Moving Meditation I

Most of us have heard about the benefits of meditation: relaxation, emotional release, inner peace etc. Some may even have tried doing meditation with a audio CD or DVD. In most people’s mind, meditation involves sitting at a half lotus posture, follow some breathing and mantra and try to quiet the mind. But for the majority, as soon as they close their eyes, random thoughts start to kick in: “What to do next?” “I forgot to pick up the laundry!” “Where did I put my purse?” In about five minutes, the hip or legs start to hurt and then the mind starts to ask, “Are we going to finish soon?”

In fact, sitting still meditation is actually a higher level of meditation. The mind is like a wild horse, it is quite challenging for a beginner to tame the wild horse while he/she is not even able to ride a well-trained horse yet!

I personally highly recommend learning and mastering moving meditation prior to progressing into sitting meditation. Moving Meditation mostly involves movement, breathing and controlling the mind all together. The simplest way to do it is just focusing on a body part, slowly move that body part, breath and relax. For example, we always do shoulder rotation as a warm up exercise for our muscle. Most of the time, we just rotate the shoulders without even paying attention to them. You may try, which I call, shoulder rotation meditation. Close your eyes, focus on your shoulders, breath out gently when you rotate your shoulders, imagine all the tension is melting away to the surroundings, just like melting a butter. If you may let your mind stay still for that 1 or 2 minute, you will feel refreshed and your shoulders will feel very good too. You can continue to do the same for your other joints: neck, wrist, elbow, waist, hip, knees,and ankles.

When you can master that, you may then start to progress to learn energy meditation such as Tai Chi, Qigong/Chikung, Dahn Mu etc.

Please see my next post for more about the details of moving meditation

Yoga Breathing Therapy

A Yoga Breath Therapist walked in to our center today and asked if there was opportunity for collaboration. Actually we include yoga breathing therapy in each of our class. We also offer that in the private sessions for our members.

Yoga breathing therapy is in fact very effective in helping individuals to release emotions that were hidden in their bodies. When a person encounters emotional trauma such as loss of loved ones, betrayal, divorce, emotions usually stick in the body when they were not dealt with right after the events. These emotions usually affected the 4th chakra at the chest area or 3rd chakra at the upper abdomen area. With energy imbalance, diseases such as depression, anxiety, high blood pressure emerge. Through yoga breathing therapy and other techniques such as acupressure, energy healing and visualization, these emotions could be released and the individual could feel more balance and normal.

Energy Training and Energy Healing

A lot of visitors came in and asked about our Tai Chi classes. Most of them have practiced Tai Chi before. But when I asked them if they felt energy on the hands when they practiced Tai Chi, most of them said no. They said that they had not reached that level in the practice. In fact, most of my students felt energy on their palms in their first holistic yoga or Tai Chi class. There is nothing mysterious about feeling energy. In a simple scientific sense, we all have a bioelectric field around us. Our brain communicates various signals to our body in  the form of bioelectricity. We however focused most of our time looking outside with our five senses. That is why we do not feel our energy. Our yoga classes focus on “rewiring our hardware” – body, by deep stretching. We can then feel energy in our palms naturally. By doing this type of energy training, our mind naturally calms down. Energy connects our body and mind. By focusing our energy, we also can have a better sense of our body. Usually we will feel coldness in those areas of our body that had blockages or weak. Energy healing then can take place by harmonizing those energy field.