Long White Cloud Qigong

There are many methods we can use to guide our mind and energy within our qigong practice.

They start with Interoception - the skill of simply turning our awareness inwards to notice the sometimes subtle details of what is occurring within our bodies.

We then often use physical movement, posture and touch to create activity within specific parts of our bodies, and naturally direct our awareness towards them.

We also often use more subtle methods such as the expansion and contraction and flow of our breath, or the direction of our gaze to assist our intention in guiding our energy.

And finally symbolism is often used to shape our overall texture and flow of our energy in more subtle ways.

All of these come together in a rich tapestry as we become more skilful at using our mind to work with our energy in our qigong practice.

Sometimes we need to adapt our qigong practice to our environment. There wasn’t a horse 🐎 available, so I adapted the practice ‘Riding a horse using a bow and arrow to shoot the eagle’ for use on a scooter 🛵😅.

In this practice the bow drawing motion opens our shoulders and straightens our spine. The activity of the muscle from the shoulder down to the lower back also activates the nerves that feed into the kidneys.

Usually this exercise is done in a ‘horse’ stance to activate the kidney meridian and keep the pelvis stable so that the forces created by the movement will go to the right places. Actually sitting down for the movement also works well for stabilizing the pelvis and makes the overall practice less strenuous when that is desirable.

We explore this and other practices for specifically stimulating and balancing our organs and meridians as part of the Twelve Rivers Qigong practice in the Small Universe Qigong instructor certification program. You can find details of our next Small Universe Qigong program through the link in our bio 👆(We will focus on a more traditional way of doing the practice there 😆)

A helpful principle for working with our mind is understanding the difference between a towards and an away orientation.

There are always countless directions we could channel our energy to. With a towards orientation, we choose a specific direction. This helps us to gather and focus our energy toward a clear purpose, and also helps us navigate obstacles along the way.

With an away orientation, our energy can still go in infinite directions, but it’s likely to be more scattered and unfocused. Our attention is on what we don’t want, rather than where we are going, so navigating challenges also becomes harder.

To use our energy effectively, it’s always better to focus on what we want to move towards, and not just on what we want to get away from.

A clear example of the power of the mind in Western medicine is the placebo effect. When someone receives a treatment they believe will help, healing often occurs even if the treatment itself has no real therapeutic action, beyond supporting their belief.

This is why new drugs must be tested in double-blind studies. To prove real benefit, a drug must outperform a control group who receive an inactive treatment – yet many people in that group still improve. In fact, many new drugs struggle to outperform the power of the mind alone.

The opposite is also true. If we believe something will harm us, it often does, even when there is nothing harmful in it. This is called the nocebo effect.

When we understand this power, we can start shaping our beliefs to better support what we want to experience in life.

When we really develop the power of our mind, our intention can become so strong that it can cause our body and energy to do things that are actually harmful to us if we direct it incorrectly.

This is why we need to be able to pair attention and intention together. When we seek to direct our energy, we need to also be able to notice how it and our body responds to that direction, so that we don’t force it to flow in ways that are unnatural or unhealthy for us.

If we want to work with our energy in ways that are healthy and beneficial to us we need to start from a base of awareness, and then gently lead or guide our energy rather than forcing it strongly.

In this way we can ensure that we work with our energy in ways that are natural, healthy, and harmonious.

Once we have developed skill at directing our attention, to notice the finer details of what is occurring, the next step is to start to use intention as well.

With attention we simply notice, with intention we start to guide and direct. We start to steer the flow of our energy towards whatever it is that we would like to achieve within our practice, or within our life.

It’s useful to be able to make this distinction between attention and intention, because when they are coupled together, they become powerfully effective.

Using our intention can be so powerful that there are a few important aspects of our mind and energy that it’s important to understand so that we can ensure that we use it in a way that is most beneficial for us. We will explore some of these in the next few videos.

We thought this was a fun video to add some special effects to. Channeling my inner ‘Raiden’ for this one… 😂⚡.

These are quite active practices that can be useful for descending our energy and discharging excess energy when we need to. They are found at the end of the Waking the Qi series after we have gradually activated our energy and raised it up. These final movements which descend and discharge our energy ensure we end the practice in harmonious balance - much more peaceful than it looks with the special effects 🤔.

We start by extending our energy upwards to ‘Stir the Clouds’ directing our energy all the way to the fingertips of our raised hands to connect with heaven. We then stomp our feet to create ‘Thunder’ - vibration which moves through our whole body shaking free any energy which is stuck or blocked. Next when throw our hands down rapidly like ‘Lightning’ descending our raised energy vigorously to the earth. Finally we stand in the ‘Gentle Rain’ allowing the energy to continue to descend in a gentle wash, cleansing, refreshing, and renewing our energy.

We study the Waking the Qi practices in depth as part of our Small Universe Qigong 200 hour instructor certification program. We also do the Waking the Qi practice regularly in our Live Online Qigong Class subscription. You can find information about both of these through the link in the bio 😊.

One way that we can practice keeping our mind clear, and develop our skill with directing our attention, is to become mindful in our daily activities.

To be mindful means to really notice the details of our experience as we go about our activities. Having a simple tangible thing to focus on, helps to keep our thoughts coherent and reduces the amount of our energy that becomes scattered in different directions.

Qigong practices naturally encourage us to become more mindful as we pay attention to the subtle sensations in our bodies as we practice, and little by little we can also bring this quality of mind to other activities that we do.

In addition to training our mind, being mindful can lead to greater enjoyment as we notice those little details, and greater understanding as we start to notice what is really there, rather than a muddled projection.