How to cultivate your internal energy through standing meditation and qi practices. The benefit of this work can be felt through the somatic practices you embrace and apply to your life. I share how I’ve applied this work to my own practices.
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.
