One of the activities I’ve lately been doing, while performing the Sphere of Art, has involved doing some of the Qi gong movements I’ve learned. I was inspired to do this one day, just for the sake of seeing what if anything would happen if I started integrating qi gong into the SOA. I did this with two different Qi Gong movements, Cloud Hands (affiliate link) and Heaven and Earth Qi Gong (affiliate link) and what I found is that with one of those moments it seamlessly integrated into the SOA work, while the other did not.
Cloud Hands is a qi gong movement, where your arms and hands move from your hip to you shoulder in a diagonal direction, while you twists your legs. When I did this movement with the Sphere of Art, I found that it did not integrate into the Sphere of Art very well. Instead it felt forced and I became distracted from the Sphere of Art work, each time I tried integrating Cloud Hands into doing it. Once I would stop doing Cloud Hands and do just the Sphere of Art, the flow of the experience would naturally resume.
Heaven and Earth is a qi gong movement where you do both the macro and micro cosmic orbits. You raise your hands over your head and then bring them back over and down in front of you and then you put your hands into fists and move them down, releasing them from the fists when you bring them back to the hips. This movement proved to be conducive to do with the Sphere of Art because of how you are balancing both your internal energy and the external energies of the cosmos and the underworld. I do this movement while saying the chants and it melds seamlessly into the experiencing, enhancing the Sphere of Art, while also integrating the energies into myself.
In the morning I do Gods Playing in the Clouds, which is a six movement set. These movements are done outside of any magical work I am doing, but I have used these movements to enhance and stir the lingering energies of the Sphere of Art. Each morning I do the movements and use this to connect with The Sphere of Art, enhancing the work that was done the previous evening.
I’ve also been integrating Qi Gong into my elemental magic work. I will go for walks and start doing Bua Gua line walking, while doing some of the basic movements I’ve learned. I find that doing this meditative walk while communing with the elements or other spirits is helpful for making me more receptive to the spiritual energies and communications that occur through the connection.
I am still learning a lot about qi gong and as I continue to learn the practices I try to consider how they can be applied to magical work and what I can learn as a result about both the qi gong and magical work. I think it’s important to explore how different practices can be integrated together in a meaningful way that enhances one’s spiritual path and the discoveries that are made as a result. Trying something that is seemingly unrelated to something else you do can seem a bit risky, but I think if you know what you’re doing , it can prove to be helpful in leading to the development of your own practice and spiritual discipline.
