Shakiness in legs during kwa squat and standig qigong

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I have been practicing standing qigong for quite some time now (a few weeks after I quit some months ago because I noticed I had poor posture: hollow back, shoulders too much backward, weight on the heels, I ‘fixed’ this using a core strenghtening program). My problem is I experience quite a lot of trembling in the legs (mainly the quadriceps I thinks but it spreads out to the rest of the legs). I experience the same trembling in coming up during the kwa squat, in going down things feel stable. You can imagine this doesn’t really give a rooted feeling and it is not good for calmness neither, actually I must say it kind of frustrates me. The thing is I have a lot of stress, which is the reason I picked up on practicing qigong in the first place: for the health benefits.

I must say I have strong legs so this can not be the problem. I also look at the alignments closely. One more thing that might be an indicator, during the lying down excercise on whole body breathing, I noticed the trembling in the quadriceps was there as well.

I’d really appreciate someone telling me where the problem lies and a way out.

Kind regards,
Thijs

[Anonymous]

Hi Thijs,

I’m not sure what your exact issue is but I thought I’d share my own experiance with trembling legs.

I used to get a lot of trembling in my legs, especially in my quads. In the past, I had done a lot of external martial arts and had built up strong quads so the trembling was puzzling. I could sit in a horse stance for long periods of time, but just standing with good alignments was very difficult.

I eventually figured out that I was carrying a lot of tension in my quads and this tension was making it very difficult for energy to smoothly flow through my legs. I spent a lot of time dissolving through my legs and removing layers of tension. Every time I released some deeply held tension, it became easier to stand.

I made most of my progress by laying in bed and doing my dissolving practices. I found it much less distracting and easier to focus my mind onto my legs. When I tried to do the same while standing, I found all the tension and shaking in my legs to be too overwhelming and it was difficult to make much progress.

My legs will still start shaking sometimes, but I take that to mean I’ve just found a deeper layer of tension to work on

Hope this helps,
Janak

[Anonymous]

Hi Janak,

Thank you for you answer.

I see two similarities with your story: strong legs and trembling, so maybe this could work for me. However I am not sure what this dissolving practice entails. I have Bruce’s book Opening the energy gates where there is a chapter on dissolving ‘Dissolve blocked energy: ice to water, water to gas’. Sounds great, but difficult, how does it work?

Kind regards

[Anonymous]

It is true that
it could be built up tension in the legs releasing due to the body relaxing
into its alignments. However, there is another possibility: your alignments may
not be very good, so your body is closing down. First, check your alignments
and make sure your lower spine, hips and the backs of your knees are (to some
degree) open. Don’t force them open, but make sure they’re not shutting down.

If the shaking continues following,  then it is probably tension being released
from the legs. If the shaking is too distracting to your practice, then I
suggest sitting in a chair while in proper alignment and practising sinking qi
(see the audio download in Week 2). It is best to get a good foundation
in sinking qi (say for a month or so) before moving on to dissolving as
dissolving is based on the ability to smoothly and strongly sink qi through the
body and into the earth.

You can begin your practice standing and after a few
minutes, when the shaking becomes too much, sit and complete your practice.
Over time, in several months or more, your standing time will slowly increase
and the shaking should lessen.

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Dissolving is one of the core methods of Bruce’s system. As such, there is an incredible amount of depth and breath in this technique. It’s the kind of thing that you can study for 10 years and still feel like you’re just starting to get the hang of it.

The dissolving technique is based on the power of your mind. Your mind has a very high frequency of vibration. Imagine a cell phone on vibrate. It’s buzzing back and forth very quickly.

Stuck energy in your body would have a very low frequency of vibration. Imagine an ice cube. It does not move much. It is just kindof stuck and sitting there. What is stuck energy? There are many different types. In the physical body it could be a very tight muscle, an old injury or a recent bruise.

Now here’s the interesting part. Some taoist dudes a couple of thousand years ago figured out something very interesting. They noticed that if you bring your mind to a spot that contains stuck energy something starts to happen. The stuck energy starts to change! It starts to unravel, loosen up and become unstuck. It’s almost like you’re picking up the ice cube and shaking back and forth really quickly and this is causing the ice cube to start melting. This is the phase called “ice to water”.

So in your quads, you probably have many layers of tension from years of exercise and activity. To get started, you want to bring your mind into your quads. Pick a spot on your quads and just try to feel it. What does it feel like? Does it hurt? Is it tense? Is it sore? Try your best to keep your mind in that spot.

You will notice that you can’t actually keep your mind there. You can keep it there for a couple of seconds, but then you’ll get distracted and your mind will fly off somewhere. Every time you mind flys off, you want to gently bring it back and start feeling that spot again. If your mind isn’t feeling that spot, then nothing is happening, nothing will change. Change will only occur when your attention or awareness is located in the spot that you are dissolving.

If you are feeling a spot in your body and you are staying present to it. If you are getting distracted but keep coming back to that spot. Then you are dissolving.

The above is an oversimplication of the dissolving process, but I hope it does help you get a rough idea of what this technique is all about. I’d recommend trying to find someone who has already learned the dissolving process to talk to. It makes it a lot easier to get the hang of things.

Hope this helps,
Janak

[Anonymous]

Thank you both Janak and Paul for your elaborate answers.

I must say that I think my alignments are ok, I follow the instructions as stated in the video closely. However I always had the feeling I was doing something wrong because of the shaking. I am not sure what exactly you mean by making sure the lower spine, hips and backs of the knees are open Paul, since none of this is mentioned in the video?

The shaking is already less then in a previous practice period (I quit a few months because I got frustrated by the shaking, thinking I did it wrong, however I’ve spend a lot of time checking if my posture was correct, and as for as I can tell it is. It is possible for me to stand like twenty minutes, not very relaxing because of the trembling but I can.

I look forward to the excercise you mentioned in week 2 about sinking the chi. I am very motivated to go down the taoist path and therefore hope something can be done about it.

Kind regards,
Thijs

[Anonymous]

Yes, begin working on the sinking qi next week. In Week 3, I’ll give you more advanced considerations for your alignments that includes how to open up the backs of the knees. In the meantime, I encourage you to sit down (rather than lie down) if the shaking gets to be too much.

[Anonymous]

I too experienced this, though for me shaking in the lower legs is not common, not to the degree that I experienced it in doing the standing and dissolving meditation and the sinking chi after I did the kua squats. Sometimes I will have very brief shudders that manifest in my body, but it usually starts somewhere in my core and moves out then down and out the legs naturally, and is brief. This is very different from the shaking I had after the kua sqats.

This time the shaking was constant and was simply a sign of what I think is deep internal muscle fatigue…followed after by some very light soreness in my left knee. This I interpreted to be one thing…it simply meant I worked muscles that I normally don’t, as it was the exact same feeling I get when that happened to me in the past as well. It meant the kua squats were simply doing what they are meant to…and that it was working. The shaking was not painful, it simply was constant and very distinct from that which I mentioned above.

The kind of brief shudders I normally get are simply energy being released in my body, or sometimes it means that my focus needs to soften. I’ve been working on chi/energy work for a little over a year now, so from my experience this is what I have determined to be happening…but that is only for MY body since every BODY is different. Just sharing my thoughts.

[Anonymous]

I’ve heard shakiness or trembling to be processing energy/information. A good sign!

[Author]

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