Sunday, September 26, 2010

Learning to bi-locate your energy body


 To bi-locate your energy body means that your physical body remains in one place, whilst your energy body travels somewhere else.

One of the things that you may have heard emphasized in Qi gong is that it is important to find a location that has good natural qi, such as parks and other places in nature that have trees and such. This is absolutely true, but, in the absence of always having suitable location, you can always begin your Qi gong session with a brief meditation where you strongly visualize and imagine that you are in the natural, qi-rich environment of your choice.

If you do this regularly, you will start having strong feelings that you are actually in that environment, and you will actually feel the healthy qi flowing through your body. The reason for this is that your energy body, or qi body is made of light, and as such can travel at the speed of light to any location simply through the power of strongly imagining yourself there.

By visualizing yourself in a beautiful place, part of your energy body will actually go there and the experience that you have of being connected to the energies of that place is absolutely genuine.

The basic understanding here is that you can, energetically (in your energy body) go anywhere you want at any time. With regard to your Qi gong practice you can be in a concrete jungle and still practice your Qi gong connected to the beautiful, natural environmental qi of your choice!
Five minute exercise for learning to bi-locate your light body

Part 1- minutes 1-2:
Sit or stand comfortably, feel your physical body surrounded by your energy field, which is like an oval of light extending 20-30cms around the edge of your body. Gather your mental and physical energy into the present moment and into your energy field. As you breathe in feel yourself breathing light and energy into all the cells of your body, as you breathe out feel your mind and body releasing tension.

Part 2 – minutes 3-4:
Visualize yourself in the natural, qi-rich location of your choice. Strongly imagine yourself there and feel your energy body connecting to the energies of the environment. Breathe these energies in and out of your energy field for a while. If you like you can focus on breathing in the energy of particular feature of the landscape, an old tree, a waterfall, a mountain.

Part 3 – last minute:
Relax, keep present and just allow the energies that you are connecting to to flow through your energy body.
Then you can either finish the exercise or go on to do other aspects of your Qi gong practise.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Body shaking and patting

Body shaking and body patting are very simple exercises that you can do as a way of awakening the flow of Qi in your body, releasing tension and creating a state of mental and physical alertness. I do this at the beginning of meditations sometimes if I am feeling a little sluggish, or as a way of refreshing my mind and body after I have been sitting at my work station for some time or otherwise involved in stationary work

Body Shaking:

Part 1: Standing with your kness slightly bent, place the backs of your hands upon your lower back, so that the weight of your hands and arms are resting on the tops of the hip bones. Using the thighs and knees, gently shake your whole body up and down in a regular rhythm. As you breathe out, do so in short bursts in rhythm with your body shaking. With each short burst of exhalation, feel yourself releasing tension from your mind, body and energy system.

Part 2: Once you have done part one for a minute or two, move onto shaking your body rhythmically in a more free form way. Go up on to the toes and front balls of the soles of your feet, shake your arms and shoulders around, use short kicking movements to release tension from the leg muscles. This is a free form stage, the main thing is just to shake your whole body in a way that releases tension and feels good (an not in such an energetic way that you injure yourself)!

Body patting

Take a moment to imagine that the palms of your hands are filled with light and energy. Pat the surface of your body lightly with the palms, see this light and energy moving into the surface where you are patting, energizing and awakeing it. Pat the whole surface of your body systematically. I normally follow a pattern that goes something like this:

• Across whole scalp, face and neck

• Across chest and belly area

• Using one hand pat across the top of one arm and hand, then along its underside. When finished swap arms

• Using one hand pat across the shoulder of one side of your back, and then underneath the armpit from the lateral muscles down to the lower back. Once finished repeat on the other side with using the other hand

• Using both palms together, pat the butt cheeks and then down the back of the legs to the ankles. Then work your way up the front of the legs to the top of the thighs

• Then pat the sides of the legs from the hips down to the ankles. Subsequently pat from the ankles back up the inside of the legs to the top of the thighs and groin area

When you finish, take a deep breath and relax!

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby's permission first! Contact toby@tobyouvry.com

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Learning to conserve, build and circulate your energy, not waste it though dissipation and distraction

One of the basic principles of Qi gong is that, through our awareness of energy we are trying to learn not to needlessly dissipate or “throw off” our mental, emotional and physical qi. Instead we learn to keep it within our energy field and circulate it within our mind-body continuum. Here are some practical ways in which we waste our qi and life force habitually:

• Continuous physical fidgeting and habitual muscle tension (often due to lack of awareness of how our busy mind is causing our body to feel uneasy all the time)

• Discomfort with feeling deep emotion (positive or negative), due to a habitual aversion to the vulnerability that deep emotion makes us feel. In general, deep emotion carries with it large amounts of qi that we can learn to circulate in our energy system. Repressing emotion, or becoming addicted to it/acting compulsively on it causes us to lose our ability to use its qi in an effective way

• Doing our physical actions using much more muscle power than is necessary. For example typing at a computer with our facial muscles locked in an unconscious frown.

