Spinal spirals

One of my favorite, most fundamental exercises is the spinal spirals. My teacher taught these as part of our our warm up... yeah I find them so subtle and helpful, I spend a lot of time in this exercise and feel like I could do it every day for years to come and still be surprised by what I find.

Even though all my movements stem from my dan tien, my focus in this variation starts at the bottom of my feet. Energy coming from ground, through my feet, dual spirals of awareness wrapping around each leg. Serpents of consciousness wrap upwards around ankles, knees... and join in the hip/tailbone area.

Focal point of awareness spirals up and around each vertebrae... there will probably be a physical spiraling motion... if this feels natural, go with the, yet let the awareness lead the movement... it is often tempting to exaggerate external movements in an attempt to amplify the internal awareness, yet really this must be done the other way around. Intensify your internal awareness, and relax your body to allow for whatever external movement is needed.

Continue spiraling your attention up to your thoracic spine, around each cervical vertebrae in your neck to the base of your skull. Here, I do different things on different days... often I will relax my attention and begin again at my feet. Sometimes I will continue for a few more spirals around my brain, through the top of my head and out into the universe.

Alternate clockwise/counterclockwise spirals... these reveal shockingly different things!

Remember... where the mind goes, the qi will follow.

Simultaneous awareness

One of the key properties of active awareness is a simultaneous presence with as much of my body as possible. Often I will focus and get lost in one of my "problem areas"... perhaps my neck, shoulder, arm... and lose touch with my core areas. Disconnecting from my spine sabotages any work I'm trying to do in my arms... just as disconnecting from my dan tien and hip area detract from spinal work.

My daily practice starts around my dan tien, moving to include hips, spine, neck, shoulders... including larger swaths of my body. As I expand my field of awareness, I constantly find myself reconnecting with the core areas. A useful way to frame this method for me is one of progressive context: I'm aware of my spine in the context of a thorough hip presence... I'm aware of my cervical vertebrae in the context of a thorough spinal presence... I'm aware of my elbow in the context of a thorough shoulder awareness.

I am always surprised by how quickly I specialize/focus my awareness on one body part, and how quickly my hips (for example) will tense once I've removed my attention. Stiff limbs/locked joints are anathema to healthy qi movement, and cultivating a simultaneous awareness of my entire body is an ongoing challenge... and a meditative practice in itself.

Qigong stretching

This is my term for integrating simple stretches/nerve glides with a qigong practice. Basically, exploring full ranges of motion within the context of active awareness. There are some important principles:

-- healthy range of motion is more important than absolute range of motion: stretching should not be a test. In my case, tension and discomfort in my right hand/arm/shoulder makes arching my fingers back in a forearm stretch quite... unhealthy. Simply put, it doesn't feel good. If I push it anyway, and complete the stretch at an intense angle, I usually feel worse. My dysfunction is not the absolute length of my muscle fibers/tendons/whatnot, but a much subtler discord in the entire nervous/muscular cascade of my right arm, from wrist to neck. Sharon Butler refers to something similar as the "stretch point". What I'm describing could be thought of as an exploration of the "stretch point" with a qigong, active awareness.

-- intention is important: in a very real way, I feel I am retraining my movement patterns and muscle memory. Qigong stretching is more a process of choosing a movement with every cell in your body than a static state/position that you reach.

-- move from the core: spinal awareness must be at the core of qigong therapy. Many days, I don't even get past my spine in my practice! Many qigong practitioners do all sorts of fancy stuff... sending, receiving and whatnot... which I can't wait to get more into. For the moment though, spinal work is so rewarding and necessary that I rarely move beyond it. If we take a simple arms-extended-out-from-sides posture (a.k.a. crucifix, my current favorite), start from the spine and go into the shoulder blades with your awareness. Each progressive inclusion (shoulders, elbows, forearms, wrist, hand, fingers) should be with them the context of strong, consistent awareness of all previous areas. When I've achieved a fairly consistent level of awareness from spine to fingertips, still with slightly bent arms, I begin "sending" energy out of my fingers... and spend the rest of the session/stretch reintegrating areas that I lose track of, exploring stagnant spots, adjusting... exploring small spontaneous movements...

