Gentle Exercises for Optimal Health

Medial Qigong offers many simple prescriptions for health conditions. These are gentle, specific, yet sophisticated exercises that involve movement, breathing, and meditation. While not the only important medicine needed for many conditions or situations, these Medical Qigong prescriptions do have some great plusses over using pharmaceuticals, or even natural health concoctions. 

Qigong Prescriptions

• Give you more self-control over your own health.
• Don’t have the kind of intense side-effects many medications do.
• Can’t be used up. The bottle doesn’t get emptied.
• Can be practiced in addition to other methods you may be using for your healthcare.

You Must Do Them to Recieve the Benefits

Qigong Prescriptions do take practice, time, and commitment. The basic Insomnia Prescription–which I detail below–is an effective self-healing method for sleep difficulties. Most people who practice it begin to go to sleep easier, and sleep more deeply and sleep longer. They wake up more refreshed with a sense of energetic regeneration.

Two Main Mechanisms of the Insomnia Prescription

This short series of gentle exercises works through two energetic mechanisms:

1. The redirection of your Qi.
2. Charging your Kidneys.

Redirect Your Qi

The Qi is redirected in a series of steps:

1. From your head to your Kidneys
2. From Kidneys to your lower abdominal center (Dantian)
3. And finally, to the bottom of your feet

Awake Versus Sleep

When you are awake, the majority of your body’s consciousness and energy tends to be focused outside of yourself, in the front part of you, and up in the head or heart. When your energy and consciousness is thus directed, sleep is difficult. The Insomnia Prescription reverses that high, forward energy. It will bring your energy inward, backward, and down.

Charge and Fill Your Kidneys

The Kidneys–which also include your adrenal glands (one of these small glands lies on top of each Kidney)–are crucial in Chinese Medicine approaches. To put it simply, the Kidneys can be thought of as fuel reserves; as gas tanks. Your tanks get emptied by forcing and using willpower to get things done. Or by doing too much. You run out of energy and are essentially running on fumes. If you have ever felt, “too tired to fall asleep,” then you know what I mean.

Insomnia Prescription

The instructions for how many reps to practice: The more persistent and bad the insomnia, the more repetitions it will take.

Steps one, two, and three can be done standing or seated.

Insomnia Prescription: Step One

Use your hands to rapidly massage the Kidneys until warm. You can massage up and own, back and forth, or around in circles, both directions. You can use the palms or, if you can’t reach easily, the backs of the hands. Warming the Kidneys will increase the blood flow to them, relieve tensions around them, and generally turn them on. You want your Kidneys “on” so your thinking brain can turn “off” for several hours.

Reps: 20 to 50.

Insomnia Prescription: Step Two

Place the palms on your back, over your Kidneys. Inhale to your Kidneys. As you inhale, round your lower back a bit to help expand the tissues around those fist-sized structures. With the inhale, imagine you are drawing energy that is extra and unneeded from your upper body (especially your brain) to your Kidneys. Exhale into your Kidneys to store that extra energy.

Location Note: The Kidneys are usually found in front of the thick muscles on both sides of spine, about halfway under the lower ribs; and about halfway below the ribs. They are nearly fist-sized. Because of the big Liver above it, the right Kidney tends to be lower than the left Kidney.

Modifying Note: If shoulder flexibility problems or an elbow or wrist issue make it difficult to put your full palms on your back, you can place the back of the hands on the Kidneys. If this is still too difficult to do with no strain, you can place one palm or back of the hand on one side and turn slightly. If this is still too difficult, connect to your Kidneys by placing your hands over the front of your upper abdomen.

Reps: 20 to 50.

Optional Reps: If the Kidneys need a lot of attention: Repeat steps one and two, twice more.

