Standing Meditation

[[DW]]

Mountain Hammer (aka "Craig") has kindly written me up a Guest Blog (#2) on Standing Meditation (Zhan Zhuang). Check it out here:

http://physicalalchemy.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/guest-blog-2-craig-mallet-arctraining.html

D

[Craig]

This article I wrote totally just reminded me to do more standing pole. Good work me!

[[DW]]

<cue theme song from 'Once Upon A Time In China'>

[Kit_L]

When I was living in Hughes (in the Japanese Tea House), I worked up to a hour in this position. It is a brilliant practise. I still do it occasionally.

[Joshvogel]

Nice article! I did and still sometimes still do standing practice for years. Usually the relaxed type, but a long time ago I trained for a while in I chuan which invilved lots of opposite forces, tension training through twisting the limbs and very long duration sets (60-90 minites regularly). The interesting thing with the long duration sets is after about 20/30 minutes or so, the intense shaking would stop and you can go for what seems like forever relatively easily after that.

That being said, it really really sucks holding for the first 20/30 minutes lol.

[LukeMM]

Question:

Is there a positiv effect withhout reaching the stage of relaxation, or is ithe relaxation something that only comes after some weeks of Training?

I tried it for 500 Breath/30 Minutes and had very intense (and funny) shaking all the time.

Whats your experience with stoping the shaking in the first days/weeks? Keep on going until it stops at every session?

[Craig]

Days/weeks is not enough time for this to subside. *maybe* if you are never ever ever missing a day you'll pick it up in a couple months, likely less if you are doing the 60-90 mins josh mentions. It took me several years of intermittent (3-4 times per week) practice before I had the total relaxation effect.

[Craig]

But yes, keep going. In the meantime you'll also be doing some strengthening of joints etc, and doing some invaluable work on the old willpower. Nothing is very hard after you can do an hour of being horribly uncomfortable and burning standing pole!

[LukeMM]

...Oh

In Serge Augiers book, he writes about the grounding and structural benefits of the standing practice as a basic, that should be trained before neidan / sitting breath work. 

This is already very time consuming, and I don't want to completly stop neidan. Do you thing the standing practice can still be used as breath work and have at least a small calming effect, when the body is better aligned and some of the pain stops? Training both is of course better, but something that takes a bit too much time.

 

Thank you

[Craig]

I've had standing as my only mediation for years, it's obviously had a very nice effect for me despite my lack of daily practice. I really think either is fine, my preference right now is to have one thing on focus (do not ever miss doing your 30 minutes minimum of this thing no matter what each day) and one thing as complimentary (try not to miss this thing, even if it's only 5 minutes or something). So I'd suggest doing 3 months of focus/complimentary as nei dan/standing and then afterwards do the opposite and see which one has a better effect. Either way, you will have then done 6 months of really great practice. To be honest I'm not sure the order is such an important thing, as long as you eventually end up having done lots of everything. Make sure you don't end up with paralysis by analysis, best is that you are flight something consistently each day.

I'm currently doing 30 -45 minutes of nei dan daily, and 15 - 90 minutes of nei gong daily. Also random things throughout the day while waiting for lifts or buses.

[spencer_c]

I've had standing as my only mediation for years, it's obviously had a very nice effect for me despite my lack of daily practice. I really think either is fine, my preference right now is to have one thing on focus (do not ever miss doing your 30 minutes minimum of this thing no matter what each day) and one thing as complimentary (try not to miss this thing, even if it's only 5 minutes or something). So I'd suggest doing 3 months of focus/complimentary as nei dan/standing and then afterwards do the opposite and see which one has a better effect. Either way, you will have then done 6 months of really great practice. To be honest I'm not sure the order is such an important thing, as long as you eventually end up having done lots of everything. Make sure you don't end up with paralysis by analysis, best is that you are flight something consistently each day.

I'm currently doing 30 -45 minutes of nei dan daily, and 15 - 90 minutes of nei gong daily. Also random things throughout the day while waiting for lifts or buses.

 

 

Craig, i'm about halfway through Augiers book now and was thinking about the different positions of meditation from this post. I was wondering your thoughts on a 3 times daily meditation and body position for this. I was thinking Standing in the morning sitting mid day and lying at night. Do you think it's beneficial to practice these different positions in one day or to jut focus on a single one to understand which one works best.

[Craig]

its good to experiment.  just make sure you keep one of them consistent with daily practice. doesnt matter which at this point, the processes serge describes in the book are processes that take more than 5 years of consistent daily practice