Re: PaulLin
Originally posted by scotty1
[B]So, what is your experience of Zhan Zhuang?
I am pretty much new to it, so I’ll share my experience and ask a load of questions as I don’t know how long you’ll be online.
I started with over 100 days of Wuxi standing. As I understood this was to make sure my energy was flowing correctly before I started building.
Now I am doing the treehugging (Lohan Embraces Buddha?) stance, for 10 minutes daily. By the time 10 minutes is up, depending on what other training I have done that day, there is mild pain in my back and arms. I basically just try and relax and breathe my way through it.
My feet are slightly more than shoulder width apart, and my hands are the same width apart as my feet at about shoulder level in the stance.
The stance now feels quite natural, I am using mental aids to help maintain the stance. Such as a thread out of my crown to keep the spine straight, my pelvis a bowl of water to keep my hips tilted forward, and a weighted thread from my perenium (between the anus and scrotum) hanging into the earth to maintain the correct stance.
{to me, this means to keep the direct path of the connection to the center of the earth–matter–and the space above–energy. So it is like you are a nail between 2 magnetic rocks, one is the earth, the other is some planet out there above you. The body will be stright, but not done by holding, by the force of flowing powers. All lines in the body will be curves, no stright nor bent. Your torso seems stright, but the front and the back would form a oval as you run the path with qi, like ballon with air flow in it. Maintain it long enough, the air becomes steams, and pumps too, all at once.}
In short, it feels natural and relaxed. My mind is relaxed during the stance, and I used to have a problem with tensing my legs which I no longer have.
{Relaxed must come with sinking. If you can relaxed more, you will sink more, if you can’t sink more, you can’t relaxed more. So goes the other way.}
I am not guiding the breath, I am just breathing naturally. After doing this for two weeks I feel I can do 15 minutes now although I am in no rush!
{Breathing is natural and relaxed. So your belley would expend when breathing in and contract to puch air out. That is how to breath without holding it up, so it will goes with the weight and sink the breathing. All parts of the lungs has their own function, that is how you use the deepest parts of lungs.}
So now the questions.
How long have you been doing it?
{I started to practice internal since 14 years old. Not much can I feel at that time. Now it was 17 years later, I have discovered a lot things I have no idea what or why I am doing it.}
What are the effects you have experienced, and what are the effects you hope to experience?
{I will take that out separatly, it will be a longer one.}
Is your practice similar to mine from the description I gave? What is your opinion of my practice from my description, and how could I improve it?
{ We have a set of ZhanZhong, 8 postures. 5 with arms up shoulder high, 3 with arm donw hands at dantien level. It was designed to have a long term standing, so that you can readjest arms. The Zhong you have, I would say you can put your arm down to the dantien level if your arms is sour out, and then you can have your arms back up when ready again. Each of posture should try to make towards 30 min. But what ever you do, don’t rise your arms above your head and stand long time in Zhong, it will harm the heart.}
I have no teacher, I have learnt from a book ‘The Chinese Way of Energy’ and knowledgable people on the internet. I have done other qigong with a teacher.
{meditation would help too}
Do you have any other information you can share with me about this? Also, you mention that my kickboxing will be different from others because of my Zhan Zhuang, how so?
{that will have to do with how firm your center is, how good your linking, as uniting all body parts, how good you can feel internally and externally, how dense your body becomes and how relaxed you are able to maintain. How good you can root on the ground or on your opponent in some case. All these can be trained and improve by ZhanZhong.}
Final question - what is your opinion and experience of the pattern Lifting the Sky? Would you perform it with Zhan Zhuang?
{Again, rise your hands above head cannot be standing for a long time, due to the countinue heavy pressure to the heart. I am only training in the long-time postures. But that would make you look like a happy Buddha.}
Sorry for the long post and all of the questions, hopefully you will find the time to answer them 
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