Insomnia Prescription: Step Three

Left Kidney: Place the right hand on your lower abdomen (Dantian), below the belly button and the left hand over the left Kidney. On the inhale, connect to the left Kidney. Don’t breathe to it, as you did in Step Two, just be there, at the Kidney. On the exhale, use your breath and intention to guide Qi from your Kidney to your lower abdomen. It is as if there is a little highway of flowing energy from the Kidney to the lower abodmen, a one-way flow. You can also push a little with the left hand to the Dantian on each exhale.

Right Kidney: Now place your right hand on the right Kidney and left hand on the lower abdomen. On the inhale, connect to the right Kidney. On the exhale, use your breath and intention to guide Qi from your Kidney to your lower abdomen.

Reps: 20 or more, each side

Steps four and five, below are done seated–either on the floor or on a chair.

Insomnia Prescription: Step Four

Left Foot: Warm up the left sole of your foot by rubbing it with your right palm. In Acupuncture and Qigong theory, the center of the palm is a fire point, connected to the heart. The point being rubbed on the foot is called Kidney 1 (KD-1) or Bubbling Spring. It can be found in the space created by the two balls of the foot. By rubbing this water point of the Kidneys with a fire point  you enliven your Kidneys, leading to stronger, more healthful states of energy in your internal organs. You are also bringing more attention to the lowest part of your body.

Right Foot: Repeat on the other leg, warming up the right sole with the left palm.

Reps: 20 to 50 per side, or more.

Insomnia Prescription: Step Five

Left Foot: Place the left hand on your lower abdomen (over the Dantian) and the right hand on the sole of the left foot. Feel the Dantian on the inhale. On the exhale, gently encourage energy to travel down the leg to the bottom of the right foot. This gentle focus of one-way Qi flow will help root your energy down your body. You may have to cross the lower left leg over the right leg to reach the sole easily.

Reps: 20 to 100 per side.

RightFoot : Repeat on the other side, right hand on Dantian, left hand on right sole.

Practice Makes Sleepy

It might take a few sessions of practice for chronic insomnia to begin to lessen it’s cruel hold on your sleep: It takes time for the water to make progress on filling the well.

Awaken the Breath

When:         Saturday, June 5, 2010

Time:         10:00 to 2:00

Cost:          Only $40

Location:    Robert’s beautiful healing studio at

                  1095 East Axton Road, North of Bellingham.

Sign Up:     (360) 398-7466, or rbbatesdc@comcast.net

Breathe Bigger, Better and Easier

Breath Practices are some of the most powerful healing exercises you can do. You can insert conscious breathing into just about any part of your day and be better off for it. You can benefit from conscious breathing practices virtually your entire life. Any amount of good breathing you do adds to your health.

With These Breathing Practices You Will

•  Massage the internal organs for greater all around health
•  Keep the head clear and promote mental clarity
•  Help move the lymph throughout the body, increasing immunity function
•  Increase your energy
•  Calm your emotions
•  Increase your lifespan
•  Decrease tension
•  Sleep deeper
•  And much, much more

 What We Will Cover in This Workshop

• Qigong breathing practices, each with different health goals
• Simple tests to assess how well you are breathing
• Easy ways to integrate vastly more quality breathing into your   everyday life
• The Framingham Study: How your breath capacity can accurately predict your lifespan; and how to definitely increase your lifespan with breathing practices

 Breathing Exercises We Will Practice

Follow the Breath. Just watch. Notice how you are actually breathing. You can learn a lot about yourself this way.

Graduated Quiet Breathing Meditation. Build awareness and sink into a relaxed, healing mode of being as you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, coordinate your consciousness and balance your brain

Abdominal Breathing. The foundation of proper breathing. Breathe into and out of your abdomen, letting it expand with the inhale and flatten with exhaling.

Belly Book Breathing. Re-teach yourself how to use your diaphragm to pull air into your body by expanding your abdomen, instead of lifting your shoulders to bring air in.

Pelvic Breathing. Sometimes breathe low into your pelvis to build power and prevent many problems.

