Sophomore

Hi all, I’ve been practicing Zhan Zhuang for almost two years, and after about 5-10 minutes, so much blood has rushed to my feet that they turn a dark purple! If I shift my weight left to right and lift up my heels, my feet return to a normal color. But I’m curious if this is related to an error in my posture, and if anyone else has experienced this. I’ve used the way of energy as my guide (generally I do wuji, holding the balloon, then wuji for a cumulative 25 minutes) until a month ago when I switched to Damo Mitchell’s wuji posture.

This really makes sense. I’ve signed up for Damo’s online school.

This is helpful for me, thank you. I place intent on softening my knees and actively bringing the weight of each body part to the feet with nothing grabbing the weight on the way down…but my hips and lower body are still very tense. Rarely I’ll get a lovely drop of the lower back and hips towards the end of the 20 minutes, but I haven’t made that release my own yet. Looking at Damo’s pictures in his nei gong book, there are a lot of obvious structural differences between our stances. I appreciate your focus on feeling and intent. It’s a good reminder for me. I really love this practice.

Here are before and after photos, and my stance. Brutal critiques are invited! https://imgur.com/a/tI4q1BG

Hi all, glad to be here. I’m a Zhan Zhuang practitioner of about a year and a half, and I’ve lurked these forums pretty frequently as I’ve been refining the practice. I began with the Way of Energy, and have recently begun reading Damo Mitchell’s book on Nei Gong. Nice to meet you all, and thanks for all the information you’ve shared!

Thank you all. I think I can track down a local qigong teacher to critique my stance.

Thanks for your reply. My health seems much better since I’ve started Zz, but I’ll take your words into consideration.