where and how to start physically doing Qi Gong excersizes for me at least.
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If you are interested in qigong then I highly recommend Anthony Korahais’ 5-Phase Routine. It can be done in less than 15 minutes and acts as a safety mechanism that protects you from deviations caused by incorrect practice. My favorite part is that it doesn’t contradict with any other qigong style (you can literally plug in any qigong exercise you see on youtube into the 5PR and enhance the benefits of them).
I might write a guide on how to practice it one day but for now you can learn it for $10 from his book on amazon (Sorry! Something went wrong!)
And here’s more information on it:
P.S. I personally don’t recommend practicing the Microcosmic Orbit on your own until you are sensitive to qi energy (or at least able to feel it). This allows you to feel any internal injuries you might get before they become serious.
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Also: stand with your knees slightly bent, chin a little “in” i.e. towards your neck, lower back protruding as if you were about to sit. That’s a basic/standard posture.
Now raise your arms with bent elbows, hands at the sides of your faces with the palms forward and walk around opening and closing your hands.
Then stop, returning to the posture, raise your left hand bringing the palm in front of you, turn your upper body to the left (keep your hand in front of your face), then return in the “normal” direction. Lower your arm while turning your hand so that the palm is forward, meanwhile raise your right arm and let your palms face each other. Now look at your right palm, basically almost like your hands are mirror, turn to the right etc.
3 repetitions; then rotate 3 times your shoulders clockwise and counterclockwise.
These are some exercises from Paul Lam’s warming up.
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So just to confirm, it is basically like the middle pillar energy circulation, but just for the torso, correct? The instructions I read said to inhale through the perineum, up the back, and then to exhale from the shoulders down the front of the torso. Is all of this correct?
The Precious Eight, also known as the 8 Pieces of Brocade. It’s a popular moving Wu Dan form with some simple variations.
Don’t bother with the microcosmic order in the beginning. It’s not necessary. Learning to properly regulate the breath is more important.
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No, I’m not certain but I think Kabbalah is a different system, it doesn’t deal will with the mechanics of the meridians and relies too heavily on a limited kind of symbolism to get the job done. It doesn’t seem to be an adequate or complete energy system and rather than mix and match, given everything I need is in qigong, I don’t worry about other systems.
As @DarkestKnight said, you have to build up - I mentioned the microcosmic orbit as a good milestone, because it needs you to get the fundamentals of breathing and reading your own energy first, if you can run it you have all that and so you’re golden. These are really quite simple and you can probably already do it and just hadn’t noticed. Once you have that if there’s only one qigong exercise you could do for the rest of your life I’d say the microcosmic orbit was it.
To run the microcosmic orbit means you know:
- How to cultivate (breathe in) qi from the cosmos
- How to collect and concentrate that qi in lower dan tian and feel it
- How to mentally find and read the main points on the du mai meridians
- How to move your qi from point to point through these meridians
Well that’s not quite what I do. I do:
- Full body breathing to Lower Dan tian first. x9
- Breathe normally and run that collected energy through the microcosmic orbit from lower dan tian down to hui yin, then up and around. x3 - x9 It runs as fast or slow as it likes.
- I may continue to cultivate while running the orbit, breathing it into lower dan tian usually.
I do this at the start of every ritual and meditation I do.
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Just tried it. Quite remarkable how the circulation “zones you in”. It is much more of an “active” feeling that I thought it would be.
I’m guessing most of the time our chi just gets randomly dispersed.
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Yes, and there were specific movements that teacher led not as in dancing but everyone practicing same movements as a group.
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Not exactly… It resides not in the body, but in the qi body which consists of the organs and meridians. It may not disperse itself all that evenly depending on your lifestyle but it will try to stay balanced.
It’s worth knowing that qi is considered sentient and intelligent, and when not directed tends to go where it’s needed, kind of like water finding it’s level.
