Mental skills personal experiment (2): energy and abdomen (december 8)

-          Meditation – about 10’

-          Breathing – very little

-          Weight training – pecs & triceps general strength, upper back postural

-          Stretching

-          Flexibility

Details

1.       It’s been about one week or a little more since I haven’t practiced meditation. It makes a difference. It seems there’s a breakthrough after 5-7 days continuous practice and the curve of tolerance/body need for meditation enters a plateau

2.       Zhan-gong – adapted its practice to this experiment. Works better than other martial qigong exercises I tried. Consists of keeping the traditional zhan-gong position combined with breathing and visualization. Inspiration = flow up from the Earth, up legs, following front part of lower abdomen; expiration = flow down from sky, throat, spine, sacral area, turning in and forward as it reaches lower abd. Breathing this way creates a white glowing ball at lower abdomen. Haven’t done it in a while – makes a great difference.

3.       Weight training: almost impossible to apply qigong to any workout exercise yesterday. The gym was full and for some reason too many people decided they wanted to assist me. IMPORTANT: must develop ways to focus and apply energy techniques while under the care of others, since this is what actually happens at competitions. Yesterday I could only practice my “thing” on triceps-pulley and parallel bar exercises. Even without a lot of focus, it was quite effective: breathed in and out zhan-gong-like, visualized the glowing ball, contracted the abdomen and pumped about 10 abdominal expirations. Tried to visualized conducting strength to triceps and pecs, eyes closed. Opening the eyes still spoils the effect – I suddenly lose strength.

Observation: yesterday was the first exceedingly hot day of the year. I have low blood pressure and felt somewhat dizzy and weak. Even in this condition, “concentrated” exercises were quite different from “non-concentrated”. Was able to reach (very briefly) the state of disconnection with the environment. I suspect this is the key to it.

Questions:

-          How important it is to contract abdomen

-          Timing

-          Team-work (in meets and training, how to deal with team-mates and helpers)