Body Posture - The First Adjustment of Qigong Practice
To truly practice Qigong, there are three adjustments you should learn first, which are body, breath and spirit. These adjustments should be mastered individually and unified together when the time comes. It is believed that a practitioner who has mastered and combined them can reach the Daoist state of unification of Heaven, Human and Earth. Such practitioner can feel what it really means to practice Qigong.
This blog will be devoted to the first adjustment: the body posture and the correct strategy to learn it.
Importance of Getting the Form Right
The correct form is the foundation of any Qigong practice. Every Qigong lesson starts with learning all the details of each movement and we keep practicing through mastering and combining all these little details until we get the correct movement. But why is it so important to pay so much attention to getting the form right, you may ask. Why can’t we start feeling and guiding Qi straight away? The answer is simple. Without the proper posture, we are not able to open the proper meridian channels through which the Qi energy flows. If we move on to Qi visualization before adjusting the form first, this can result in energy stagnation. So be patient with your Qigong practice, spend as much time as you need on each step and don’t jump to the next stage until you become proficient with the prior one.
Learn Down Up, Detail by Detail
According to Master Tevia Feng, the best tactic of learning the form properly is to work on every single detail of it. Don’t try to grasp all the technicalities at once but rather focus on each posture aspect one at a time. Start with adjusting the lower body and then gradually move up, as the movement in Qigong always comes from the ground. Practice until you achieve the state when you don’t need to make any body adjustments anymore. Then, you can move to the second stage.
Maintain Connection Between Heaven and Earth
Apart from adjusting the details of the movement, try to always maintain connection between heaven and earth in every upright form. Allow the sacrum naturally drop to the earth and the Crown Point rise to the sky leaving you with a naturally straight spine. Such alignment is the fundamental posture of Qigong practice.
To sum it up, before we can start working with energy and practice Qigong at a deeper level, we should first adjust our body posture until we move naturally without thinking about the corrections. It may seem hard to do at the beginning, but step by step you will be able to grasp all the details and impress yourself with the great results you have achieved with the movements.
For more expert insights explore the rest of our Qigong blog.
