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The next Chi healing preparation is called Standing Meditation or Zhan Zhuang in Chinese, which literally means standing like a wooden post on the ground.
Now, this is a position of stillness in which your body is in the optimal posture for gathering and storing healing energy. Obviously, an exercise of that type is important for increasing your own energy reserves that is for self-healing, but it also builds a stronger Chi field between the hands. So later on, we are going to apply some of the principles of standing meditation to healing others. In order to practice standing meditation, incorporate all of the principles of Chi Gong posture that you learned in the Chi Gong stands of power. So your body is relaxed, sank into the ground, you are breathing quietly with the abdomen.
Now, here is how we actually begin the standing meditation. As you are holding the posture, slowly raise the arms up until your wrists are the height of their shoulders. I like you to imagine that when you are lifting the arms, you are lifting from the wrist. Now, what do I mean by that? Here is raising the arms as one unit. You see, there is a tendency for the shoulders to lift up. The feeling I want you to get is that the elbow are hanging downwards as though there is a weight on the tip of the elbows and your arms are lifting from two strings pulling at the wrists that will keep your shoulders relaxed which will also help you maintain belly breathing. Once your wrists are at the height of the shoulders, sink by bending the knees, sink into a rounded shape. Let us try that once again. From the Chi Gong stands of power, rotate the palms so they face behind you and imagine the arms are being lifted from the wrists. Be careful that you do not lift the shoulders while you lift the wrist because that is going to lift your breath into the upper chest instead of encouraging the slow belly breathing. Once the wrist are at the height of the shoulders, bend the knees a little bit extra and going to a rounded stance. Now, we are going to hold this posture as long as we can comfortably. If you can only hold it for five minutes that is fine, but ideally we want to work up to about 10 or even 15 minutes of standing meditation. However, do not force it, be very patient with yourself if you can only hold it for five minutes or two minutes that is fine.
The idea is to hold it and maintain a sense of inner quietness also to slow down the breathing rate. This is an ideal time to train yourself to breathe slowly, the more slowly you breathe, the more sensitive and open your mind is and the easier it is for you to sense Chi imbalance when we are working with a partner. So let us just hold the standing meditation, remember the eyes are open that will help with your balance and you are just gazing long and into the distance. If you are facing a window, allow the beautiful scene to be part of your standing. Or, if you are practicing in a space whether it is not a window, whether it is not a beautiful landscape to look at, then the eyes can just look down towards the ground and you can have a little bit more of an inner focus. But, do keep the eyes open, it will help you with balance. As you are standing, keep your attention on whatever is happening. The mind is focused on the present. You are not thinking of the future. There is nothing that you are suppose to get out of the exercise. There is no grateful results you are just being present and attentive. In fact, I like to call standing meditation restorative awareness, again, restorative awareness. If your mind does begin to wander, bring it back by quietly focusing on the breath. Just ask yourself internally without words, how am I breathing? Ask that in terms of your experience. As soon as you focus again on the breathing, your mind will become quiet and let us just practice this together.
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