Low Back and Kidney Breathing. Drawing the air into the lower back to expand that area and fill the Kidney’s with Qi.

Filling the Vase. Fill your torso with breath like pouring water into a vase; the water fills up the lower parts first before working up. Empty your breath in reverse.

Gentle Breath Holding. Holding the breath for a short time—repeatedly—to help relax tensions in the breathing apparatus.

Plus

The Remembering Breath. Put up green dot stickers. Every time you see the dot, take a deep breath. This will give you many deep breaths each day.

10 Percent More. Add just a little to the size or seconds of each breath.

Breathing Awareness Set (to take home.) Begin to take more control of your daily breathing habits.

Hot flashes can sometimes be eliminated in a moment by the use of a simple healing sound from the Chinese Art of Qigong.  I have seen these amazing shifts happen on several occasions with different people.

A hot flash means you have too much heat being produced in the body. Usually the extra heat rises into the head, making you uncomfortable. It could arise for a number of reasons: sudden hormonal shifts, too much sunshine, a liver working too hard, or being drained of vitality so that your body has trouble keeping you cool.

Healing Sounds to Clear Your Body

Part of the expansive collection of Qigong exercises is the art of healing sounds. Over many hundreds of years, Chinese Qigong practitioners discovered and refined particular sounds. The basic use of healing sounds in this discipline is for cleansing the body, mind, and emotions of stuck, stagnant or excessive energy. Sounds vibrate the tissues, releasing contracting-tension and shaking loose what is stuck.

“Sheeeee” Helps Hot Flashes

Here is the sound for excess, high heat in the body: “Sheeeeee.” It is pronounced and performed in a special way. You will simultaneously do these three actions:

• Draw your hands from the top of your head down through your legs and into the earth. The eyes and head follow the hands down.
• Imagine and visualize and sense that you are clearing your body of extra heat from head to feet. It is like your cells are being showered with cooling water, or the inner windows are being squeegeed clean.
• It is a descending tone “Sheeeee.” This dropping sound starts in the high range and descends very low, like going from soprano to basso. The farther down your body you go with your hands and consciousness, the deeper becomes the sound.

Note: Do not bend over as you get closer to the ground. If you bend too much you will, via gravity, put energy in the head. With this exercise you want to get energy out of the head, not put more in.

In March and April of 2010 Robert Bates is teaching Healthy Joint Qigong.

To Sign Up for Classes: (360) 398-7466, or email

Days: Mondays and Fridays. Take one or both days for the same price.

Dates: March 8 through April 16

Time: 12:00 to 1:00

Cost: $60 for the 6-week series

Location: Robert’s Healing Studio: 1095 E. Axton Road, Bellingham, WA 98226

In Healthy Joint Qigong You Will Learn

• Joint Rotation exercises for clearing the joints and increasing range of motion
• Joint Expansion practices for increasing the space between bones
• Joint Pulsing practices for building Qi in your joints
• Joint Strengthening exercises to add more resilience to your joints
• Joint Massage techniques for bringing blood, Qi, and lymph through joints
• Bone Breathing meditations for clearing the joints and charging them up

Joint Motion Exercises Can

• Lubricate the Joints through motion
• Help you feel better. Joint exercises can decrease arthritic and creaky pain
• Decrease calcium and other mineral buildup
• Help you stand and be taller: Expand the body, rather than be compacted
• Decrease the chance of injuries
• Be used as a wake up in the morning
• Be used as a warm up before being physically active
• Increase your flexibility
• Restore much lost joint health

Some Reasons for Qigong Joint Exercises

Health is movement and movement leads to health. Stagnation, in contrast, leads to illness. Impaired joints decrease the amount and types of movement you can do. While it is important to stretch and exercise the muscles and soft tissues of the body, the joints also need to be “stretched” and exercised. As a general rule, gently and frequently moving them in through their natural range of motion, helps them heal, helps them reconfigure closer to the way they were meant to work. If we exercise our joints we will be healthier and feel better. The joints have no blood flow, so they depend upon your movement to pump the synovial fluid through, and the toxins and detritus out.