• Compulsive and excessive (mindless or meaningless) speech

• Compulsive and excessive thinking or worrying

In all the above ways and many more, we dissipate our qi on a daily basis. So, one of the best ways to start practising Qi gong is simply to make it a daily habit and discipline to be aware of how you are using your qi on a moment to moment basis. Ask yourself questions like:

- “In the last hour, how effectively have I been using my life-force?”

- “How much physical energy do I really need to walk from one place to another, how can I make my walking more energetically efficient?”

- “Is the amount of thought that I am giving this problem really ergonomically effective?” (ie: the amount of good results relative to energy spent on the issue)

Here is a simple, 6 minute exercise that you can do to help develop awareness of your qi, and start to build it in your mind and body, rather than dissipate it needlessly. If you do this and nothing else as a Qi gong practice it will help you raise your energy levels:

For the first two minutes:
Sit in a comfortable position. Visualize an energy field around your body, the shape of an egg, extending roughly 10-20cms from the surface of your body. Simply sit still, and focus on the physical stillness of your body. Notice the temptations to fidget and don’t follow them. Try to keep all of your energy in the present moment, and within the boundaries of your energy field. Use your breathing, your still body, and the edge of your energy field as your basic points of focus

For minutes 3-4:
Use the core body breathing technique to breathe energy into the core of your body and out to the edge of your energy field. As the qi moves in and out of the core of your body, retain it in your energy field so that you can feel it building and increasing.

For the minutes 5-6:
Relax and breathe naturally, your body and energy field will now feel energised. Practice keeping mentally and physically still, whilst at the same time feeling full of energy and life-force.

This final state is the one that we are aiming to make the base line of our daily life and awareness as Qi gong practitioners: Simultaneously relaxed and energized.

For details of upcoming Three Body Qi Gong classes with Toby please go to www.tobyouvry.com/qigong

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Healing, Art and Service: The three levels of motivation in Qi gong

There are three levels of motivation that you can distinguish in Qi gong:

- Qi gong as Self-healing: Firstly you can practice Qi gong in order to learn how to self-heal your mind and body of a particular ailment. You can see stories of two people who have found Qi gong most helpful for their self-healing at the top of my testimonials page. The first is recovering from cancer, and the second found it helpful in re-establishing her body’s balance after premature kundalini activation that caused here a lot of problems.

- Qi gong as the art of energy-awareness: The second level is where you have gotten to the stage where you are basically healthy and well, and you are using Qi gong as a way of developing yourself and enhancing your quality of life. For example Qi gong facilitates the development of your energy awareness, helps facilitate your mind-body-spirit connection, increases your energy levels and mental sharpness, and enables you to commune with nature more and more deeply.

- Qi gong as an act of service: The third level of Qi gong practice is where the person’s primary motivation for practicing Qi gong becomes that of service. As this level the person is seeking to bring energetic benefit to the landscape in which he or she is practising their Qi gong. Rather than saying to the Earth “please heal me” such a practitioner says to the Earth “What can I do to be of service to you in my practice?”. This is really a level that evolves out of the first two. If you practice Qi gong and Qi gong meditation for a while then you naturally start to see your daily Qi gong as a way of participating in the life of the Planet and, by doing so enhancing the overall depth and texture of the Earth’s Qi.
A nice thing to do at the beginning of your Qi gong practice is to consciously generate all three motivations within your mind by reciting a simple prayer or affirmation such as:

“May my practice heal myself of all physical, energetic and psychological imbalances,
 May it create joy, harmony and depth in my own body and the energy body of the Earth,
 May it play a part in the restoring health and wellbeing to the Earth all who live within the sphere of her energy body.”

One of the secrets of Qi gong practice is that the level of energy that you connect to in your practice is influenced to a large degree by your mental intention. If you consciously expand your intention and motivation at the beginning of your session, then this will actually accelerate the development of your Qi gong practice!

Classes:
Upcoming Three Body Qi Gong™ classes with Toby in September and October
Related Articles:
An answer to the question "How do I experience meditation?"
Is your meditation a type of threrapy, and art-form or a spiritual practice?

©Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

What s Three Body Qi Gong™? (and why should you be interested in practicing it)

Three Body Qi Gong™ (TBQG™) is a new form of Qi Gong that I hav been working on in my own personal Qi gong practice for the last few years. I will be giving my first series of TBQG™ classes this coming September/October, and I am quite exited by it.

