I share how you can use qi gong to help you dissolve and release emotions so that you can express them authentically or let them go. I also share how this work can enhance your magical work and help you get better results.
Somatic dissolving through posture and movement
I recently picked up the book Become as Supple as a Leopard, which is fascinating book about posture. I’ve picked it up because I’m currently doing a lot of work with my posture in my Kung Fu and Qi Gong studies. I’m paying particular attention to how straight I stand and how I position my back when I am lifting something or otherwise bending over. This is a crucial detail that can effect your physical health and your overall well being.
I’m also continuing to focus on breathing, specifically doing a continuous in and out breath during qi gong, where I breathe in as I move my arms up and breathe out as I move my arms down. While doing this breathing I focus on my lungs and diaphragm, expanding my awareness to fully use the capacity of my organs and in the process dissolve blockages.
The blockages are dissolved by using your awareness. You become aware of the blockage and you place your awareness on it, so that the blockage is gradually dissolved. Your awareness is like a waterfall flowing around the blockage, making it softer and softer until it releases on all levels of your being. While you do this releasing work you can continue doing some type of qi gong practice. The practice I typically do is either Cloud Hands, Heaven and Earth or Gods Playing in the Clouds. Each of these practices brings you into somatic alignment with your body consciousness.
I also like to do this work with standing meditation. When you stand its important to focus your awareness on the alignment of your body with your posture. Your feet should be aligned with each other like two wheels of a car or a train and facing forward. You want arms to hang at your sides comfortable. You want to slightly squat with your hips and pelvic area so that you are “seated” in your posture. Then focus on breathing, drawing the breath in and releasing it out. As you breathe, scan your body with your awareness, starting at the top of your head and slowly going down your body. Keep in mind that the work your doing is a gradual release and it may feel like you are releasing a layer at a time.
Each release of a layer of a blockage also releases with it emotional and mental stresses that are embedded in the body. The human body retains memories of traumatic events and experiences and the best way to release those memories is through this kind of release work. You may not be consciously aware of how embedded the trauma is, but by doing this release work you can gradually loosen it and then dissolve it altogether.
You can do this work through both standing meditation and moving practices. The key is to focus on your breath and specifically on using your breath with standing and movement to help you go deeper and deeper into your body as you work to release the physical, emotional and mental blockages. Eventually you’ll reach a state of great calm and emptiness and you can fully relax into that experience allowing it to lead you to even deeper states of awareness and transcendence.
How standing can transform your spiritual practice
Photo by Debbie Pan: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-standing-near-rock-in-front-of-lake-1365211/
I recently decided to reboot my qi gong practice.
I’ve been practicing qi gong for a few years now and what I have encountered is the inevitable experience where you do something long enough that you start taking what you do for granted, because you know it.
Challenge what you know by discovering what you can learn.
In the midst of all the other moments of truth I’ve been having lately, something which really rang true for me is that I need to start my qi gong practice over again. I decided to do this in two different ways.
One way involves attending a live qi gong class in Eugene and learning it with a group of people. By putting myself in a group of people I don’t know and learning what they’re learning I’m removing myself from what I know and opening myself to discovering what I can learn. And I’m making some friends too.
The other way involves starting the practice of what I know from the beginning, bringing myself back to the basics. And that brings us to this topic, where what I’m doing is standing for a half hour to an hour and just focusing on the sensation of standing, adjusting the alignment of my body and connecting with the qi (internal energy) as well as with the environment around me. It seems real simple, but its also quite profound.
The act of standing is something I think most people take for granted. I certainly have. I stand and if I’m standing I’m usually scrolling through my phone, looking at the latest distraction, when I could be taking in the environment around me and connecting with the deep wells of being within me.
The benefit of standing, with qi gong, is that it lets you feel the areas of tension and start working through them. When I stand, I’ll stand with my knees slightly bent, my pelvis gently seating itself to support the rest of my body. I rock forward from my heels to the bubbling well, where the foot connects with the toes, and then rock back to my heels, loosening up the stress by cycling the qi back and forth from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, and from the stellar energy of the cosmos to the underworld current of the earth.
When I stand with presence I let go of the everyday tension and discover the depths of the numinous by taking in everything around me and being with it. And all I’m doing is standing.
Well there’s a bit more to it than that.
When I stand I wrap the muscles of my body, grounding myself into the sensation of standing while also stabilizing myself so I can really connect with the world and everything that might come up. I let my thoughts go and become aware, simply being with whatever is there, sinking my qi into the earth and if I do it long enough, I may even start dissolving blockages, turning the icy blockages of shame and guilt and other toxic experiences into water and then space, letting them drift away, relaxing and releasing and in the process going even deeper to the hidden well of my being from which my inner genius makes itself known.
I stand and be…
Everything else can sort itself out.
