Zhan Zhuang Mind Aspect

[shaq420]

I am practicing Zhan Zhuang and want to know what should I be thinking while I am holding a posture? Can I watch TV or does my mind need to be meditating in some form while standing?

[Miffymog]

yeah - my practice (although self taught)

 

As with any interest in my life, I could go on for hours on the simplest of points - so I'll try to restrict my self.

 

First question would be how long do you stand for, the second would be what warm up and warm down exercises do you do?

 

I stand for 20 minutes, if you're beyond that, then you're beyond what advice I can give.

 

I went through this very question this week when I came across a website that suggested if you are holding the balloon / embracing the tree, you should pretend that you are holding down two floating balloons with your elbows. By doing this you are learning to use your posterioral  muscles to hold up your arms so that there is less tension around the neck.

 

Now, normally I just do what Lam Kam suggests which is allow your mind to wander (this is along the lines of maintaining an contrived mind). But this week I decided to try out the above method. For the first 5 minutes it definitely help relax my arm muscles, but I found I could not keep this mind set for the whole stand, so I then just let my mind wonder.

 

My conclusion from this experiment, just go back to letting my mind do what it wants to.

 

As far as watching TV goes - its simple, if it makes the stand easier do it. I tried it a while ago and found that I became more concerned about how long I had been standing if there was either TV or radio on in the back ground.

 

If you're thinking about watching TV, this is possibly because you're standing at the end of the day. With other meditation practices, I have found they were easier to do if they were in the morning, because then I would not have to worry about how I was going to squeeze it in in the evening. Wake up, do it, forget about it.

 

Good luck with it - it takes time, but I have found a greater benefit in the long term than with a simple sitting practice.

 

 

[Mudfoot]

You can watch tv. In my style,  that's recommended for beginners. 

 

Now,  if you want to get more out of your practice, you don't want to do that. It builds in a glass ceiling in your practice. 

 

But what you want to do depends on your goals and your skills. 

 

If you are in to martial arts, you can work on expanding and contracting,  Peng,  an and so on. A good dvd on I Chuan can teach you that. 

 

If you're into a spiritual path,  depending on school and/or level you might want to focus on your LDT, let your mind follow the changes, or try to find stillness. Or..... 

 

Good alignments is always a start, no matter which path you tread. So learning to feel the differences between good and poor alignments is useful. 

 

Some of this is also depending on which stance you are using. 

 

Every stance (except one) has a focus, they are not neutral. So it is stronger in developing one thing,  at the cost of bring less efficent doing something else. 

 

But now you are coming to the point where you probably have quit practicing on your own and found a teacher. 

 

 

 

[Starjumper]

Focussing on your body helps one to stop thinking and there are body things to focus on while doing Zhan Zhuang.  Focus on the posture to make sure it is proper, focus on your breathing to make sure it is smooth and not strained, focus on how you are feeling the energy in your hands and body and observe it.  Look for tension everywhere in your body, try to find where you have tension and release it specially in zhan zhuang because some of the strenuous postures can bring out tension in parts of your body that are not required to hold the posture.  Relax as much as possible without falling down.  These things give you some focus that helps you to stop thinking.  

 

Standing still can be one of the most difficult things because since you are already standing it's so easy to get an idea about something that seems to suddenly need attention, so watching TV can help you stay on task.  Watching TV will lessen the meditational aspect but it won't make to much of a dent energy building aspects and the strength building will be the same either way.  Good luck with it.

[KuroShiro]

3 hours ago, shaq420 said:

I am practicing Zhan Zhuang and want to know what should I be thinking while I am holding a posture? Can I watch TV or does my mind need to be meditating in some form while standing?

 

I would say don't worry about the mind, let your thoughts run free and don't worry if you're not "meditating". The practice will "work" the mind and with time your thoughts will decrease not only when standing. You can start by watching TV, later on your body will ask you to turn it off.

As it's been said worry about correct posture, relaxing and breathing. Also you might want start slow (3-5 min) and stick to 1 posture.

[Sudhamma]

The Mind aspect of the zhan zhuang practice is the training of mental calmness and concentration, the precursor to moving qi. It does seem to be a contradiction of sorts when the practitioner has to concentrate on being relaxed and be aware of the body. As the stance can either be low for beginners, medium for the experienced, and high for those accomplished, being aware of tightness and to be relaxed are extremely difficult for the serious beginners. However, the cultivation of jing, qi and shen in neijia cannot begin without that mental focus and calmness which can only result without distraction. A good 20 minutes of complete mental focus and calmness is much better than an hour of practice but without focus nor calmness. Another consideration is that it is much better to practise where is good fresh air.