Qi Centering Exercise 1
Center Breathe in a Square
This is a small modification of Breathing in a square, which is one of the above breathing exercises. The simple difference is that this time you concentrate on the midpoint of qi breathing, your center in the lower abdomen, instead of focusing on prolonging your breath.
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How to do it
- The best is to sit down with a good posture, or lie flat on your back, but do not stand up when doing this exercise. Wear loose clothing. No clothes at all is even better – at least none that covers your belly.
- Put one hand on your belly with the middle of the palm on your center, three finger widths below your navel. The best is if the hand has direct contact with the skin on your belly, without anything covering it. Then put the other hand on top of the first one. You decide which one of the hands should be on top. Right-handed people might prefer to have the right hand closest to the body, and vice versa – but try both before you take it for granted.
- Start a strictly regulated breathing with the same fixed time for each of its four phases: inhaling air, a continued feeling of inhaling without air, exhaling air, and a continued feeling of exhaling without air. Do not make the intervals too long. Settle for somewhere between five and ten seconds.
- When you exhale, concentrate on how it feels inside the belly, under your hands. If you have not managed a good belly breathing before you do this exercise, you might not notice much at all, but with good belly breathing there is a distinct sensation. You feel power inside your belly, and sort of an itching at the core of your breathing – in your center.
- Continue as long as it feels meaningful, while you sense a point of power inside your belly. You can go on as long as this feeling increases, but if it diminishes you should stop for now.
Because this exercise stimulates the qi flow considerably, and because you have your hands on the central area, your center will be evident to you. Of course, the more you make qi flow in your breathing, the more you will feel your center.
Even if you feel nothing special in your belly during this exercise, it still works as a stimulation of your qi flow and your belly breathing. And the next time you try it, you will surely feel more.
Qi Centering Exercises
Here is a set of simple exercises to find the center of your qi flow. That makes you grounded and your qi flow powerful. You don't really have to follow the order given below, but you may want to do so the first time around. Then you can focus on the ones you find particularly rewarding.
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This is a chapter of my book Qi: Increase your Life energy.
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The life energy qi (also chi or ki) explained, with several very easy exercises to awaken, increase, and use it.
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