Meditative Shaking and Pulsing: Part 2, Fingers, Wrists, & Elbows

The following is an excerpt from my book Sunset Tai Chi: Simplified Tai Chi for Relaxation and Longevity. 

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Last week, we introduced you all to meditative shaking. If you haven't read up on that yet, go back and do so! This week, we will go into detail with the first several exercises. This will be especially helpful for anyone who does not easily feel a mind-body connection, particularly when they first begin doing exercise. The tiny details of stretching each body part in all possible angles are only a guide for you to develop your own body awareness. The ultimate goal is to completely loosen every part of the body deeply during this shaking, while maintaining a relaxed meditative mind.

Fingers

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Start with the gentle movements of pulsing and some pumping through the ligaments in the fingers. Remember to loosen the fingers and gently move the wrists. You want to notice the sensation throughout the joints as part of the journey to develop awareness and sensitivity. How do you do that? You put your mind in the fingers while you are moving the wrists. Pay attention to the various sensations throughout the joints.

For example, if I put my mind in the fingers, the first sensation that calls my attention is the thumb because it is the biggest joint. And then when I put my mind in my thumbs, I can feel that my left thumb is looser than my right thumb. This is a significant part of the exercise. Put your mind in the joint, and concentrate on each sensation. Over time, you will even be able to feel the difference between the smallest joints: the pinkies.

Of course, at the same time, you want to take deep breaths through the nose while your mind is focusing in the joints. Remember, you need to be between awake and asleep and in deep relaxation in order to gain even more from this meditation. 

Wrists

Now we move to the next joint, the wrist. To isolate the pulsing or pumping in the wrist, focus on the elbows. If you can integrate more of your skills, put your mind in the lower energy center.

Some joints have more varied movements than others. The wrist has more range of motion than the fingers. When moving the wrist, notice the wide angles and various directions it can move: forward and backward, left to right, up and down, circles, twisting, and rotation. Feel or sense the difference between the right and left wrists, and between forward, backward, and sideways movement.

Elbows

Then we shake the elbows and move the shoulders in order to create the gentle shaking, pulsing, or pumping in them. The elbows only have one major angle of motion, so creating gentle movement through them is simpler than with the fingers and wrists.

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That's all for this week! Come back next week for an in-depth guide to shaking the shoulders, and finding the Yin and Yang layers in the shoulders for this exercise.

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Meditative Shaking and Pulsing: Part 1, an Introduction

The following is an excerpt from my book Sunset Tai Chi: Simplified Tai Chi for Relaxation and Longevity. 

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Western exercise starts with warming up by increasing the heart rate to saturate the muscles with blood and oxygen. Therefore, we can say that Western warm-ups focus first on the heart and muscles. On the other hand, Eastern exercise starts by charging and igniting the energetic system and then the rest of the body. You can charge the energetic system in more than one way.

One of the ways to jumpstart the energetic system is by creating a gentle movement in the joints or in the ligaments. This skill of isolating the ligaments and creating movements in them is actually part of our natural day-to-day physical behavior. It happens whenever we use our arms and hands. It is helpful to refine this skill and train our ability to isolate this skill in whatever part of the body we choose. 

In order to achieve this isolation, we need to first understand the various physical motions, and second, be able to put into actions these motions: pulsing, pumping, and shaking. Each of these words is important because each one affects the body and the energy differently, which creates different sensations and experiences.

Pulsing can be created though gentle up and down movements or gentle in and out motions, and with small side to side movements. It is a great way to loosen up. Pumping is a stronger movement than pulsing, although the actions of up and down, in and out, and side to side are similar. Shaking combines side to side first and then some in and out motion with a gentle up and down. All three have a gentle rotation that can be added to each one while they are happening.

You need to understand that each one is different and over time, you will experience the differences as well. This exercise (meditative shaking) will activate your energetic system, remove some stagnation, and can also serve as a good warm-up. Even if you only have five minutes, doing this meditation will go a long way.

When you shake, you may notice that the fingers are tense. This next piece of information is essential for loosening this tension. Move the joint above the one you want to isolate. For example, if you want to loosen the finger joints, shake the wrist, but put your mind on the fingers. Try to isolate this gentle movement in your joints, rather than moving the muscles or tendons. To loosen the wrist, move the elbow. Remember, your jaw is a joint as well. When practiced correctly, you will begin to feel patches of warmth in your joints and some warmth in your internal organs or lower energy center.

Next week, we will give you the how-to for shaking the upper limb joints: fingers, wrists, elbows, and shoulders!

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Cooling Down Exercise: Surfing the Breath

From my book, Sunset Tai Chi:

The breath is a tool to achieve our goals and needs. Sometimes we use slow and deep breaths and other times we use fast and shallow ones. We can use the lungs differently according to the different goals we have.

Breathing is the method we use to bring oxygen into our blood stream that nourishes every cell in our body, but the breath is also the banana we use to capture the monkey mind. The breathing in qigong is considered one of the tools to affect our ability to be 'watery' or 'fiery.'

Fast and hard exhalations lead us to be fire, and deep, long, quiet inhalation will lead us to be water. If you do too much of either for too long, you will lose balance, and it can have negative effects on a mental or physical level. But if you know how and when to use this principle, you will be able to benefit tremendously from it and achieve balance in both mind and body.