With this in mind I wanted to write a little bit about some of the fundamental concepts of Three Body Qi Gong™; what sets it apart from other forms of Qi gong, what the benefits are and so forth:

Three Body Qi Gong™ combines physical fitness training, subtle energy training and meditation training into a single practice:
As I'm sure you are all aware, contemporary living is placing a premium on our time. Our "to do" list never seems to run out, and the amount of information that we have to deal with is ever increasing. Within this time-limited context we also understand that it is good to make time for:

- physical fitness in the form of conventional muscle, stamina and flexibility training
- energetic fitness in the form of exercises such as conventional qi gong or yoga that create a balanced flow of energy through the body
- and mental/spiritual fitness in the form of meditation training to still the mind and develop inner peace and our sense of our "centre"
What I have done with TBQG™ is to combine elements of physical muscle fitness, subtle energy work and meditative stillness into a single set of practices. With three Body Qi Gong™ you can learn to exercise your physical body, subtle energy body and causal (or very subtle/stillness body) all in one workout; mental peace, energetic health and physical fitness rolled into one practice! So this is both time effective and rewarding.

Three body Qi Gong™ simplifies a lot of complex terminology into an easy to understand and comprehensive format:
Many people interested in Qi gong have found that the way in which is explained seems to be quite complex and ambiguous. Different teachers explain it in different ways and using different terminology. TBQG™ presents Qi gong practice in a conceptual framework that is easy to understand, and therefore easy to put into practice. Whilst honoring the depth and complexity of the tradition from which Qi gong practice arises, TBQG™ aims to give people the confidence in their own ability to understand and practice Qi gong that arises from clear instructions and understanding.

Three Body Qi Gong™ will complement and enhance any physical body or sport training that you do:
TBQG™ uses traditional Qi gong stretching and bending movements to promote flexibility. In terms of strength and stamina training TBQG™ mainly works with different types of standing positions that creates gravitational resistance against which our muscles have to work. The type of muscle that we develop through this type of training is high quality, light and ergonomically effective (ie: in terms of the size of the muscle relative to its strength). It is definitely a type of fitness training in itself, but any other form of sport of fitness work that you do will be improved by the TBQG™ practices.

Three Body Qi Gong™ will complement and enhance any meditation or spiritual practices that you have:
In general I have found that conventional Qi gong practice has had a tremendously balancing and deepening effect on my own meditation practice, as it works so well to balance and harmonize the subtle energies of the body. TBQG takes this a step further by integrating muscle training and strengthening which further grounds and stabilizes our meditation practice. TBQG™ overtly integrates meditation and stillness practices into the workout, which means that formal meditation time is integrated into the exercises themselves.

Three Body Qi Gong™ will help you to develop your emotional and mental strength and balance:
TBQG™ teaches us how to transform physical resistance into energetic flow. By learning how to do this on a physical level, we will also come to understand how we can start to:
- Energetically transform emotional resistance and negativity in our mind and body, and direct it toward useful and beneficial ends
- Develop mental strength and endurance through the physical training itself

Three Body Qi Gong™ will increase your general health and energy levels as well as your body's capacity for self-healing:
Again, I have found that conventional Qi gong has has a tremendously beneficial effect upon my own general health and energy levels, and has given me a lot of knowledge and expereince when it comes to tapping into my bodie's innate capacity for self-healing. TBQG™ adds a couple of new dimensions to the health and healing power of Qi gong in general, by more overtly tapping into the healing power of meditation and the mind, as well as the health and confidence benefits of a physically strong body.

Three Body Qi Gong™ is easy to practice at home as well as in class:
The format of TBQG™ is such that, once you have a grasp of the basics it is quite easy to apply in your ow time as long as you have a little discipline. It is not like Tai Chi in the sense of being a complex set of movements that takes months to get a grasp of even the basic physical gestures. TBQG™ does however offer multiple levels of increased depth in the training, so it is a practice that you can engage in for years without feeling like you have ceased tapping into its beneficial potential!

If you are new to Qi gong and looking to start a practice, Three Boby Qi Gong is going to be a great place to start. If you have been practising Qi gong for a while and are looking for new dimensions to your practice, then I am confident that the TBQG format will provide those dimensions, perspectives and experiences in abundance!
So, if you are in Singapore, I invite you to check out the new series of TBQG™ classes that I am doing in September and October, numbers are limited to seven persons maximum, so please register your interest sooner rather than later to avoid disspointment.

For those of you not in Singapore, but following from overseas, I will be posting more articles on TBQG™ in the future, and hope to get some form of training manual together over the coming months...

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby's permission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com