Pushing, pulling & pinching

Our hands seem to have special capacities for concentrating and emitting body energy. When I first began my qigong practice, subtle energy sensations in my palms were among my first direct experiences of qi. I gather this is largely true among practitioners, and I may be even more attuned to my hands because of the pain/RSI complications.

When I begin a session, my hands (especially my right) are cold, distant, painful. After 20 minutes I'm usually able to totally turn this around, and finish with a warm, integrated, healthy feeling in my fingers, palms and arms. My main blockages/stagnant areas very somewhat day-to-day, yet almost always include my right shoulder, elbow and wrist. To clear these and reestablish a healthy flow of qi I use both "pushing" and "pulling" techniques.

Pushing qi is how I describe shifting my awareness outwards from my core; from dan tien to spine to shoulders and so on. Stagnant areas are probed and integrated in sequence. Pulling is when I skip some stagnant zones by including more remote areas in my sphere of active awareness, for example my hands, and work on concentrating qi there with the intention of stimulating a flow from the core. Pinching is simply the combination of these two techniques... closing in on a stagnant area from both sides. Simple (and common) example would be active awareness of shoulders and hands, teasing energy through a block/stagnant elbow region.

presence/active awareness

With the intention of someday fully, true healing... and shortly afterwards publishing a book on how... I want to begin documenting the various ways qigong has been helping me. Qigong is by far the most effective technique I have ever encountered for gaining body awareness, identifying injuries/tensions/stagnations and healing them by stimulating healthy movement and healthy energy flows.

Perhaps the most important, fundamental concept/technique in qigong is that of body presence. Sometimes I call it Active Awareness. To be aware with, not of your body. I often (verbally, if I'm having trouble focusing) invite each and every cell of my body to come alive with awareness and contribute to my composite consciousness.

For example, my shoulder hurts... somewhere in my body there is a regional crisis, serious enough to send pain signals... to get my attention. Pain awareness is important, but just the beginning. Active awareness is based on the belief that my body has all the information it needs for full, complete, robust health. From the qigong perspective... or perhaps more precisely, from a self-healing perspective... diagnosis is a matter of listening.

So now I'm past pain... I'm standing, practicing... amplifying the volume of my invitation to every cell in my shoulder to share their story. Very important, IMO, to never have an agenda beyond energy flow and health. Very often pain in my wrist stems from tension and blockages closer to my neck.

The way I discover this is by being present with the friction between healthy tissue and stagnant tissue. This friction announces itself as pain in extreme circumstances, but as soon as I tune in and expand my awareness to include subtler levels of sensation, the pain fades. Actually, not so much fades... from the generalization of pain emerge details of sensation that are much more informative than simple pain.

Let discomfort be the guide... and awareness be the catalyst for cure. Inviting, maintaining and expanding the holistic, simultaneous, distributed awareness of my body has become my daily practice...

Heart-centric awareness

One interesting shift that has been occurring mid-session for me lately is a transition... an opening up... from what I'll call head-centric awareness to a more diffuse, inclusive, expansive heart-centric awareness. Entering this state has been a real breakthrough for me... all energy work (qi concentration/manipulation/circulation) seems easier, more accessible, more powerful from this state. I now consider it a necessary milestone in each session... the more experiences of that I have, the easier it seems to be for me to intentionally cultivate/enter it.

Terms to describe different modes of awareness are not well developed in English... or any other language that I know that I know... so bear with. I'll use the term head-centric for my standard mode of perception... I feel physical sensations around my body, yet process the results in my mind... I'm aware of my hands with my brain... there's a disconnect between a local sensation (I touch something with my finger) and it's interpretation in my mind. That's one angle; another one is where my "seat of awareness" is... or the "center of gravity" of my awareness/intelligence. For pretty much all of my waking life it is my head/brain/mind.