Qigong is slowly making inroads on the consciousness of America. An article on one of my students was recently in the local newspaper here in Bellingham, Washington, USA, North American Continent, Planet Earth.

Vitality

Lee Willis has been benefiting from Qigong for a decade or so. I find Lee to be one of the most present, friendly, happy, helpful and engaging people I know. The photo and article don’t quite show her effervescence. And she vehemently denies–as the article speaks of–that she is a sufferer or victim of any kind. In the decade plus I have known her, I agree with this self-assessment. She leads not just an active life, but a thorough life.

Lee Willis in 2007

Qigong Awareness is Growing

Anyway, read the article. The benefits and joys of Qigong (and Tai Chi) are trickling up, seeping into general consciousness. Maybe we will soon see a bigger awareness of these arts. Most individuals–and the country as a whole–would be better off practicing these internal movement arts.

Lee Willis teaches a short, gentle Tai Chi form that was designed for people with arthritis (whether or not they are victims), but the form is actually great training for anybody seeking better internal and external balance, smoother movement and less pain in their bodies.

Modify Your Movements When You Need to

Lee mentions the principle of modifying in the article, which is so key in making a practice work for whatever your current physical needs, abilities, and areas of concern. To restate the principle of modifying: Find a way to move that doesn’t hurt, whether this means using less effort, doing slightly different movements, or making the range of the motion smaller. By modifying as necessary, you engage your body in relaxation, which engenders healing responses at all levels of your being.

The Omnipresence of Limitations

Another point she touches upon is the fact that most of us have some “limitations” in our health to deal with. Actually, everyone does. Working within the boundaries of whatever your current abilities are–rather than fantasizing or blithely stepping into the dangerous water of overdoing–is so much of what Qigong is all about. When engaged in healing practices, activated movement within relaxation is necessary. Working within your limits is both wise and pleasurable. Pushing into pain is the path to problems.

Below is the fifth of five videos on Reducing Depression with the “Old Man” Qigong Set.

The final video in this series puts each part of the the form together into a flowing whole.

The Ratio of Moves

Once you have practiced each of the 3 moves separately and can perform them well–with good amounts of feeling and healing–then you put them all together. The connected movement ratio is as follows:

1, 2, 3

2, 3

2, 3

Put Another Way, You Do

1. Lungs

2. Heart

3. Middle Burner

2. Heart

3. Middle Burner

2. Heart

3. Middle Burner

Then start over, again starting with the Lungs.

The Daily Exercise Prescription

The basic formula for practicing the full “Old Man” exercise is to do it for set amount of time. Get into a flowing groove by the set over and over and over again for 5, 10, 20 or more minutes at a time.

As you practice, you don’t need to count reps. Just glance at a clock every once in a while.

Urgent Prescription

Those who need to get their bodies on track quickly can elect to do 25 minutes of the “Old Man” 3 times a day.

Below is the fourth of five videos on Reducing Depression with the “Old Man” Qigong Set.

The Middle Burner

In this section of video training, I detail how to release blocking tensions in the the center organs of the body: the Spleen, Stomach, Pancreas, Upper Small Intestine, Gall Bladder and Liver, as well as the Solar Plexus area. The entire area is known as the Middle Burner.

Emotional Release in Masse

Releasing blocks in this area will help you easily release repressed emotions such as worry, over-thinking, anger, grumpiness, and rage. It will also help generally clear held-onto emotions from your body, resulting in more freedom for feeling well.

Ho, Ho, Ho

The healing sound used for this central section of the torso–the Middle Burner–is a long “Ho.” This sound is expressed to vibrate the target area from left to right (or right to left.) While making the sound you lower the bent arms to the lower ribs and turn the torso from left to right (or right to left, if you like.)

