Chinese Healing Exercises (29 page)

The basic practice follows the same general pattern as the abdominal massage above. That is, you are going to make a large clockwise circle around your abdomen. After you've warmed your hands by rubbing them together, place your right palm on the right side of your belly, and your left palm on the left side. Feel for the warmth penetrating your skin, and see if you can follow that warmth more deeply inside your body. Use your mind as much as your physical sensitivity to accomplish this. Then, keeping that sense of deep penetration under your hands as best you can, circle both hands in a clockwise circle around your belly. Only one hand will be able to remain in contact for the entire circle, and it doesn't matter whether you choose the left or right, but for this description we'll select the right hand. In a clockwise circle, your right hand will move up and then to the left under your ribs as your left hand moves down and to the right. When your right hand nearly reaches the 9 o'clock position, your left hand will nearly reach the 3 o'clock position. At that point, lift your left hand and let it lightly brush over your right wrist as you continue the circle, keeping your right hand in contact with your belly at all times. As soon as your left hand crosses your right wrist, let it once again contact your belly. When you get good at this practice, the energetic connection from your left hand to your belly will not break, even though the physical connection does. To help maintain good digestion and elimination, do a minimum of twelve circles per day. There is no set upper limit of repetitions for this practice, so if you enjoy it feel free to do as many as you'd like. As your hands pass over all the organs discussed in the abdominal massage practice, this benefits all of those organs energetically.

There are a few ways to practice the next variation, but they all have in common a downward focus on the centerline of your body, so you will only need to learn one method
to accomplish that. Stomach qi naturally wants to descend. It does its job of breaking down proteins and turning everything you eat into a soupy liquid, and then sends that
down into the small intestine for further digestion. Sometimes, though, a person may overeat, eat something that disagrees with them, drink too much alcohol, get emotionally upset, or become ill, and then the stomach qi moves upward, in the wrong direction. The Chinese call this rebellious qi. Common symptoms include belching, acid reflux, nausea, and in extreme cases, vomiting. This is a practice to restore the normal flow of stomach qi and alleviate those distressing symptoms.

As in the basic practice, warm your hands and place them on the sides of your belly. Using your mind, feel the warmth penetrate your body deeply. This time you will not make clockwise circles. Instead, move both hands upward along the side of your belly, and circle to the midline only, one hand on your breastbone, and one just below it on your solar plexus. It does not matter which hand is in either position. Then slide your hands down the midline of your belly, one hand staying above the other. Use your mind even more to encourage the downward flow of qi while moving your hands downward. Move both hands to just below your navel and part them, right hand moving right and left hand moving left. Again circle up the sides of your belly, minimizing the energetic connection during the upward movement, until your hands once again reach your breastbone and solar plexus. Repeat as many times as is necessary for you to feel some relief and restore the sense of normal descending stomach qi.

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Eleven

Whole Body

1. Beginning A Practice Session: Whole Body Vibration

Vibration practices are related to paidagong, working in a similar way and with a similar rationale. They are used to break down small or large regions of energetic obstruction, that is, qi stagnation, where qi has become condensed and unusable by the body, and which frequently becomes pathogenic, the root cause of most pain and many diseases. This is accomplished by introducing a different waveform, another frequency of energy from the vibration (or the tap of paidagong) created by a physical movement and guided by the mind into the regions of condensed qi.

In pockets of qi stagnation, energy and fluids no longer move or are restricted and move minimally. Some of the more obvious causative factors include trauma and illness. Even when the trauma heals and the illness resolves, there may be lingering smaller areas where stagnation remains, largely unnoticed. A few other less obvious factors include prolonged inactivity, including sedentary work that is not balanced with adequate exercise; certain emotional states, especially if prolonged; worry and obsessive thinking; certain environmental factors, primarily cold and damp; improper diet; and the side effects of some prescription and recreational drugs. All of these can cause qi to constrict and stagnate, quietly accumulating, contributing to assorted imbalances, until a “critical mass” of sorts is reached, which is when physical symptoms manifest, and then a more rapid degeneration may begin.

Stagnant qi becomes dead, incapable of nourishing life, gradually leaching the life and vitality from surrounding healthy tissue. Conventional exercise, while beneficial in many ways, is often not enough to reverse this process. Exercise will make a person feel better for a time because it causes more qi and blood to move through the healthy parts of the body, but it is not designed to access and dissolve the unhealthy accumulations. If it did, professional athletes would be among the most long-lived members of our culture, but in fact their life span, on average, is shorter than that of the general population. Most professional sports involve impact, the very type of trauma or microtrauma that creates qi stagnation. The incapacitating and sometimes lethal martial art dim mak makes use of this phenomenon.

