Somatic dissolving through posture and movement

I recently picked up the book Become as Supple as a Leopard, which is fascinating book about posture. I’ve picked it up because I’m currently doing a lot of work with my posture in my Kung Fu and Qi Gong studies. I’m paying particular attention to how straight I stand and how I position my back when I am lifting something or otherwise bending over. This is a crucial detail that can effect your physical health and your overall well being.

I’m also continuing to focus on breathing, specifically doing a continuous in and out breath during qi gong, where I breathe in as I move my arms up and breathe out as I move my arms down. While doing this breathing I focus on my lungs and diaphragm, expanding my awareness to fully use the capacity of my organs and in the process dissolve blockages.

The blockages are dissolved by using your awareness. You become aware of the blockage and you place your awareness on it, so that the blockage is gradually dissolved. Your awareness is like a waterfall flowing around the blockage, making it softer and softer until it releases on all levels of your being. While you do this releasing work you can continue doing some type of qi gong practice. The practice I typically do is either Cloud Hands, Heaven and Earth or Gods Playing in the Clouds. Each of these practices brings you into somatic alignment with your body consciousness.

I also like to do this work with standing meditation. When you stand its important to focus your awareness on the alignment of your body with your posture. Your feet should be aligned with each other like two wheels of a car or a train and facing forward. You want arms to hang at your sides comfortable. You want to slightly squat with your hips and pelvic area so that you are “seated” in your posture. Then focus on breathing, drawing the breath in and releasing it out. As you breathe, scan your body with your awareness, starting at the top of your head and slowly going down your body. Keep in mind that the work your doing is a gradual release and it may feel like you are releasing a layer at a time.

Each release of a layer of a blockage also releases with it emotional and mental stresses that are embedded in the body. The human body retains memories of traumatic events and experiences and the best way to release those memories is through this kind of release work. You may not be consciously aware of how embedded the trauma is, but by doing this release work you can gradually loosen it and then dissolve it altogether.

You can do this work through both standing meditation and moving practices. The key is to focus on your breath and specifically on using your breath with standing and movement to help you go deeper and deeper into your body as you work to release the physical, emotional and mental blockages. Eventually you’ll reach a state of great calm and emptiness and you can fully relax into that experience allowing it to lead you to even deeper states of awareness and transcendence.

Developing your Energy through Posture and Qi

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.

The Somatic benefits of martial arts

Photo by Craig Adderley: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-a-man-and-woman-doing-martial-arts-1543932/

I recently started learning Kung Fu at a local studio. I had been interested in studying Martial Arts for a long time and had gotten into Qi Gong because of that interest. While I continue to practice Qi Gong and appreciative the meditative and energetic aspects of the practice, I also wanted to branch out to a more martial form in order to better understand the differences, but also see how one practice might comment on the other.

While I definitely have gotten that benefit from starting to study Kung Fu, what I also came to appreciate about Kung Fu were the somatic benefits of the practice. As I learn a given move and enmesh it within my body memory, what stands out to me is how the practice engages me on multiple levels of knowing and consciousness. My body consciousness is engaged when I learn how to step or move a part of my body, but my memory is also engaged, both in learning the move, but also considering how I might have applied it in different situations in my life. My emotional consciousness is also engaged and I am able to work through and release emotions with the practice.

Somatic work has become a kind of buzz phrase of late in the holistic sphere of activities, but somatic studies have been around for a long time, and whenever I learn a new form of body work I look at how I can integrate it into the existing body practices I already practice. For example with Kung Fu, one of the experiences I’ve been paying more attention to is the angle of a movement. I first learned about the angle of a movement by studying the dance disciplines of Laban, who broke movements of the body into the platonic geometric shapes and showed how a given movement could be performed with these geometries in mind.

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.

Going back to basics part 1

I discuss why it can be good to go back to basics and share why I’m doing that right in my spiritual and magical practice as a result of a couple experiences I’ve had this previous week.

Learning how to do leads to why

I was recently watching a qi gong training video and the instructor made a really interesting point: Learning How to Do leads to why. The point he was making is that if you want to know the why behind an activity you are doing, you first must necessarily learn how to do the activity. It’s a salient point to make and one often missed when people get caught up in trying to understand the why, without doing anything experiential first.

I will, on occasion, have people ask me questions about a given practice, which is very reasonable to do, but at a certain point the answer becomes, “Do the work,” if the work hasn’t already been done. The reason is simple: A conceptual framework of the actual work can only take you so far. Until you apply the concepts into actual practice, you don’t know the concepts. Theory without practice can only take you so far, especially if theory becomes a crutch that keeps you away from the practice.

I apply this to my own practice by making the choice to do qi gong everyday. Learning the practice allows me to experientially open myself to the concepts and turn them into felt experiences that shape my understanding of the concepts. Each movement I perform and learn leads me deeper into the mysteries I’m exploring, allowing me to discover how to deepen my practice but also illustrating the why behind the practice.

Learning how to do something will naturally create more questions, but it will also answer a lot of your questions. The new questions can lead you deeper into the practice, and while the insights someone else offers can be valuable, the real work begins when you answer your own questions through the engagement in your practice and discover the why through the embodiment of your practice. The whys’ you discover will lead you on to richer and deeper insights, providing clarity and focus around the work.