I'm using the term heart-centric to describe a shift in that center of gravity, from head to heart. There are several qi distinctions (whatta pun! I'm so funny...) between the two states:

-- heart-centric awareness, though physically rooted in the chest/heart area, is much more expansive than my standard head-centric awareness, encompassing my entire upper body, from dan tien to crown. -- the field of awareness extends beyond my physical body, in somewhat of an egg shaped field enveloping the majority of and sometimes my entire body... sometimes I swear the surrounding air also contributes my awareness.
-- wha't I'm calling heart-centric awareness is not merely a simultaneous awareness of head and heart, but a fusion of the two.

Catalysts for shifting into heart--based awareness include:

-- spinal exercises, spinal exercises, spinal exercises!
-- the neck seems crucial... even a fully charged spine will often not be enough... some focused neck exercises (circling around each vertebrae, for example) really seems to help bridge and allow the fusion of head and heart
-- feeling from the heart... sounds simple, yet is ongoing interesting/challenging for me... like learning to use a brand new muscle group
-- closing the eyes definitely helps at first... then once a strong heart-centric space has been entered, opening the eyes will reengage the mind... playing with this tension, back-and-forth, has been fruitful for me in terms of understanding the transition

Embracing the external

I spend 90% + of each session focusing on the energy flow within my body. I'll give some attention to the Earth/feet connection and the sky/crown connection, but really the bulk of my effort goes towards concentrating and circulating energy in and around my spine, through my shoulders and arms, up from my feet to my knees and hips... and of course the ongoing challenge of integrating all of these parts and flows in simultaneous awareness.

At the end of my session, however, I've recently been tuning in to the external energy fields around me... reintegrating myself with my environment, if you will.

Mentally, I extend my body-tissue awareness outwards to include the surrounding air space... similar to what I described in heart-centric awareness. Physically I extend my hands slightly forward and slightly away from my body (I call this the Peace pose, as the geometry of my trunk/arms is somewhat similar to the peace symbol), palms up.

Primary energy exchange points with my surroundings are the feet, crown and palms... and the vibration I exude is one embrace. To me this means embracing and connecting with my surrounding reality, as it is, with sincere interest in perceiving the action. I feel it's very important not to project any pretentious thoughts/images at the expense of direct awareness. This doesn't mean you can't hold an image of light/love, but be careful to not let that image blur your actual perceptions.

A new sense

Through qigong, I have begun to develop what I consider to be another sense... somewhat similar to touch, or the perception of heat.

For me, the first stage of development was perceiving a subtle yet distinct vibration/field in and around the parts of my body I focused on (some qi centers, such as palms/dan tien, are a good place to start). Sometimes I would simply direct my awareness to a location, other times I played with various mental images... light flooding into that part of the body, etc... for similar results; subtle warmth, spontaneous movement, feeling of health.

Second stage involves learning to concentrate qi in one area. By focusing with the mind, perhaps using some visualization techniques in the beginning (yet I recommend discarding these as soon as you're able), and most importantly "feeling" the qi of a particular body area, I'm able to generate significant heat... spontaneous movements also increase in strength. The "feeling" that I speak of has been an elusive technique for me... a lot like learning to use a brand-new muscle group. I experiment with this every day.

The stage involves transmission of qi from one area to another. Hands are good place to start... I often concentrate qi in one hand, transmit to the other (receiving is another technique altogether)... and create a circuit back up the arm, through the shoulders back down the arm and so on. After one or more cycles, I switch direction. Transmission exercises with a partner are also very interesting.

Fingertips

Our hands are potent qi concentrators, and I'm discovering that our fingers have unique capacities as well. One of my favorite exercises these days is to hold both of my hands loosely in front of me, palms more or less facing, and shift my awareness from fingertip to fingertip... fairly quickly... on the same hand. Then I play with transmitting qi from the fingers of one hand through to the next... one set of fingers is sending, the other receiving... and then back.

Many discoveries to be made here!

what's this all about...

With the intention of someday fully, true healing... and shortly afterwards publishing a book on how... I want to begin documenting the various ways qigong has been helping me.

Qigong is by far the most effective technique I have ever encountered for gaining body awareness, identifying injuries/tensions/stagnations and healing them by stimulating healthy movement and healthy energy flows.