The whole body vibration you will learn here works well and is very easy to do. It can be practiced by itself at any time of the day, for brief periods of time or as long as you'd like. One of my teachers, a lineage holder from Emei mountain, told me that the Daoist monks from Emei say, “One thousand vibrations a day cures one hundred diseases.” At about three vibrations a second, you can easily do one thousand vibrations in about six minutes. You can do it while watching TV or listening to music. You can also do this at the beginning of the other self-care exercises. The vibrations shake things loose and free things up, and you can use self-care exercises to reorganize that loose energy in specific healthful ways.

Scientific Rationale for Vibration Practices

Whole body vibration benefits the entire body musculature, internal organs, and
glands. The rapid firing of muscle spindle cells from whole body vibration causes a neuromuscular response provoking physiological changes within the brain and throughout the body. It is believed that the vibrations may additionally de-imprint the cellular memory of trauma and injury and reimprint positive, healthy information.

The health benefits of vibration acknowledged by Western medical science are varied. In animals, mechanically induced vibration produces a significant reduction in body fat along with increased new bone growth. In humans, bone density is increased, slowing or reversing osteoporosis. Elderly populations experience an improvement in (nonspecific) physical function, equilibrium, vitality, the quality of walking, a reduction in pain, and an improvement in general health. These results are typically achieved using vibration for just four one-minute sessions three times a week for six weeks in total.

Among the general population, some other areas of benefit include athletic and other physical performance, due to whole body vibration's ability to produce a positive influence on skeletal muscle, applied force, fatigue, oxygen uptake, and balance; a healthful normalization of hormone production and other aspects of metabolic activity; blood circulation; and pain management.

Because animals can't be trained to practice vibration themselves, and because Western science is more technologically oriented, a vibrating plate was used to mechanically induce vibration to achieve these observable benefits. That also allowed for the vibrations to be standardized and repeatable regarding vibration frequency and intensity, and duration of application. Scientists with differing research agendas and different affiliations around the country and world each had their preferred range of applied frequencies and intensities, and each purported to give the best results. Accordingly, such plates are now commercially available, many producing different frequencies and intensities than their counterparts from other companies, ranging in price between $500 and $10,000! Daoists have been using vibration for thousands of years with no mechanical assistance, and with excellent and comparable results. Appreciate the science, but save your money. And of course, do the following practice.

Method

Stand with your feet parallel, shoulder or hip width apart, arms hanging loosely at your sides. Make sure your knees are slightly bent, not locked. This is your starting position. Now, drop your weight almost as though your were getting ready to spring off a diving board or bounce on a trampoline, lowering your butt just a couple of inches at most. It's okay if your knees move forward some, but it should be fairly minimal, not like you're doing knee bends. Feel for your body's natural springiness, and allow that to bounce you back up to your starting position. It may take a few times for you to feel that springy bounce-back. Once you have it, however, it becomes very easy, and you simply bounce while standing in place. No part of your feet should leave the ground. Establish a comfortable rhythm. If you want to do three vibrations a second, you can count like you might have done as a child to gauge the passage of seconds, “1-Missis-sippi, 2-Missis-sippi, 3-Missis-sippi,” and so on, bouncing with each grouping of syllables. On days when this might be your
only
practice, go for 1,000 vibrations (bounces), or about six minutes of bouncing. If three bounces a second is too fast for you, adjust accordingly and bounce for a correspondingly longer time.

While you bounce, strive to allow every part of your body to be loose and relaxed. Your arms may swing a little, your torso may sway a bit, and your head may bob forward and back or side to side. All of this should only happen naturally from the bounce; do not try to make it happen. Your shoulders should bounce only from the upward wave generated by the springiness in your body. If you can keep your jaw relaxed, your teeth will chatter with each bounce. You should not force or induce any part of your body to move, aside from how the bounce makes your body move. Any force or intentional movement will generate some amount of muscle tension. If you hold your arms in any position besides keeping them loose at your sides, you use muscles to make that happen. Here, you want to release muscle tension throughout your entire body.