Twist the Towel

The torso-turning is a unique method that will take a little practice to get. It is an organ-wringing style–like twisting a towel–that is done from the center, between the chest and the belly button. This massages the organs of the upper abdomen and helps release tensions, trapped emotions and toxins from them.

Below is the third of Five Videos on Reducing Depression with the “Old Man” Qigong Set.

Open the Heart and Release Armoring

Opening the heart area can release stuck and stagnant emotions such as impatience, frustration, criticalness, anxiety, cold-heartedness, and armoring against feeling. All of these emotions get in the way of healing; as well as living a full, vibrant, friendly life.

The Healing Sound of the Heart and the Sparrow Fist

The Heart healing sound used in the “Old Man” exercise is a sighing, descending “Haaa.” The hands are held in a partly open palm shape called a Sparrow Fist. The hands descend from head level down to the lower chest as you make the chest-vibrating “Haaa” sound.

It is also important to slowly, slightly lower the head with the movements here, bringing  your gaze somewhat downward. This helps lower excess rising Qi.

Below is the second of five videos on Reducing Depression with the “Old Man” Qigong Set.

There are three movements in the Old Man exercise, beginning with the Lung Movement, as taught in this video.

Open the Lungs and Release Grief

In the Lung movement you will stretch the lungs open, massage them repeatedly with relaxed arm movements and release sadness into the earth. Each movement is accompanied by a directed healing sound, one that is specific for that area, bringing loosening vibration to the cells of the targeted area. The Lung sound is “SHHHH” or “SSSSS”.

Contraindications for Practicing Healing Sounds

According to Jerry Alan Johnson people should not practice Qigong sounds if:

• They have any bone fractures
• They are in the throes of an acute illness
• They are pregnant
• They are menstruating

I’m not sure about the last one. It seems to be more of something to be cautious about and aware of your own body’s needs. Refer back to the second principle of Qigong: Modify.

Note: The “Lung” movement is also a Kidney strengthener. Bending over while imagining your feet are in warm water is–in the Five Elemental Energy conception–nutritive for your Kidneys.

Without going into it in too much detail in this post: Full, strong Kidneys give you energy, healthy bones, mental clarity, and a sustaining connection to Nature.

Below is the first of five videos of a movement and healing sounds Set that is very effective in helping to alleviate negative emotions. The full name of this exercise Set is Old Man Searching for the Reflection of the Moon at the Bottom of the Tide Pool. That is a mouthful; I usually just called it “Old Man.”

Many People Have Benefited

I learned this set from my Medical Qigong teacher Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson. He credits Dr. Her Yue Wong with introducing it into the USA in the 1970’s. Dr. Johnson told me that he gave these exercises to more people than any any other healing prescription. He often found that very sick people were holding so much armor that they were unable to relax enough to let healing enter and spread through their bodies. So he taught them the Old Man to release their holding, usually to impressive results.

Open Blocks and Release Stuck Emotions

Following a sophisticated understanding of the Five Elemental Energies system, the Old Man Set opens blockages in the body so stuck fluids, Qi, and blood can flow again, resulting in healing. By upgrading from stagnant swamp internally to flowing rivers and rivulets, health naturally re-establishes.

Since 2000, I have taught this exercise to many clients. Over and over again they have come back to me with glowing reports of how well it has helped them manage or delete unhealthy amounts of blocking, sludgifying emotions, feelings, and sensations.

Many Emotional States Helped

I’ve truncated the name of the encompassing term of the video to depression, but the Old Man exercise is great for helping with many emotional weights, including: sadness, grief, impatience, judgementalism, anxiety, worry, low energy, unprocessed emotions, indecisiveness, lack of clarity, anger, grumpiness, and rage.

Below is the Overview Video of the Old Man. In the next post I’ll add the video detailing the Lungs and sadness tomorrow; and videos 3, 4 and 5 over the next week or two.