Category: Form

The Standing Meditation of Chinese Soaring Crane Qigong falls in the category of static qigong (the five routines belong to kinetic qigong). It is an exercise to clear the channels, balance yin and yang, regulate the function of qi and blood and improve health. Designed to enhance the therapeutic effectiveness of Soaring Crane Qigong, the standing meditation is taught after the Five Routines. Students must first of all learn the Five Routines well before they go on to this stage. They should have practiced the Five Routines for at least 40 to 50 hours and have had the sensation of numbness, fullness, warmth or cold which proves that their main points – say lao gong, yong quan and bai hui – are open and their major channels are clear. Then they may learn this standing meditation.

When doing the standing meditation, use natural breathing. That is to say, you do not have to think about how to breathe but just let your respiratory system work naturally.

During the practice of standing meditation, various spontaneous external body movements are observed. Some are seen with the whole body shaking, some with hand movements and jumping, some massaging and hitting their own body, some utter some sounds and regulate their breath, some dancing, etc. Upon closer observation, these movements are closely related to sicknesses the practitioners concerned are having. Which parts of the body is having sickness or the channels blocked, those parts will move more. Qi is like a good doctor. It can automatically detect sicknesses and attempt to cure them. These movements gradually become lesser and lesser as these sicknesses and channel blockages get better, until eventually there is no more external body movement. The movement then becomes internal.

1st Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Preparation (Yu Bei)

Stand with your feet as wide apart as your shoulders, toes turned in a little, knees slightly bent. Let your shoulders relax. Allow your hands to fall at your sides naturally. Place the upper tip of your tongue on your upper palate, just behind your teeth. Keep your eyes level and open, thinking of nothing.

Use your mind to relax your whole body sequentially from top to bottom. Gather Qi into your lower dan tian. Concentrate your mind on your lower dan tian for al little while.Direct Qi from your lower dan tian to hui yin, then back up along du mai to da Zhui. At this point, split the Qi into two streams and direct it through the middle of the shoulders, down through the arms to lao gong.

2nd Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Double return of Qi (Shuang Hui Qi)

Turn your palms forward and using your shoulders as a pivot, raise your arms while holding a ball of Qi in your hands, then beam it into tian mu. Open your chest by spreading out your elbows. With palms down and fingertips pointing at each other, your hands descend in front of you body guiding Qi down into your lower dan tian.

3rd Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Holding a ball of Qi (Bao Qiu)

When your two hands reach the level of the navel, relax your fingers and bend them slightly and push your hands gently away from your body with the backs of your hands angled a bit toward your body at about 45 °. Turn your palms to face your lower dan tian. Embrace a ball of Qi in front of your lower dan tian.

4th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Hanging the head from Sky (Ding Tou Xuan)

Keep your head straight as if your bai hui were connected to heaven by a string, and visualize that you are holding an object (such as a bowl of water) on the top of your head. In this way your upper body will be kept straight and your head and neck will be very steady so that you will not easily fall onto the ground.

5th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Relaxing the Spine (Zhui Ji)

Raise your shoulders up a little and then inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. At the same time relax your spine by loosening each of your vertebrae.

6th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Holding in the Chest (Han Xiong)

Take in your arms a bit to enable the Qi in your lungs to flow unimpeded but not so much as to press against the inner organs, Be sure to relax the area around the heart; only in this way can the inner organs be relaxed.

7th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Relaxing the Shoulders (Song Jian)

Raise your elbows outwardly a bit as if you were holding a tennis ball under each armpit, and relax your shoulders.

8th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Sinking the Elbows (Zhui Zhou)

Hang down the joints of your elbows a bit and you will feel Qi flow down from your arms to your forearms immediately.

9th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Relaxing your Wrists (Song Wan)

Keep your mind on shen men and relax your wrists a bit and you will immediately feel the flow of qi into your ten fingers.

10th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Smoothing out the fingers (Shu Zhu)

Relax your fingers and bend them a little as if you were holding a ball of Qi in each palm. Then visualize that you are mingling the two balls of Qi with the Qi in your dan tian to form one big ball, 2/3 of which is outside your body in front of your lower dan tian, and 1/3 of which is in your lower dan tian.

