My Morning Practice

hey dan

good question.

I often have hip pain as I wake up(scoliosis, it’s getting better and better), so I will do gentle knee circles and bends while laying in bed. I also teach this sort of thing to anyone with chronic pain, fibromyalgia or CFS, it makes a huge difference limbering up a bit before you get up.

once I actually get up, I tend to do a bunch of cloud hand variations; bruce style (energy gates), chen’g man ching style (even more yin), and bagua style, also known as teacup exercise. always trying to allow the legs to do the majority of the work, and whatever else im working on with the legs (sinking, spiraling, softening, springing, connecting, smoothing)

if I have chi gung tui na sessions that am, I will do some of D and T and gods, cause I want my chi moving smoothly. I like D and T movement 4 a lot, I will do that one anytime, but a lot on work days. keep the chi flowing, baby…

I also tend to do some heaven palm or single palm change, just very easy, , to get the whole body working as a unit.

If I have serious work to do, particularly one with obstacles, ill go out in my alley and do some hsing-I. gets me focused and keeps me on track (If you know me, you know I can use the help)

If I have a day off, ill often just roll to my closest park and visit my buddies the trees. circle walk, palm changes, and gods. the days I spend time training in the trees seem to be the days I make the most headway in regards to chi and shen training.

with all of this, I will say it’s often just “I feel like this would be good today”, and I kinda do it. I find when I organize a daily schedule, it’ll get derailed and then I don’t practice as much. but if I practice when I feel it, I seem to get a lot out of it. this may be a byproduct of my irregular schedule, or just how I tend to roll…

Hope this helps, and im looking forward to hearing/seeing what others do with their warm-ups…

I need to figure out how to actually get out of bed early so that I can do stuff of a morning. It’s quite a struggle, and usually I just get up with enough time to get to work 5 minutes late.

When I actually do do stuff it’s something like this…

1) Standing and sinking to clear anything stagnant
2) Tai chi to get things moving
3) Anything particular that I feel I might need
4) San Ti to top things off with a boost

I’d like to get up really early to practice. It seems like me and most of my generation have issues getting up early. Not at all sure what the issue might be apart from maybe moving around a lot in my sleep.

There was only one night that I can remember waking up totally refreshed, and surprisingly that was when my entire upper body was quite badly sunburnt. There was one position that was less painful which was flat on my back, and so my subconscious mind had to keep those precise alignments right the whole night otherwise the pain would be horrendous. Despite my body obviously working hard to repair my skin I woke up with more energy than I had ever had.

How do you suppose I could wake up like that every morning? It would be fantastic to have to sleep less because then I’d have more time for practice. Has Bruce ever mentioned anything about that?

Hey Cameron,

Bruce did teach a little “sleep qigong” at Brookline Tai Chi one year. The biggest takeaway was that you need to prepare your body for sleep, like Andrew was saying.

From a qigong perspective, this was mainly about getting the energy to drop out of your head. One of the simplest techniques to do that was a version of counting sheep: lying in bed, roll your ankles 100 times in each direction, effectively focusing your feeling awareness there and pulling the chi out of your head.

When you look at the problem that way, there are ways to use many of the different qigong exercises to get moving in the same direction — like doing the First Swing as if you were almost falling asleep on your feet.

You can also go through your tai chi form in a really light way, focusing on just releasing the buzz from your nervous system if that’s the kind of rev that’s keeping you awake.

Coming from a slightly different point of view, I found this talk about energy, creativity, and work fascinating:

http://the99percent.com/videos/7110/Tony-Schwartz-The-Myths-of-the-Overworked-Creative

If you have 30 minutes, I highly recommend watching it.

Dan

Hi cameron

3 things I have had work well when you gotta get your energy going.

1. don’t wait until you’ve gotten up to start waking up.
for example, most people will hit the snooze button at least once, instead of rolling back over and snoring, try laying on your back and do a little breathing. if your trying to relax, slow breaths are great, but first thing in the morning, your trying to energize, so full, smooth, and medium speed breaths can be great.

also, most tai chi and bagua arm movements can be done lying on the bed, just don’t smack your bedmate.
or just doing some arm circles, wrist circles, leg circles or ankle circles wil get the blood flowing.

I figured these out while working with people who have chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia/epstein barr issues, and I saw very good results.

the more tired you are, the more stagnant your chi is. chi is flowing smoothly and dynamically, you will be awake. I learned this during Bagua IT, I did not sleep for 3 or 4 days, just cause I was so full of chi. felt great, just did not need the sleep.

2. figure out why you WANT to get up, and let go of why you HAVE to get up.
I notice that when people want something, they do a better job of whatever they do than when they don’t want to, but feel they have to.
why would you want to get up early? to practice more, so you feel better all day, and have an easier time making that money you want to have? it’s a mental trick, but it works.

3. GO to BED EARLIER, and REMOVE ALL hindrance to a quiet and restful sleep. no TV or any electronics 2 hours before bed, and most people sleep better with a little food in stomach, but not too much, maybe something easy to digest(soup?). Red lighting in bedroom is better than blue, and having it very dark when the lights are out also helps. but everyone’s bedroom and nighttime ritual is different, ask yourself, what might improve my sleep? then try it. this is advice from a ND student and DC friend of mine, and I have found it can make a big difference.

hope this is helpful, I am wishing you a good nite’s rest and a great morning! (positive thinking!!!)