(20-min) Movement Meditation Tai Chi and Qi Gong Practice with Kim O'Brien, E-RYT Yoga Teacher

Hey yogis, Kim here. I hope you'll join me in my movement meditation series. After taking a tai chi training program, I was pleasantly surprised at the effect that it had on my mind, body, and spirit. So I decided to craft this movement meditation series, which would include some of those simple tai chi forms, as well as weave in some qi gong movement and breath practices, and top it off with a guided meditation. What I learned about these ancient traditions of tai chi and qi gong is that the movements are subtle and soft. We often just move within about 70% of our full range of motion, yet they are powerful and strong. Research has shown us that these practices not only help to improve balance, strength, posture, bone density, but have a positive effect on cognition and reaction time. Perhaps the best thing about these practices is they are accessible to all of us, regardless of your fitness level or spiritual prowess. Consider this movement meditation series as just another tool in your toolbox to better health and well-being. I hope you'll take the time to join me on this journey of movement and meditation. Namaste. Hey yogis, it's Kim again. This is the warm-up segment of my movement meditation series. Now this segment can be done on its own at any time if you're ever feeling like you need to get your energy moving, or this is a typical warm-up that I would do before I practice and go deeper into my tai chi and qi gong practices. So use it alone or use it as the warm-up to each of the other series along the way. So with that, we're going to start with a nice beautiful qi gong practice to calm the mind. It's called cleansing the qi. And to get started, let's just get in our nice comfortable stance. Remember the feet are about hip distance and that means something different for everybody. The knees have a very soft bend to them. They're not jutting out over the feet. They're just nice and soft. The joints are not locked. The pelvis, which is really important, takes a gentle tucking. Nothing too crazy, but just enough almost to flatten the low back. You'll find as you progress through the series, if you're finding an achy low back, you may realize that you lost that gentle tuck position and then recreate it. Either way, we'll just keep our arms down alongside the body. So this cleansing of the qi is meant to just rid the body of that negative energy. In the teachings of qi gong, that negative energy, that stress, that anxiety kind of starts in the belly and has an upward movement. So this cleansing of the qi reverses that movement by gathering a calming energy, bringing it in toward the body, and then moving the energy downward to the earth where you are rooted and grounded. And I like to believe that moving that energy downward, the earth absorbs and takes it and spreads it out and lets it dissipate. So let's get started with our cleansing of the qi. Soft knees, gently tucked pelvis, arms are down along the side of the body. And as we inhale, we just begin to float the arms out to the side. And when they reach about shoulder height, we rotate the palms up, gathering all of this calming energy. And then on the exhale, we move this energy downward toward the earth. So maybe just start with the arm movement. Inhaling, floating, opening, gathering, exhaling, down toward the earth, rooting, grounding, dissipating. Every time we inhale, we allow the hands to float up. They rotate about halfway through, palms up, gathering all that calming qi to meet the energy of the body going downward. Now, if you can close your eyes during this gentle practice, I invite you. Trying to link and inhale on the upward movement and the exhale on the downward movement. One more with instruction, floating the arms out, rotating the palms up, gathering the qi. And then on the exhale, soaking, soothing, moving downward. A couple more cycles on your own. One more complete round on your own. And after you've completely exhaled and the arms find themselves down alongside your body, just let them hang there for a moment. I want you to see if you can tap in and feel the energy in the palms and the fingertips. And if your eyes are closed, gently open. Now as we inhale, we just float the arms up and forward. As you bend the elbows, draw the palms to the chest, depress the chin down. As the inhale floods, re-extend the arms forward and exhale, soak them down. Inhaling up, bending the elbows, depressing the chin, exhaling. Inhaling, re-extending up, and then exhaling. Keep this pattern going. Kind of keep the movement continuous. My arms are soft, but they don't droop. My wrists are lengthened, but they're not strict in any way. And I'm just trying to coax the energy. Inhaling up, exhaling. Inhaling up, exhale. One more of those. Inhaling up, exhaling. Bend the elbows, depress the chin. Inhale, re-extend, and then soften the arms and allow them to hang to your sides. So some warm-up exercises for the neck. Think about the movement coming from the neck and resist using anything else in the body as best you can. As the right arm floats up, we inhale. And this is the neck. Exhaling as we're rotating the neck, following the hand. And then as we lower the hand, depress the chin down, keep the arm down, and just move that chin center notch. And then float. Inhale, left, and then exhale. Work through the neck rotation. Maybe notice the place you can rotate to. Drop the chin, drop the arm, and then bring the chin back center. Right arm, inhale, opening. Notice if you can maybe take the neck deeper. Always lower the arm, depress the chin. It's part of the neck stretch. Move the chin back center, and then bring the left side up. I can already go farther. One more time, each side. Inhale, right. Mark that spot where the neck can go. Depress the chin, relax the arm. Dribble that chin back center, and then pre-extend the left. Take that rotation wide. Let that arm come down, chin down, and depress the chin. Now keep the chin in the downward motion. Just form the hands down along the side of the body, but have the palms face up. And now opening up through the front of the throat as we inhale, palms up. Flip the palms as we exhale, open the throat, and let the arms go wide and come on back. Depressing the chin down, inhale, lift, open, and only tip your neck as far back as comfortable as for you. Inhaling up, find that beautiful range of motion on the front of the throat, and then a couple more cycles of these on your own. If you're having trouble coordinating breath, just master the movement and let whatever natural breath pattern that happens take over. My knees are staying soft, my pelvis is tucked, and I'm going to take one more of these. Gathering up, flipping the palms, opening, and as my arms go out to the side, I'm going to leave them out to the side. I'm just going to do a couple of bird wings. So I'm just going to inhale and float the arms up, and exhale down. Just