11th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Relaxing the Waist (Song Yao)

Use your mind to relax the section of your spine from lumbar vertebrae to sacrum and then push your tail bone back a bit as if to sit, being sure that your knees are not further forward than your toes. The whole body should be completely relaxed, and every vertebra, especially, should be loose.

The 12th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Relaxing the Hips (Song Kua)

Take in your hips a bit and rotate them once or twice and then the hips will be fully relaxed.

The 13th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Hanging down Wei Lu (Chui Wei Lu)

Wei lu is a point at the end of the tail bone. Visualize that there is a pendulum hanging down straight from wei lu to 4” (10cm) above the ground. This forms a triangle with your feet as the other 2 sides.

The 14th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Relaxing the Knees (Song Xi)

Relax your knees which should be slightly bent naturally and not further forward than your toes. Use your mind to visualize that Qi passes through your knees.

The 15th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Adjusting the Feet (Diao Zu)

Let your feet be flat on the ground, toes fully relaxed. Use your mind to direct Qi from your shoulders, hips and ankles to yong quan. When you feel the Qi in your yong quan, use your mind to direct it down to the earth to connect with the Qi from the earth. Your feet will then be rooted.

The 16th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Gathering Qi into Dan Tian (Qi Chen Dan Tian)

By this time your whole body is completely relaxed. Now use your mind to mingle the Qi in your two hands with the Qi in your dan tian to form a big, round ball of Qi. Concentrate your mind on shen men, ming men and yong quan so as to relax them. Visualize that you are mingling the Qi in your upper body with the Qi in your lower body and mingling the Qi outside your body with the Qi inside your body so that you are in the middle of a ball of Qi.

17th Instruction for the Standing Meditation

Bringing down the Eyelids (Chui Lian)

Use your mind to withdraw the spiritual light from far to near slowly until you have taken it completely back. Lower your upper eyelids and look at the end of your nose (you may either close your eyes or just leave a small gap but never squeeze them shut). Look down the nose inward through shan zhong and along zhong mai into lower dan tian. Then keep your mind on dan tian without thinking of anything else.

There are 4 steps in the finishing for Standing Meditation.

1st step : Slowly Coming to a Stop

When you feel that you need to stop or you feel too tired to go on with the standing meditation, you tell yourself that you want to stop. You say the following words silently, ”Hao Liao Qi Gui Dan Tian.” (It means, “let all the Qi gather into dan tian; I am ready to finish.”) Gradually your movements will become slower of milder until they come to a complete stop. Stand for a little while and until your heart is in complete peace.

2nd Step : Double return of Qi (Shuang Hui Qi)

Turn your palms forward and using your shoulders as a pivot, raise your arms while holding a ball of Qi in your hands, then beam it into tian mu. Open your chest by spreading out your elbows. With palms down and fingertips pointing at each other, your hands descend in front of you body guiding Qi down into your lower dan tian.

3nd Step : Finishing (Shou Gong)

When your hands reach the level of your navel, relax your fingers and bend them slightly and push your hands gently away from your body with the back of your hands angled a bit towards the body at 45°. At the same time, push you wei lu backward as if to sit. Keep your upper body straight. Be sure your nose is in line with your navel.

Turn your palms in to face your lower dan tian, finger tips pointing slightly down. Embrace a ball of Qi in front of your lower dan tian; relax your shoulders. Use your mind to contract your hui yin. Draw your two hand towards your hips and sides and then let them fall naturally, while at the same time straightening your legs.

Note: You may do parts 2 & 3 as many as three times, until you feel that the Qi is firmly stored in your dan tian.

4th Step : Placing your Hands Together (An Shen He Shi)

Palm to palm with your finger tips pointing up (prayer position), rub your hands together several times and then run them over your face gently from jaw to forehead and down up. Then use your fingertips to comb your hair from your forehead back to the point called fong fu. Then use the outer side of your little fingers to rub the back of your ears and the part under your cheek bones. Bring your ten fingertips together under your chin and let your palms come together naturally. Then draw them down to the point called shan zhong between your breasts. Stay in this posture for a while and then let your arms fall naturally to your sides. Open your eyes slowly and walk away.

