In our last blog we talked about the importance of recognizing breaks in one's awareness during practice and we mentioned that the San Ti practice of Xing Yi is a great way of achieving this goal. There are two basic components to San Ti practice-the physical part and the awareness part.

In terms of the physical structure San Ti's focus is on developing a sense of "whole body" power where every part of the physical body feels as though it is directly connected to every other part of the body. The first stage of this is developing a sense of the "Six Harmonies," key alignments that put the body into its most optimal state of balance and resilience. There are three internal and three external harmonies. The three external harmonies are hips aligned with shoulders, knees aligned with elbows and hands aligned with feet. The three internal harmonies (which isn't part of this article) are the heart aligned with intent, intent aligned with chi, and chi aligned with spirit.