Qigong Exercises: Tree Posture

Video Transcript

"What I'd like to do next is have you follow-up with a movement from the Qu qi posture, and this posture is called standing like a tree. It's a posture. Very simple posture that you can go right into right after you do the qu qi. So, if you're in the qu qi posture the first thing that you want to do is stand in the qu qi as we talked about, and from the qu qi posture we can raise and go right into standing like a tree. So from the qu qi posture what I'm going to do is I'm going to raise my hand and I'm going to come up to, basically, chest level. When you come up to chest level, you want to relax the shoulders in this movement, Okay? So don't have the shoulders hunched up, but relax the shoulders. Keep the shoulders very relaxed. Keep your elbows and your hands all relaxed. Fingers are spread. Once again, don't exaggerate spreading the fingers but don't let your fingers touch either. Keep your fingers in a nice spread manner. Okay? This is called standing like a tree. We stand like a tree because we want to feel that our arms are actually like tree branches. If I'm standing very still my arms are like tree branches. Okay? And what I want to do is first, always go through your posture, make sure your posture is correct. So, we're going to go from the feet again. One easy way to remember is to go from the ground up. And so we want to go with feet again. Start off with the feet. Are my feet flat on the ground? Are they evenly spaced so that you get nice stable platform? Second, work your way up to your knees. Once again, the knees should not be locked. They should be slightly bent so that you can keep the energy flowing. If something is locked in the body the energy cannot flow. So don't lock your body, keep it nice and bent. Okay? Waist, once again, should be straight. Work your way up to your shoulders, relax the shoulders, don't have the shoulders tight."