inhale, float the arms up, exhale down. Now one more bird wing. Fluid, continuous, like a river running. One more, inhale up, exhale down. So take a moment, maybe roll the shoulders. I always love to just get a little hip movement in, particularly if you're feeling any discomfort in the low back. Maybe take a cycle in each direction, and then come back to our nice base stance. Feet about hips distance, soft knees, gentle tuck in the pelvis, arms, shoulders relaxed. Just a good gentle feeling. So we want to master this art of weight transfer. So to understand weight transfer and what we don't want, I always love to put this in all the time. I like to shift my weight just a bit forward to feel how uncomfortable that is. I can feel my toes gripping. I can feel the tops of my feet really activated, but not in a good way. I can even feel my quadriceps kind of clenching, and I can feel this little discomfort in the low back. But if we can shift the weight back, so that if there was a plumb line, it would be gently stacked over the heels. And you should notice upon shifting your weight back into the heels, how better able you are to manage your body weight and stand upright. So try that again. Pinch the body forward, understand where we don't want to be, and then I don't want you leaning back. It's this gentle shift back where everything is stacked over that strong ankle joint. So from here, let's just shift more weight into the right foot and pause. And then shifting weight over to the left foot and pause. So do this a couple times. Give me a pause. The leg, the leg that has your weight, that's your anchored leg. And we call the other leg your empty leg. So the majority of the weight is in this anchored base leg, very little here. And then as we shift, the majority of the weight is anchored here, very little here. So shifting over to the right, pause, anchoring, lengthening, you should be able hopefully to draw that left toe in. And then just send it back, anchor, shift, secure, and then bring it in. Remember you can keep your chair near you for the entire practice. Touch, shift, anchor, and with integrity and strength, let this empty leg come over and then send the empty back, shift, anchor, good body, and then feel that come in. One-legged balance is key to life because that is what we do when we walk. We balance on one leg. So mastering that shift, we're going to add some arm movement. So I'm going to create this energy between my palms, this ball of energy, some of us call it a and I'm going to sweep this energy high to the right. Now just the arms as I shift left, I shift right, I shift left, and then I'm back at my right hip. And I'm going to sweep up left, and then I'm going to shift right, and I'm going to shift left, and I'm going to shift right, and then I'm back at my left hip, and add that weight shift right, left, right, left, down at the hip, and then it's a sweep up and shift, shift, shift, shift. Now you notice I'm not fully extending, and in fact, we want to keep our movements soft, gentle bends in the elbows like a crescent moon the entire time. And the teaching is that we extend our range of motion, maybe 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%. Taking it high right, get your shift, feel this beautiful shift. Now this will be the last one to the left, taking it up. And as we come down this mountain, I want you to keep the shifting, but I want you to keep the energy right here in front of the heart center. And notice how my hands just spin on the spiral of the energy here. And the greatest teaching or best, you know, way to understand what hand should be on top is that the arm on top is like a direction, and the hand on top is telling you which direction you're moving. So left hand is on top, I'm shifting left, and then right. So let's get that right hand on top, let's shift right, and let's bring that left toe in. Let's rotate this left hand on top, take a bigger step. And then let's continue this gentle shifting action, but with a wider leg stance. Now, if you're having any pain in your knees, don't tend to. You can always keep your stance much shorter, but I'm not here to have you do squats or overextend. It's very soft, it's very subtle. And then I'm just going to bring my hands to center, fingers reach to the sky. This is just called open and close. Inhale and open the hands above shoulders width, and then we exhale. So maybe inhale, feel the rise of the body, exhale, and inhale, it's a rise, exhale. So inhale, rise, and then come back to center here. So I want you to make this, and I want you to pull your energy in, and then just reach the arms up a little bit across of the forearms, and then completely reverse that. So bend, and then floating up. So I like to exhale here, and then I like to inhale here. And then notice as I exhale, there's a little bit of soaking, and as I inhale, there's a rise. Exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale. So we're going to add on. So we exhale, we pull it in, and as you inhale, we lift up and just lift open, and then reverse that. Bring it back and down. So inhaling up and open, and then exhaling back and down. And again, notice I'm changing whatever hand is in front. I like to give each hand the opportunity, right? Inhale, open, exhale, down. So we're going to add on. We're going to inhale, open, and then the hands go down. It's like we gather the energy from the earth, and then we reach these fingertips up, and then we start all over. Down, up and cross, open. Scoop the energy from the earth, and then send it high to heaven. Down, cross, open. Scoop the energy from the earth, and then reach the fingertips high. Down, cross, open, scoop, and then reach that energy high. A couple on your own. One more. Scoop the energy, reach it high. And this time, after reaching high, just let the arms float wide out to the side. So visualize hugging the largest oak tree possible, tucking the spine, rounding the arms, and then just inhale, breathe the chest. Do that again. Just a tucking, and this rounding, and then this nice inhale, and it's tucking, rounding. Inhale, and open. Let's change it up. I like to rotate the shoulders in, bring the backs of the hands together, and then rotate the thumbs back, open the chest. Exhaling here, inhaling here. Almost like a nice cat-and-cow movement, right? Inhale, open. One more of those. Open, and then just relax the arms back and down, shake out the legs. So let's end our practice, our warm-up, as we began with just a little bit of chi cleansing. You need a lot of hips distance, soft knees, gentle tucking the pelvis. As you inhale, begin to float the arms up, and about halfway through, the palms rotate up. Let's gather that energy, and then on the exhale, let's bring it down. A couple cycles on your own. So, no matter where you are, inhale, draw that energy up. When the hands reach overhead, draw the palms of the hands to the heart center. The light and the energy in me is a reflection from each of you. Namaste.