This first breathing exercise is the simple and safe way to start this journey into the science of breath. It will lead you to the first step of being relaxed or what Dr. Herbert Benson refers to as the relaxation response or what I consider a Buddhist path. But remember, this is just a first step or, as previously mentioned, the relaxation is a doorway to a palace full of other interesting rooms that I consider the Taoist path.

Surfing the breath is the simplest method of achieving deep relaxation. First, close your eyes. Sit in an erect posture with a straight spine. Do not collapse your spine. When the spine is collapsed, surfing the breath will still work on a mental level, but you will not get as much air because the lungs are compressed. Surfing the breath will help you calm the monkey mind. Follow the air through the nostrils down though the windpipe, deep into both lungs, in and out with long, quiet, and peaceful inhalation. Your inhalation and exhalation should be, eventually, equal in length, unless you have other specific goals.

After a few minutes, you will be able to determine which of your nostrils is wider. Our bodies are not symmetrical. One of our nostrils is more open than the other. Move down, with your mind, into the lungs and try to determine which lung is longer and which lung is wider. One lung has three lobes and the other lung has two.

I really enjoy the moment when my students tell me they do not know which lung has three lobes and which has two. Not knowing this fact allows them to experience the air moving into the nostrils and the sensation of air moving into the lungs, and then to determine from the sensation, not from looking at an anatomy book, which lung has the three lobes and which lung has the two.

Sometimes the lung that is wider has the two lobes, which makes some people think that it is the longer lung. This 'wide' sensation that the mind experiences throws them off, and they will swear that one is the lung that has the three lobes. But really it is just a stronger sensation in that lung that confuses them and makes them think that one is the longer lung--feel as opposed to real.

As long as you follow the air in and out of your lungs, that is, surf the breath, you will be able to quiet the mind from excess thoughts. Remember we have, on average, eighteen thoughts per second. Relax, reduce the number of thoughts, and bring the mind to the brain activity level between being awake and asleep.

Until next time, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Correct Alignment in the Standing Posture

Welcome back, mind-body students!

This week, we continue our discussion of achieving correct alignment with a video about upper body alignment while standing.

I call this technique "Crane Flies." As I show in the video, you can practice this standing against the wall first in order to get a good feel for what the correct alignment of the spine and neck is. Then, when you feel like you have the posture committed to memory, you can step away from the wall and practice while free-standing.

Remember to touch the wall with your heels, sacrum, shoulder blades, and back of the head. Your lumbar spine (lower back above your hips) should not be touching the wall. You should be able to pass your hand between your lower back and the wall.

The great thing about this exercise is that you can feel, as you do the movement, which parts of your back are tightest. That way you can determine what to stretch next to release your skeleton from being a prisoner of soft tissue.

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Correct Alignment in the Sitting Posture

Welcome back mind-body students!

This week, I want to share a video with you about correct alignment. Correct alignment is so important to a successful mind-body practice. In a similar way to how isolating the joints allows you to achieve better health outcomes during your tai chi and exercise, correct alignment allows you to achieve better health outcomes both during your mind-body practice, and when you are sitting at your desk, driving your car, walking, or doing anything really!

The first thing you need to study is this: there is a difference between what your body is designed to do, and what it probably tends to do. Things like your head craning forward, your shoulders staying shrugged, your chest and back slumping down and so on are all examples of bad tendencies our body has.

Once you learn to recognize when your body is doing those bad tendencies, you can practice correcting them. A great way to practice that is by focusing on what I call the "Major Up and Down Forces".

The three "Up" forces, which are areas of your body that should feel like they are lifting up when you are in correct alignment, are the lumbar spine (lower back), thoracic spine (middle/upper back), and the top of your head.

The three "Down" forces, which are areas of your body that should feel as relaxed as possible (without drooping!) when you are in correct alignment. They are the abdominal muscles, the shoulders, and the face.

Ideally, through practice with this video and my face meditation video, you get to the point where you can experience all six major forces at the same time and achieve correct alignment.

I have even more advice in the video, so don't miss it!

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

New Course Release: Reduce Stress & Make Better Decisions!

Another week has gone by on the blog, and this week we have a special announcement!

I am putting together a series of short Udemy courses called Martial Meditations. They are aimed at helping professionals that work in high-stakes and high-stress environments improve their work and their health.

This week we released the first installment: Reduce Stress & Make Better Decisions.

In this installment, you will see the new format for these courses. The first section is a series of techniques to help you warm up. Then, there is the main meditation that is the part of the course that you will try to master. If you are short on time, you can simply practice this part, which is what will help you achieve the reduced stress and the better decision making the most. Last, there is a section to help you cool down and integrate all that the meditation did for you, rather than go right back to being stressed.

Martial Meditations: Reduce Stress & Make Better Decisions is on sale for the next 4 days for only $13.99. After that it goes back up to its regular price, so go grab it as soon as you can!

Tell your friends and family about it too! This will be the first of several courses in the Martial Meditations series. Each one focused on helping you achieve a different set of mental skills to further your professional development.

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!