Get closer to Qi gong

To talk about Qi gong or at least to start, let's start with the three, a number dear to the oceanic Dante. The idea is that you are composed of three centers. The dantien ( dantian ) superior, median and inferior. The first is placed around the frontal draft, between the eyebrows; the second is around the xiphoid, at the mouth of the stomach; the third rests in the lower part of the abdomen. Here rest your "three treasures" ( jing, qi, shen ), which we will talk about elsewhere.

The phone rings, you want coffee, sudden need to call someone, thoughts about the future, the crisis that envelops all of Italy, the black and lucid crisis, as if it were a living fluid, something that looks like an insidious creature, enters from the window and whispers in your ear to find ways to make it or invites you to scratch directly. The beauty of Qi gong is that the degree of tranquility and the time needed to obtain it vary according to the conditions of each individual.

In different phases of life I have experienced how the practice is affected and if the practice is part of life in a constant way, the influence is one-to-one. The variant that I would call "around", affects. A man whom I respect a great deal told me that one cannot ignore the relationship with others . That you can eat well, give yourself to the motion, take baths with salts, give us under infusions, decoctions or herbal teas or whatever it is. But the relationship with the other cannot be ignored. Why should you, on the other hand? I try to answer. Because you are afraid. An important fear of not re-establishing personal boundaries, of ending up doing slalom between possessive adjectives, while thoughts and judgments take over.

In Qi gong we have a degree of light tranquility, intermediate or deep . When I approached this practice I obviously didn't know all this, then I entered the phase for which it is worth forgetting the subdivisions; lately, I sniff the difficulty between the storm of thoughts, which corresponds to a sincere discovery of fascination with teaching, as a spontaneous need for communication and transmission of what we are learning. For those who start with Qi gong, I would say to experience a slight degree of tranquility for a while. Some tricks to induce him: walk barefoot on the ground, a whole afternoon (then slowly a whole day) without speaking, without uttering a word. A documentary about animals is also fine, as far as I'm concerned, but seen well, without cell phones, without food, without distractions.

Reality has jerky and broken movements. Qi gong and tai chi chuan go together and rest in transitions . The calm to experience them, the transitions, even in life, is worth making it familiar. In Chinese tradition, achieving this tranquility means progressively getting closer to splendid goals:

Strengthen brain function ;
Develop psychic powers ;
Work on character formation;
Improve the state of mental and physical health .

We must think in motion, in a profound sense. What I mean is that if you think you can't change, if you believe that things are there monolithic, you can't approach anything and if you can't approach anything, Qi gong is also excluded. Even a revolutionary haircut or the introduction of a completely new food habit are cut off, if you don't think about it in terms of inner movement, to say.

So, let's start thinking about the three centers, without fixing them too much. Let's go ahead "feeling snakes"; in other words, with a skin on and inside that changes, continuously. And then off, go down with your hands to the abdominal dantien, move your tongue up and down in coordination with the breath. Roll it up and wet the mouth, then swallow it and let it go down to where you have your hands, internally.

Now we direct internal Qi towards an organ. What does it mean? Pensiamolo. I often use anatomical tables, both ancient and not. Some may instead not need it at all and it is better for them to imagine their own liver or heart as they want to.