DAO YIN Exercises for Health

By Junie Norfleet, L.Ac.

In the book Daoist Health Preservation Exercises, it is reported that Dr. Tissot, a famous French doctor from the 18th century, said, "As far as the role of movement is concerned, it can almost replace any kind of medicine. But no medicine in the world can replace the role of movement."

For many years the Chinese culture has recognized the importance of using movement to maintain and support the health of the body. The type of movement that the Chinese culture uses is not the aerobic and weight lifting types of movement that are so much a part of the culture in the United States.

Dao Yin movements are gentle and yet very effective for moving the energy (qi) of the body to help maintain health or to help cure illness. Following are some Dao Yin exercises that will help to maintain a supple, energized body. (As with all exercise, do only what your body feels comfortable doing.)

1. Lie on your back. Relax. Notice where your breath is in your body. Put your hands on that area. Relax. Gently guide your breath to the lower body. Breathe into the lower body several times. Place one hand on the upper body and one hand on the lower body. Inhale into the lower body and hold the breath. While holding the breath, force the breath into the upper body and then back down to the lower body. "Pump" the breath between these two places until you can no longer hold your breath. Release the breath through the mouth. Repeat several times. Relax and notice where the breath is now.

2. Stretch both hands over your head and spread your legs so that your body looks like an "X." Relax. Now you are going to "crawl on your back." Stretch the right hand higher over your head, then stretch the left leg out; then the left hand higher and the right leg out. By letting the hips shift as you reach, a "crawling" motion will be created when you do it at a fairly rapid pace. Once you have done it several times, relax and notice what feels different in your body. Where is the breath?

3. Lie on your back with your arms out to the sides as if the body is a cross. Pull the knees up and place the feet on the floor. Cross the right leg over the left leg so the knees cross. Inhale and let the weight of the right leg push the left leg to the left as far as it will go and release the breath. The head should naturally turn to the right. Let the left leg do the work of bringing both legs back up. Repeat this several times. As you repeat the exercise again, this time let the legs flop over to the left and release the breath rapidly. Repeat several times. Now lie on your back again. Notice what feels different in the body. Which leg feels longer, heavier? Where is the breath?

4. Repeat exercise 3, but cross the left leg over the right.

Doing these gentle exercises helps to lubricate the joints, stretch the sinews, move the qi, and relax the body. As you do these exercises more and more, you will begin to notice that you feel more centered and comfortable in your body, and that your body can stretch more each week. And remember, there is no medicine that can take the place of movement!

Quieting Your Mind and Making Friends With Your Experience Through Contemplation

By Ann Wolman, L.Ac.

As practitioners of Chinese medicine, we tell our patients every day about the importance of relaxation and stress reduction. We encourage them to take time each day for quiet contemplation. Many people are motivated toward contemplative prayer, but they are worried that they will somehow do it wrong or fail at the task. Contemplation and relaxation are not jobs that we need to complete or endeavors we can fail.

I would like to encourage you to do some contemplative prayer or meditation with the simple idea of slowing down and making friends with your mental process. There is no single way to quiet the mind.

Every religion in the world encourages some form of prayer or meditation. Some traditions suggest prayer in order to cultivate a relationship with God, others offer meditation as a way to focus our minds and tame our emotions. Numerous studies have shown relaxation to have a beneficial effect on mood, blood pressure, pain control, digestion and sleep.

If you take the time to watch your mind, you see that the nature of thoughts and feelings is to rise and fall. Even if we want to, we cannot hold them or make them permanent. This is often compared with the nature of waves rising and falling on the surface while the ocean depths remain calm.

As you pay more attention, you may notice that there are short gaps of silence between thoughts and moments of peace between the waves of emotion. The notion is to attend less to our thoughts and ideas about our feelings, and more to the silent awareness that is always present within us. We become less identified with our mental state and more grounded in silence.

There are an endless variety of relaxation techniques. Generally speaking, these techniques offer a reference point for the mind. This can be focusing on one's breath, a sound, or a saying, such as an affirmation or prayer, or even something else. In any case, the idea is to spend time quieting the mind itself.