1. Your movements and mental focus must be accurate.

The stance adopted by CSCQ is of the medium type meaning the angle of inclination between the thigh and the vertical shall exceed 20°. Only by so doing, the wei lu can be protruded resulting in the point on the ground vertically below wei lu forms an equilateral triangle with the two feet. Use mental focus to virtualise that a heavy pendulum hangs down from the wei lu. This pendulum shall be 10cm from the ground. Never imagine that this pendulum reaches the ground as this would lock the body and Qi from the du mai will be lost into the ground. Prolonged practice this way will cause fatigue and degradation of the brain.

Actually, by imagining that there is a pendulum is to help new practitioners to activate the Qi faster. After some time when the practitioners are more familiar and feel at ease with standing meditation, the same result can be achieved by merely mentally focusing on the wei lu.

2. Spontaneous movements must be really spontaneous instead of artificially induced.

Most practitioners have spontaneous movements naturally. Some practitioners may not have spontaneous movements. This is because some of them have not practiced long enough and have not accumulated sufficient energy of have hot mastered the instructions of the standing meditation. Once these problems are overcome, they will have spontaneous movements. On the other hand, some practitioners do not have spontaneous movements because they do not have any channels blocked, so the Qi travels through their body smoothly.

Once practitioners understand why spontaneous movements come into being and why some do not have them, then they will not force them.

Some practitioners have spontaneous movements but are not satisfied with them. They intentionally induce movements or imitate others’. These are not true spontaneous movements, they will, instead of having curative effects, cause suffering to the practitioners. Therefore false movements are strongly forbidden.

3. Self-control in spontaneous movements may be needed at times.

You should be able to control yourself when spontaneous movements appear. Sometimes the spontaneous movements are very violent and ungraceful, for instance lying on the ground, but you can control them by giving yourself an instruction such as, “Let the violent movements become milder or slower.” If you are lying on the ground, you may thick of bai hui and then you will naturally stand up.

4, Relaxation is preferable to nervousness in the standing meditation.

When you are doing standing meditation, you must be relaxed the whole time from the beginning to the end. You should never be tense. When you are doing standing meditation the true Qi has been activated to its ultimate, therefore the Qi is very strong and travels very fast in your body. If you are tense, some parts of your body may be blocked. As a result, the Qi will accumulate there and block the channels and will not disperse for a long time, and you will feel uncomfortable or in pain. If you are too tense perhaps the Qi circulating in your body cannot be gathered back into dan tian even though you want to shou gong (finish). So, to be relaxed is of utmost importance. You should not worry at all. Let the spontaneous movements happen naturally and enjoy yourself; then you will feel very comfortable and your disease will be cured and your health improved.

5. Adopt a positive attitude toward hallucinations.

You should have a right attitude toward hallucinations. During the circulation and change of Qi (vital energy) while practicing qigong, very often hallucinations will appear. This is because your channels are open and you are receiving information from the Universe through the open channels. You can accept the information that makes you happy and comfortable. This is called ‘positive information’. For instance, you may feel that you are growing taller and bigger; you may see brightness in front of you; you may see beautiful scenes; you may hear wonderful music or even smell the fragrance of flowers. All these information is good for you both physically and mentally.

On the other hand, some ‘negative information’ might appear, which, of course, is not good for health. But do not be frightened because such things happen. Just shake your head and say “shi” and immediately they will disappear. There is nothing to be afraid of. Go on with your qigong practice and you will succeed in the end. Upon finishing, if you wish to continue practicing, choose another location of better environment. Do not continue at that same place.

6. Be comfortable and happy about the time and frequency of practice.

Consider the time you will spend practicing meditation. You might give yourself an order: “I am going to do this for 30 minutes”. Then, when 30 minutes have passed, the Qi will naturally come to a halt. As to how many times you should practice eash day, it all depends on whether or not you feel comfortable and happy. Do not exhaust yourself.

The 5 routines and standing meditation complement one another. They should be practiced con-currently. By so doing, your health will be enhanced and sickness cured.

Reference: China Soaring Crane Qigong (cscq) – http://cscq.webs.com/standingmeditation.htm