Palmer

I also was taught eyes open and slightly closed but have met people that were taught it as a meditation with eyes closed. With that said I was taught to work with visualizations at certain stages of my practice that required the eyes to be open and focused in front on something in particular. My opinion is that you can take zhan zhuang practice in so many different directions that depending on what you are trying to achieve any of the methods are appropriate.

For those of you that use standing meditation what are your goals with the practice, what is your practice, and what do you find your results are? Do you also incorporate other types of meditation into your practice? My original goals were to enhance my understanding of the martial arts I was practicing (and because my teacher told me too!) I became addicted pretty soon and my teacher eventually focused on teaching me postures that were more of a combat nature (San ti shi, Spear and shield/turtle, Dragon etc etc.) Regardless of the posture my practice mainly consisted of- 1. Initially learning to relax/quiet the mind 2. Visualization exersizes -to open channels in the extremities and guide chi to specific points and certain directions in the body -to imagine various pressures to let the mind and body react and eventually not react (physical/emotional) -to focus on movements learned and enhance my understanding/ownership of the movement in stillness 3. express opposite force in the body -stretching the 5 bows (4 legs and spine) -express force in 6 directions I have found a variety of results some including and in no specific order- Ability to remain relaxed under physical strain Overall greater physical strength particularly in the lower body Enhanced ability to generate force from the whole body over smaller distances Greater sence of awareness of balance and movement Able to deal with mental/emotional stress better than without the practice (Only found this out when backsliding on my practice) Feeling what people describe as chi circulation for the first time mainly in the extremities and a whole body type sensation. Much higher energy levels Only recently after years of feeling energy circulation in the extremities and an overall feeling of wellness have I tried to look further into incorporating taoist meditation practices to circulate chi at major points that are along the bodies center. When using similar techniques to what I was taught in Yiquan I was amazed to feel similar sensations at some of these points as well. I saw there have been threads in the past on Zhan Zhuang and there are some well educated members here on the subject I hope to learn more about how other people practice. Palmer

Thanks Trunk what kind of things have you incorporated? I have only just started to incorporate "non-Yiquan" things into my standing and have also enjoyed it so far. But since my whole standing foundation is based on a teaching I wonder how much I am interpreting things through a Yiquan filter. Palmer

Thanks Cameron, no I am not talking about rooting I have an understanding of what that is (I have been training Xingyi/Xinyi for awhile and studied Tai Chi in the past as well.) I have had the opportunity to have studied with a couple of good teachers (Yiquan is of the late Kuo Lien Ying's line) although I cant say that I have been taught everything I still have much to learn. The Yiquan tradition in my opinion has many layers and quite a few methods to learn. . I agree these things are not really practical to learn without an instructor although I have picked up a couple of gems from people over the net after already having a foundaton. cheers, Palmer

Thanks for everyones responses. I believe there are a large variety of standing practices among people and many different goals with these practices. I noticed even among the training I received significantly different goals depending on a certain posture and how it was taught. For instance my teacher wouldn't teach someone the Santi posture if they had no intention of training for self defence. This may not be exactly what you are talking about but a Yiquan practitioner I correspond with and highly respect has talked about this kind of training and Lam Kam Chuen describes it in one of his books where you are drawing strength up from the earth (Lam illustrates it as a triangle.) I have never tried this yet but would like to experiment with this in the future. Does this sound similar to what you are describing? I was kind of hoping to see if people linked together things like the "Grand circulation" and other Taoist meditation practices with Zhan Zhuang. Personally giving up Zhan Zhuang is not a welcomed option for me but at the same time I am not sure how much time I have to invest in other meditation practices that could not be incorporated into my standing. This is mainly due to time constraints since my time practicing Xinyi Liu He is fairly demanding as well. Intersting responses I always told people I am not just standing around and when you see the diversity in response even though we are just standing still clearly we are doing many different things! Palmer

I know very little when it comes to Taoism but this being the case I was under the impression that any desire to achieve immortality or longevity would be for a greater purpose that may change from individual to individual. In my opinion this greater purpose would through enlightenment need to be aligned with the Tao and therefore also ultimately be a selfless existence/endeavor?

Hello, Nice site. I came across this site when searching for Taoist information online. I have an interest in Taoism as a belief system/philosophy as well as Taoist meditation methods and internal alchemy. I have been studying chinese martial arts for about 15 years with the last five mainly being Yiquan and Xingyi/Xinyi. As a result of my Yiquan training I have become more and more compelled to explore other meditation techniques that I can incorporate with or perform in addition to my standing meditiation. I am an American living in Canada (wife is Canadian) and work as a clinical pharmacist at a local hospital. There seems to be many knowledgeable people here I look forward to learning as much as I can! Cheers, Palmer