From the Section - 'Working With The Breath'
"One eventual goal of our standing meditation is Whole Body Breathing. Although, once this is achieved, that is, hardwired and happening on it’s own, the sense of breath will seem to go away as our super-refined focus becomes fully absorbed in feeling the Chi, both inside the body and out.
Here is a good method to begin unifying the breath. Start by breathing into the upper back and lower belly (Dan Tien area) simultaneously. As you continue to relax, you will notice the breath in the upper back will seem to fill more and more downward while the breath in the lower belly seems to expand upward."
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From the Section - 'Working With Injuries'
"We all enter into the practice of Zhan Zhuang having sustained at least some sort of injury, even if it has apparently healed by itself. When injuries occur, especially anything fairly serious, the body goes into a balancing act and adapts. This means that new energetic and nerve patterns are created in the body’s effort to heal itself.
What happens unfortunately, is that these patterns, which are supposed to be temporary modifications of the original matrix during the healing process, often become fixed. When this occurs, these temporary patterns become embedded in the subconscious and as such are no longer easily accessible through conscious manipulation.
This is the brilliance of the standing exercise, the ability to, over time, access these aberrant subconscious patterns and indeed correct them, meaning return them to their original matrix, prior to injury."
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From the Section - 'Thoughts On Sinking The Chi'
"The first time I felt this in a profound way, I was standing in a Wu Style (Northern Wu) posture. One moment I felt normal and the next it felt as though I had completely bent my knees such that I was very close to the ground.
When I opened my eyes to check, I was astounded to find that my overall posture had only sunk about an inch in total. What I had actually felt was the majority of my Chi descending step-by-step into the ground."
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From the Section - 'Two Tai Chi Cultivation Postures'
"In traditional Tai Chi training, a number of postures besides the Wuji posture of Commencement were used for standing cultivation practice. These include the familiar ‘Bird’s Tail’ movements Peng, Lu, Ji and An plus Dan Pien - Single Whip.
Since many readers will be familiar with Tai Chi’s most basic postures, I have decided to present two additional Tai Chi cultivation postures they might not know about. These two postures can be used to cultivate all the basic energies of Tai Chi.
The first posture is done in the standard forward Bow Stance. It requires quite a lot of flexibility to execute fully and so is often begun with a far less pronounced stretch of the back arm. The amazing thing about this posture is that as the body hollows and opens up, it does so in a manner that naturally generates spiral energy. The potential for spiral energy actually comes from the unwinding of the tautly stretched tissue, especially in the hips and Kua."
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From The Section - 'Unifying The Body'
'The Importance Of Hardwiring'
"Hardwiring is the mechanism that enables the linkage of the many parts of the body to a central location, in this case, the low Dan Tien. Later, in advanced practices, this central focus can be in other areas like the middle and upper Dan Tien or even multiple regions. But for health and indeed martial power, for now we’ll focus exclusively on the low Dan Tien or navel area. This method is most suitable to Zhan Zhuang as well as the other internal arts.
Judicious use of hardwiring allows us to actualize the embedded layers of coordination available in each posture or movement. On a physical level, what we do is focus on one particular part of the body at a time in relationship to a central point, in order to create what some have called a dimmer switch."
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From the Section - 'Control vs. Letting Go'
"Zhan Zhuang has two essential aspects to it. The first of these, maintaining control, stems from the Taoist Fire path. The other is letting go and trusting. This finds its origin in the Taoist Water method.
To understand the fire path, we look at the behavior of fire itself. Fire basically burns things up. And the hotter the fire gets, the more fuel it requires. Fire can also be erratic, witness a forest fire which starts in one location and then suddenly jumps to another. Or a fire can begin at one point, then fan out, igniting everything around it.
Water on the other hand, reacts somewhat more consistently. It can drip steadily so as to one day wear a hole through a rock. Or when more abundant, it can flow steadily like a river, or race and tumble like a set of rapids. Water can also be like the sea and ebb and flow or well up into an enormous wave."
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New Excerpt From Inside Zhan Zhuang
From the Section - 'Initial Adjustments'
The Kua and Hanging Basket Effect
"When one has put in enough
time and sufficiently opened the body, it becomes possible to create a feeling
of pelvic suspension or the ‘Hanging Basket Effect.’ The basket is the Kua and what it hangs from is the Psoas and surrounding muscles.
When done correctly one
feels almost a floating effect in the Kua and a sensation of
great ease while at the same time there is a solid energetic connection and root. The effect itself is
primarily based on the ability to elongate the Psoas muscles and relax
them towards the back, along with the Quadratus Lumborum, the
muscles of the buttocks and the sacral
region."
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New Excerpt From Inside Zhan Zhuang
From the Section - Note To Older Practitioners
The Body Wants To Heal
"If you let it, the body knows what to do and will lead you if you surrender to it’s ‘suggestions.’ This means that even if your alignments aren’t ramrod perfect, don’t judge yourself too harshly.
Over time the body itself will begin to ‘suggest’ changes and if you let it, initiate corrections. Therefore, it behooves us to cultivate a sensitivity to these mostly subtle impulses.
The body has an innate wisdom if we listen. There’s an old saying in Chinese Medicine, “The body wants to heal itself.” This means that the main part of our job in each session is just to show up!"
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