Post by macky on Mar 2, 2021 8:03:46 GMT
Macky Thanks for posting this stuff, very interesting and informative. I'm doing a simple Double KB Press and Front squat routine 3 times a week right now. I think I'm going to add this Ping Shuai Swinging Arms to my everyday menu. I use to do the Eight Brocade from a book that Greg recommended years ago. Can't find the book so I don't remember the name. I stopped doing them because I pulled my back out doing one of the exercises but I can't remember which one.
Your KB and Front squat routine is still a pretty all-round workout, and simplicity is always the best when you can manage it.
You can see quite a few styles of Eight Brocade/BaDuanJin on my previous posts, and there's many more on youtube. The thing is, you don't have to do them all to have a nice chi kung workout i.e. relatively relaxed and the mind on the belly with breathing kept low as possible.
Just take a couple of favs and do those repetitively for (say) 15 reps each then stand still for a few minutes. Leave the forward stretch out, and the one where you go into a horse stance then move to the side with the torso and across the body to the other side before coming up again.
You'll be doing enough bending over and picking things up all day on your job, most probably. You could also do some of them seated if you want the arms reaching above you without stretching the legs and the lower body. And the punching drill.
The Ping Shuai you can blend it in with your KB routine if you want to, as a warmup. And later as a stand-alone exercise for say 700 reps, which will take you about 16 minutes, once again standing quietly after you finish swinging the arms, feeling the blood and energy moving around.
As a warm up, you could use 1kg weights (you don't need much) to enhance things prior to the KB presses, but later on if and when you knock off several hundred Ping Shuai swings, leave the weights out of it, because then at that point, it's a chi kung drill, with your mind once again on the belly, abdominal breathing through the nose. Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth gently.
Just a word, if you find your breathing starting to get heavier through your nose in the cold air and making the back of your throat cold or sore, just open your mouth a bit and breath through that. There's plenty on youtube on Ping Shuai, but if you catch sight of the girl in red demonstrating, you don't have to dip as low as she is.
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Just a bit more this morning on stretching the back. Some (not all) styles of Ba Duan Jin show straight-legged bends forward, some with rounded back, others with a straight torso.
Neither is advisable, especially for those engaged in heavy lifting-type work, and workouts. We are taught to always bend the legs when picking things up, and that should be the way we do our forward bends in exercises such as Ba Duan Jin. Some styles also do not have forwards bends that go all the way down, and even then the legs are bent.
Years ago I became very flexible in forward bending following a certain style of Eight Brocade, only to pull a back muscle the first time I lifted anything substantial, on the job as linesman.
Something else you might like to play with if and when you use Ping Shuai for its original purpose (as a chi kung drill). While swinging the arms, image a ball of transparent shining white light around you (say out to 4-5 feet all around, with your Lower Dantian (an area, NOT a spot, just below the navel and about a third of the way in) as the centre.
Swinging the arms in this environment can take on a whole new experience, and you can get a glimpse perhaps of "what is possible". It's not mere imagination, you are working more mindfully on the bio-electricity and corona effects that animate our bodies and minds.
Don't try too hard visualizing. If you can't keep the image stable for long, no worries, just easily concentrate back on the Lower Dantian as an area, filling up the lower abdomen with energy.
Actually, after ANY visuals during a chi kung round, always bring it all back and consolidate it in the Lower Dantian after finishing, while standing quietly. Being out in the open spaces and trees as you are, in quiet areas away from the work site, a round of mindful Ping Shuai among the trees can be a wonderful experience, as long as it's not too cold or too hot, and there's no draft.
Don't do any chi kung if there's stormy weather or thunder nearby. We are electrically driven, and the enhanced charges of nearby lightning apparently are not good for us when performing meditative chi kung. I'll take the masters' word for it, with their thousands of years of accumulated experience.
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A sideways version of swinging arms that a Malaysian Chinese Tai Chi master taught back in 1993 was to stand with the feet a bit more apart (not a horse stance, but have the knees bent a bit) and raise the arms to each side, up to shoulder arm, elbows bent not rigid.
Keeping the feet where they are and twisting the torso (not vigorously) to the left, swing the right arm across the front of the body, while the left arm swings to the back, then reverse, with torso twisting to the right, the left arm swinging across the front, the right arm swinging to the back.
The arms return each time to the sides, up at shoulder level with the torso to the front, as the body briefly pauses, before commencing the next turn. I hope that explains it. DON"T tap the kidneys with the arm at the back like I've seen in some other versions of twisting swinging arms. It's not necessary, and you risk bruising.
The arms initiate the twisting in conjunction with the torso, without tension, not just the body as you may see in other versions, and it's a good addition to the straight forward-and-back arm swinging in the conventional Ping Shuai. For example, in a round of (say) a thousand swings (about 25 minutes or so) I'll inject a hundred side-swings maybe two or three times through the round. A ratio of roughly 1 : 2 or 3.
You can also step with the Ping Shuai instead of dipping, according to a version Dr Yang Jwing-Ming notified in his Chi Kung book. As the arms swing forward, the left leg comes up and steps down when the arms go back, then when the arms come forward again, the right leg steps, and so forth. I have seen one practitioner on Youtube double-stepping per one arm swing, and if that is preferred, go for it. I like the single step per swing better, but that's only my preference. The most important thing is the relaxed swinging of the arms. And the standing still after finishing for a minute or two, feeling the blood and energy move through the arms and hands, then back up and into the body. That is the real benefit of the exercise (apart from the meditative aspect) and is the reason why weights are not used in the hands, when it's being used as a chi kung.
So if one is going to do 700 swings, which is about 16 minutes, one could do 100 Ping Shuai with dipping, 100 with stepping, 100 side-swinging, 100 dipping PS, 100 Side, then 100 stepping then finish off with 100 conventional dipping Ping Shuai. That can keep the concentration level up and reduce any boredom.