Qigong Exercises: Qu Chi Posture

Video Transcript

"Let's start with the first exercise and this exercise is actually one that you'll like because it involves barely any moving at all. Before you begin, some of the forms that you'll learn. You want to start in what we call a Qu Chi posture. What is the qu chi posture? It's a posture that gets us ready to do Qigong. You shouldn't just jump in and do an activity, so we want to prepare ourselves to do that and the qu chi is a wonderful way to get ready for that. How we do the qu chi, is that we're going to stand with our feet in shoulder width apart, and we're going to bend our knees slightly so that we can have nice balance and we want to go ahead and close your eyes. And, when you close your eyes you can focus on working from the bottom all the way up to the top. It is not necessary to close your eyes, some practitioners like to keep their eyes open, but this is entirely up to you. But, what we'd like to do is we like to start from our feet and work out way up to the top of our head. What you want to do is start with the feet, having the feet nice and flat on the ground. And, visualize inside of you that your feet are like roots of a tree. Feel the connection that you have with the earth. The connection of the feet being very solid with the ground. Okay? The connection that you have, the stability that you have. Feel the knees, work your way up, feel the knees. Knees are slightly bent and not locked. Make sure that you do not lock your knees. As you work your way up go to the waist. Make sure that you're not bent forward, make sure that you're not leaning backwards. That the waist is perfectly aligned with the body. Okay? Work your way up next to your shoulders. Make sure that your shoulders are relaxed. If you're tense, you won't be effective in doing Qigong. You want to be relaxed in doing Qigong, so relax the shoulders. Keep the shoulders very relaxed."