The Nobel Peace Prize winning monk Thich Nhat Hanh offers a simple introductory meditation practice that I have taught to numerous patients. Just to emphasize: you cannot do this wrong. If you can only sit for 5 minutes, you have been successful. If you run screaming from the room and your own craziness, you have done it right, and if you fall into a deep sleep, it is just fine.

***

This is a breathing meditation and ideally you will begin with trying it for 5 minutes a day. Watching your breath, you will say to yourself a short word or phrase with each "in" breath and with each "out" breath. You can say the words out loud or not, whichever you prefer.

It goes like this:

IN BREATH / OUT BREATH:
IN / OUT
DEEP / SLOW
CALM / EASE
SMILE / RELEASE
THIS MOMENT / PERFECT MOMENT

Spend 5 or so minutes with each sequence pair (IN/OUT, DEEP/SLOW) for a total of 20 minutes or so. It can be done sitting down, lying down or even walking. You can't do it wrong.

You are likely to notice that within what seems like a nano-second, your mind will begin to wander. You will think about all the things you should be doing. You may congratulate yourself for your work at this meditation thing. You may berate yourself for some past mistake. Mental chatter is endlessly varied.

Your mind may wander down long roads of the past and the future. It may take a long time to realize that you are no longer thinking IN/OUT, DEEP/SLOW, etc. No worry. You will realize it, and when you do, just gently label whatever flights of fancy you are indulging in "thinking" and come back to the meditation.

Begin to notice the space between the words, when nothing is occurring, and give it attention. You may find that peace and quiet are always present; we need only attend to them.

If you need more information on relaxation techniques, ask your practitioner at the Clinic for guidance.

Enjoy the peace.

Body Scan for Self-Cultivation

By Junie Norfleet, L.Ac.

Many of us get home from work stressed from the day’s activity. A way to speed the relaxation process and shedding the day’s stresses is to take ten minutes to do a body scan. This scan can also be done a part of the routine preparation of bedtime to assist falling asleep more quickly.

Sit or lie comfortably. Close your eyes and begin this exercise by noticing where there is tension in the area of the head. Notice the lips, the jaw muscles, the eyes, the space between the eyebrows, the scalp, the occiput, and the neck. You are just noticing any place in the region of the head where you feel tension, tightness, or that energy is not moving. Take one deep breath for each of the spaces in which you noticed tension, and image the breath going into the space in which you feel that energy is not moving, or that there is tightness or tension.

Next move to the region of the chest. Notice where the ribs meet the sternum, the space between the ribs, the area of the collar bone, and the shoulder joints. Again, once you notice where the tension and stagnation are, image one breath going into each area to help create space and relax the muscles and tissues.

Now move your attention to the abdomen and the area below the navel. Notice the abdominal muscles, the muscles of the groin and the thighs, the knee joints, the calf muscles, the ankles and feet, especially between the many bones in the feet. Once again, use the breath to create space and relax the area. Continue this exercise by moving to the back of the body.

Pay attention to where the ribs join the spine, the low back and sacral areas, and the hip joints. The sacrum has four small holes on each side in which a great deal of stagnation can gather, and the spine tends to stiffen with tension as we go through our day. Once you have used the breath to help move stagnation and tension and create space in these areas you will feel rejuvenated and relaxed -- ready to enter the routine of “home.”

This exercise can be done on three levels. You can just notice the tension on the surface of the body, which is pretty easy for all of us. As you do this exercise more and more, you will begin to notice tension in the deeper levels of the muscles, and then begin to notice tension and stagnation in the organs of the body. Using the breath to help relax the body in all three of these levels may take more than ten minutes, but will add years to your life.

Huff Puff Qi Gong

By Blake Crownover, L.Ac.

The Huff Puff Qi Gong DVD instructed by Jeffrey Yuen is available at no charge to the community at the Chinese Acupuncture and Herbology Clinic.

Huff Puff Qi Gong is one of the easiest forms of Qi Gong for a person to learn. Though the exercises are simple they can have a strong dynamic affect on the body.

One can use the exercises to treat anything from jet lag and hypertension to cancer and chronic degenerative diseases.

In China, there have been multiple cases where those who have practiced Huff Puff Qi Gong to treat chronic degenerative diseases have succeeded through regular practice in curing their illness.