E.g., This is a problem if it thinks it’s needed where it’s really not, like, say the kidneys because you are afraid and stressed often… but you don’t really want a buildup of qi in the kidneys long term as this is an imbalance that can lead to sickness. Emotions can generate qi in the qi body and vice versa, and this can manifest down into the physical. This, in qigong, is the mechanism for all disease: dysregulation and imbalance in the qi body.
But it can also get habituated into an area, so that if you are actively trying to change the qi in an area after it’s been a certain way for a long time, you might have to repeat a few times to get it settled. Similarly “new qi” being given to an area can flow away and dissipate and need to be repeatedly put there to keep it in place and let it get settled into that new norm.
This makes practice quite forgiving, but at the same time it needs some consistency to make bigger more permanent changes.
Finally, when working with qi, bring up feelings of joy and love, party because they relax you, and any tension in the muscles partially blocks the flow of qi, and partly because it responds to that feeling very strongly and easily, so you get bigger effects faster.
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So too much chi is the cause of disease, not a lack of chi. Thats interesting. I would have assumed it to be the opposite.
Will it most likely cause inflammation, or is it much more general than that?
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It’s both and more. Imbalance of qi is the cause of disease. That can be too much, too little, or the wrong kind of qi, too yang too yin, or elementally imbalanced for the associated organs and their related meridians.
No inflammation is a manifestation in the physical body, which is not the qi body. Imbalanced qi will cause different effects and how that manifests physically depends on where and how.
You would have to read the qi, but generally, inflammation is hot and may be too yang. But it blocks qi so the qi amount could be normal or weak, it’s just too darn yang (hot) for the area. To fix this you can add yin qi or remove yang qi.
But inflammation from arthritis often feels cold and windy, so in this case you can remove the wind and add warm qi to balance it back to normal.
You have to be dynamic and read the individual situation before making a decision on treatment.
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tai chi is the movement without the internal energy, its like doing boxing or a sport. QIGONG is the actual art. I followed a mornign stretch for two weeks, that healed my back, knees and hips…I’ll link below.
I’m curious as to what you said about the need for mental direction. I’ve been doing zhan zhuang - standing like a post/tree - for years with great results, but I usually stay away from mental direction because I find it hard to keep the visualisation going “in a straight line”, if you know what I mean.
Would you say that mentally directing the qi is superior?
It’s depends what you’re trying to do. In all cases I’d say you want to have clear intention to get the most out of the exercise. I think if you want to master qigong you have to get intentional about it, learn to read and move your qi to your design.
For moving meditations this is also true but less critical, because the body is involved and the movement moves the qi, but you still want to be mindful about your practice… It’s not beneficial to say, plan your grocery list while ostensibly meditating.
This is a great training posture that opens the joints and allows qi to flow. Without intentional direction this is still good and healthy and can help clear blocks. This is not training your qi as in qigong, as you are not directing it to move intentionally or cultivating it to build it. I think what’s happening here is you’re relying on it’s sentience to do you good and basically ‘getting out of it’s way’ in this posture.
For still meditations like the microcosmic orbit the whole thing is directed by your mind, sitting or standing. Beginners will not run the microcosmic orbit unless your mind directs the energy to do that. Usually it takes some work, it’s thin, it’s harder to get through some points than others etc. I’ve heard that when this has been practiced for a long time people can notice the orbit running by itself, which is ideal, but it usually takes work to reach that. I haven’t got there myself for sure.
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I was letting my mind wander during zhan zhuang for a long time until I found out that just observing the feeling of the qi while holding the posture, as you’d observe thoughts in meditation, maginifies and expands the qi.
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Once proficient in the macro and micro cosmic orbit, what practice would you recommend next?
That. Keep doing it. The perversion is within your energy now not with techniques.
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My energy is perverted? I didn’t think it was THAT obvious 
Haha whoops! Freudian slip… that should have read “progression”. 
Hahaha ok that makes more sense