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Hello
Resently my iron shirt practise has changed. I am less rigid in my practise. Mostly I do a wery easy stance, with the hands in the highth of the diafragm palms facing downwards, but I don´t remain in that position, beacase spontanous movements occurs.
When I stand in that position and have reach a state of relaxation, then my sponanous movements starts, mostly they do. I do follow the movements that starts and go into a moving qigong. The movements are sometimes wery slow, sometimes fast and sometimes even violently fast.
I start to like to do the standing practises much more when I do follow this process. After the movements don´t want to do anything I go back to the stance, and often the movements starts quite suddenly from there again.
I have noticed that the movements find theire form that is just what my body wants to do to get rid of tight areas or blocked areas. Often the muscles in these areas starts to tighten even more, sometimes wery tight, and then while following the spountanous movements the areas softens up more and more. I have notices that my body goes spountanuusly into qigong movements that I didn´t know beforehand but afterwards might find up in a book. For instance while reading Mantak Chia golden elixir gigong I found the movement to the exercise iron bridge swallow, which is one of the movements that my body found by itself, but not with the excact finger movements in that exercise.
Those spountanous movemets did start when I started to practise meditation with a mantra when I was about 18 years old. That was my first practise. I have always been wery refreashed of following theses movemetns! They are wery relaxing.
I feel much freer in my practise of the iron shirt right know. I even start to enjoy it much! Before iron shirt was wery difficult for me to do, but I have always felt that it is of greate importance for my health to practise these exercises. Perhaps I have found my own way of doing them! For a while ago I wanted to stand in a stance for 100 breaths, that was a way to increase my will to practise these exercises, even though I knew it wasn´t a wery wise aproach I did it for a while and managed to do some of the stances for 100 breaths. For the movement I do not care about any such meassure, I just stand and enjoy it 🙂
SD
Enjoying your practice is the most important part of practice.
Keeping variety and giving yourself what you need are crucial.
Happy practice,
SI think Iron shirt 1 is the best and most important part of my practice apart from smiling. It’s easy to do during the day when i’m driving to/from work or as a proper standing practice. Just makes you feel good and better. When i had it working very well i felt like my body was just a tool. I placed it in the best way and used it as an anchor to pull up the earth energy. I could use very little force and pack large amounts of energy. I also like using more force when i’m not so perfectly connected though, it’s as if the extra physical force can make up for some lack of spiritual connectedness.
I also think spinal cord exercises are very good and useful.
All the exercises interact with each other and each helps in a different way but i find when you have a family you need to find the most beneficial ways that help you with the least time. Before when i had unlimited time i ended up spending so much time practicing mantak chias stuff that my life ended up being very sheltered and internal. Sure volcanos and wurlwinds work going crazy on the inside but then whats going on the outside seems more fun. Overdo the inside and the outside will pull you. Now i think it’s best just to live life and spice it up with some internal work.
Best explaination i heard from someone is that qigong is like a big brother. He will get you out of those sticky situations and get you back on the right track.
Hello and thanks for your comments on iron shirt and your practise.
Iron shirt has been the most dificult part of my practise all the time from the beginning when I started for ten years ago. During the last years I have practised it regularly but not alot, it is part of the book “Taoist yoga…” by Eric Steven Yudelove that I practise from. My interest from the iron shirt practise has slowly grown. It was not long ago since I felt realy tired after just a few minutes of iron shirt. I also did sweat alot from this standing practises. During the last years I can tolerate it better.
During a few times perhaps five times or so or maybe less, I have resived energy up to the tan-tien during my standing practises. It has not happened many times in a row but suddenly during separate occassions.
But now when I let my body shake and rock and move slow and fast in spountanous movements, there is happening alot more with the energies than ever before. I practise standing practises for much longer times than before. My body has softened up dramatically on a muscular level. I was realy tired from the practise, which happenes nearly always when I practise more, at the momement I do practise about two hours nealy every day. And my energy are realy low every second day or so and during these days I do more lying down practises than standing practises. I am also wery cold so I often have to practise lying down under a blanket, especially if I practise for longer times at the evenings.
Anyway the other day I was standing for half an hour or so in my second iron shirt pass. I had felt that the bubbling spring points was more filled with energy than perhaps ever before, and that that happened during my spountanous movements qigong. Especially during such movements that repededly did let my body rock from standing more on the first the left and then the right leg, repededly changing the weights beteen the legs. My bubbling spring points was wery filled with energy, then I thought I might to try to move up energy from the earth to the tan-tien. As I do with my bone breathing practise that I have practised alot lately. So I did not only focus to move up energy from the earth, but instead I did breath enrgy first into the earth and then up from the earth all the way to the tan-tien. And I think this is the first time I manage to counsiously establish this connection, my tan-tien actually get a bit warmer, but with a wery soft energy. It was not alot of energy but realy a soft energy with some power. I was wery happy with this and have not yet tried to reapeat it, but I think I can manage to do it know. I considet the event as a big step forward in my qigong practise, especially beacase this might have an efect on my general health problem and beacase this connection to the earth is realy important for the following higher practises. Another reason why I see it as a big step forward is beacase I always have had problem with this part that others semse to do realy easy. I remember some years ago when I talked with my instructor about this, that I wanted to connect to the earth and counsiously be able to draw in earth energy to the tan-tien. He was realy surprised and told my it is just to do it, wery easy and you should be able to do it easy if you consider the level you are at in your other practises. Well for me it has always been an obsltacle maybe beacase of my lack of yang qi or beacese of my weakened kidneys.
I am anyway wery eager to continue with my standing practise and to investigate in what it will give to me. I have had a time when I have been reading alot from Mantak Chias books and also from ohter sources, which was realy inspiring. I decided to start to practise 2 hours a day in the near future. That will be an increase from perhaps one hour on avarege. I realy need to ground myself to be able to go foreard together with my yoga group and with what we will be practising in the future.
We will be doing some practises that connects to the universe. And I think I realy will need to progress in my iron shirt. I should also be needing to progress with my cold body problem, beacase it might be exagerated when connecting to the universe and plannets and so on. But on the other side we progress perhaps enough slowly in hour group so that I will manage to deal with these higher practises.
I will write about what that practises will be later on, the main subject in this thread is the iron shirt and the spountanous movement qigong that I developed by my own and seems to benefit alot from.
Steven are also right about that the feelings towards the practise realy are important to. Which he has commets on before regarding my iron shirt practise and my former ambivalance towards it. But I always have thought that this the most problematic area might also be the most important one, thats the reason for me fighting continously with it, even though I not always have liked it alot, compared to the other practises.
A big smile to everybody.
SD
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