When beginning the Huff Puff Qi Gong practice, it is important to consider three main aspects:

1) Breathing
2) Posture
3) Intention

Breathing

Huff Puff Qi Gong is a form of Qi Gong that focuses particularly on one's breathing technique. Therefore, the diaphragm is a particular focus for these exercises. Contracting the diaphragm (raising one's trunk) with several inhales through one's nose makes a sound like Huff, and dilating the diaphragm (lowering one's trunk) with one's exhale through one's mouth makes a sound like Puff.

In Huff Puff Qi Gong, it is fundamentally important that the inhale Huff is a few short, quick, yet strong breaths in comparison to the exhale Puff which should be one, long, quick, yet strong breath. This breathing strategy enables the practitioner of Huff Puff Qi Gong, to increase the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled, enhancing one's detoxification.

Posture

Huff Puff is a form of walking Qi Gong that begins focus on posture by aligning one's body into a particular structure. Structure/posture in Qi Gong is important because it provides an ideal opportunity for the individual to gain awareness of Qi by following a few principles in which the body is more open, receptive and relaxed.

The posture begins by first standing with feet shoulder width apart and then grounding oneself in this posture by dropping one's tailbone. To support this grounding, it is good to place one's intention on KI 1, otherwise known as Bubbling Spring, at the center of the sole of one's foot, and further imagining his/her toes are like roots growing into the ground.

Next, it is important to create a counter balance for this by lifting up at the top of one's head at Du 20, otherwise known as Bai Wei. This lifting and grounding counterbalance creates an environment in which the tension builds at one's center, also known as the abdominal/trunk region.

With the combination of one's tension and breath, the body creates a pumping action that increases circulation at one's center, nourishing his/her viscera/internal organs. This helps cleanse the body of any illnesses that may be present there.

The next important aspect of posture is to place one's thumbs in his/her navel, therefore forming a triangle with his/her hands over one's lower belly. Also known as the lower dante en/elixir field, this elixir field is known in many traditions to be essential for promoting long life when over time one nurtures and stores his/her energy there.

Intention

Holding in your mind your personal goals for health makes this exercise as much a meditation, as it is a physical movement.

To receive your FREE Huff Puff Qi Gong DVD, email: contact@ashevilleacupuncture.com.

Self-Cultivation: Holding Your Heart in Your Hand

By Junie Norfleet, L.Ac.

Sit or lie quietly with your eyes closed. Take several deep breaths into your lower abdomen, letting each one out slowly. Place one of your hands over your heart. Let it rest there lightly. As it rests over your heart, spend time scanning the body from the head to the feet, front to back, in gratitude for your skin and all that it does to protect you.

Move your attention back to your hand. Imagine that the little finger and ring finger move slowly and gently into the body in a cupping motion. Again, scan the body from the head to the feet, front to back, in gratitude for the muscles, ligaments, and tendons and all that they do to help the body move gracefully, and to help you as you move through life.

Bring your attention back to your hand. Imagine that the middle finger moves into the body to join the other two fingers in the cupping motion. Scan the body from head to feet, front to back, being grateful for the skeleton and all that it does to help support and move your body, and to the system of blood vessels that helps to oxygenate the body and to keep you alive and well.

Move your attention back to your hand. Imagine the ring finger joining the others in the cupping motion around the heart. At this time, the image should be that the fingers are cupped against the back wall of the heart. As you scan the body this time, be grateful to each of the organ systems in the body and each of the special things they do to help you maintain good health.

As your attention goes back to your hand, imagine the little finger as it moves into the body, creating a picture of the heart sitting in the palm of your hand. With the heart sitting in the palm of your hand, appreciate the core of who you are – all of the natural kindnesses that you perform, the loving presence you are to those around you, the joy that you bring to yourself and others, and most of all, the special niche that you offer to the oneness of all things.

Smile at your heart and begin to imagine gently and slowly removing your fingers from around your heart. Let your hand come to rest in your lap. Take several deep breaths into the lower body, with the focus on the bottoms of the feet. When you are ready, slowly open your eyes.

This exercise can be done alone, or you can work with a partner. When working with a partner, your hand holds the heart of your partner, while their hand holds your heart. One of you would lead the guided meditation by talking you both through the different steps. It is very important not to rush through this exercise, so that you have time to truly appreciate the wonderful being that you are.