Use your mind to take inventory of your body as you bounce, and see what body parts or regions are not moving, or not moving well. You may notice tension in your low back or your eyes. As you become more sensitive, you may notice that your liver or your kidneys are not moving. You can use your mind to guide the energy of the wave through those regions, to loosen them and allow them to vibrate with the bounce. Ultimately, that's how you want to do it, but if you initially find it difficult to do that with your mind alone, you can try a few other physical things to help. Make the intensity of the vibration stronger. That is, lower yourself just a little more so your bounce back becomes more powerful, creating a stronger vibrational wave through your entire body. See if you are favoring one leg over the other, and first try to make sure your legs are bouncing equally. Conversely, it's possible you may need to favor one side more than the other. If you notice that your liver isn't moving well, for example, you may need to drop more weight down your right leg so the corresponding energetic wave rises more strongly on your right side.

There are many possible variations to this practice. A teacher might instruct you to hold your arms in a particular position to achieve a specific result—there are reasons to purposely block energy flow to a body part, or to shunt more energy to a body part. You might be instructed to chant specific syllables to create another level of vibration using sound to target a particular organ sensitive to that vibration. For general purposes and overall good health, the above practice covers a lot of territory and is the best option.

2. Waking the Qi: Dragon Playing with a Pearl

This is the only exercise in this book to specifically sensitize you to feeling qi. As such, it can serve as a simple entry point to true qigong practices, and can be used to enhance the benefits of the other exercises as you become more adept with it. “Holding a
qi
ball” is frequently taught to Chinese children as a game, inspiring one of its more fanciful names, Dragon Playing with a Pearl.

At first glance, this may seem like an exercise for the hands and arms, but awakening the qi influences the whole body, moving qi from head to toe and even outside of your physical body. It does not add to the total qi your body has, but you may feel energized from this practice; it can free up qi that has been bound up, previously unusable by you. This can also engender a feeling of peace and tranquility, and can minimize or eliminate pain, especially if caused by qi stagnation or obstruction.

Your qi may be first felt most easily outside the body, usually between the hands. The most sensitive spot to feel qi is located in the center of each palm, and is called
laogong,
the eighth point on the Pericardium meridian used in acupuncture. Laogong
translates as “labor palace,” which according to Arnie Lade in his book
Images and Functions
, suggests “the point's possible role in physical, mental, and spiritual revitalization.” Laogong is such a sensitive point that most people will feel
some
sensation there almost immediately once they've focused on it, a great way to allow even a skeptic the chance to feel the presence of qi.

Method

Stand with your feet parallel, shoulder to hip width apart. Your knees should have a slight bend in them, straight but not locked. Keep your spine straight but not rigid, with your chin tucked to straighten your neck, and the tip of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth, just behind your teeth. Keep your breath full, even, and regular throughout the practice. Rub your palms together until they are comfortably warm, and raise your arms to the height of your chest. The arms are rounded wide in front of the body, as though hugging a large tree, which helps to open all the meridian pathways within your arms and between your arms and chest. Move the palms close to each other, facing each other as though holding a tennis ball, or a slightly larger ball, between them
(
Fig 11.1
).
Your eyes should remain open and softly focused at a central point between the palms. This is because, although qi may first be easiest felt inside the body if the eyes are closed, here you are trying to feel qi being projected outside of the body between your hands. Wherever the visual attention is placed, the mind is inclined to follow. As the mind is made to focus between the hands, you will become increasingly aware of the initially subtle sensations that accompany the presence of the qi. The mind directs the qi.

Qi sensations are many and varied, can change from time to time in any one person, and may even be unique to a particular individual. Some of the most common descriptions include the sensation of magnetic attraction or repulsion, a feeling of gentle or rushing wind or water, a mildly electric buzz or tingle, or a shift in temperature (either warmer or cooler). Sometimes there may be a definable kinesthetic sensation as much as a mood shift, an emotional shift, or a feeling of being high, in a pleasantly altered state of consciousness. These latter presentations indicate that qi is moving somewhere inside the brain, accessing aspects of the mind. In fact any number of sensations are possible, and none are necessarily wrong. It's also common for a person to feel different sensations at different practice times. The differing sensations may be due to different levels of sensitivity and accomplishment, the state of health the body is in during the practice session, the quality or quantity of qi being emitted or sensed, the intention of the practitioner, the immediate environment (which influences qi), current emotional state, the way a particular individual is energetically “wired,” or combinations of the above.