As we get older some of us might have some loss in our ability to concentrate and memory.  Using self acupressure we can stimulate two points on the back of our neck at the base of the skull.  These two points we call the #22s in Jin Shin Do acupressure.  Other naming for these points are GB 20, Gall Bladder 20 and in traditional Chinese medicine, Gates of Consciousness.  You will find a hollow between the two large, vertical neck muscles, two or three inches apart. See image below

Place both of your hands on the side of your head and gradually apply pressure on these points with your thumbs.  Angle your pressure up and underneath the skull in the direction of the opposite eye.  Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth, slowly and deeply.  This technique will increase blood flow to the brain and relax the head and neck muscles.

The benefits are a relief of arthritic pain, headaches, insomnia, stiff neck, fatigue and general irritability.

Both of us have completed the Dhamma Surabhi 10 day silent meditation seminar in Merritt, BC.  This is a worthwhile experience which explores the Vipassana technique, a way of self-transformation, through self-observation. 

Each participant follows a prescribed code of discipline.  The course requires hard, serious work.  The next step is developing some mastery over the mind by fixing one’s attention on the natural reality of the breath.

By the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana itself.

On the last full day participants learn the meditation of loving kindness in which the purity developed during the course is shared with all beings.

www.surabhi.dhamma.org

To start your Qi Gong practice we need to begin in a basic position of primal energy.  This is called the Wu Chi position.  Essentially you are standing still and paying attention to your body turning your awareness inward.  This is a key in unlocking your energy centre.  It is preferred to practice outdoors with your back towards the sun and it’s not a good idea to stand in the rain.  If you are inside you might want to find a quiet room  and even listen to some soft instrumental music.

Watch the video below with these ideas in mind:

• imagine that your body is hanging like a puppet
• feel yourself relaxing and sinking down
• calm your mind
• inhale and exhale through your nose
• start with practicing daily for 60 seconds and build up to 5 minutes.

So the next time you have one of those days when you’re getting tired, tense or find yourself getting angry, remember to use your natural energy reserves to restore your vitality and to calm your nerves.

How?  Start by taking a timeout, go and wash your face in warm water and dry it.  Whether you are at work or at home, sit down at your desk, and put your hands and forearms on the table.

Hold your hands loosely open and visualize holding an invisible balloon.  Close your eyes and breathe naturally and calmly for 2 or 3 minutes.  Imagine accumulating energy in your imaginary balloon.  Open your eyes and wash your face several times with your hands moving slowly from your chin, over your face, and then back across your ears.

This will quickly refresh your system and recharge your energy for your body and mind.  If you want you can also do this in the standing Wu Chi position.

To begin every 5 Element Qigong session start by standing in what’s called the Wu Chi position. This means that you stand with your feet a little wider that shoulder width apart. Next close your eyes for a moment and ground yourself. Imagine that your feet are rooting into the ground and bend your knees slightly. Your hands can be placed over each other touching your abdomen over the Hara. Place most of your weight on the balls of your feet and connect your feet with the yin energy of the earth. Imagine an energic connection from the centre of the earth to your feet. Next become aware of your spine. Connect this energy from your feet up the insides of your legs to the base of your spine and run it up the spine to the Crown Chakra at the top of your head. From here imagine the energy extending straight out of the top of your head up into the sky connecting with the heaven yang energy. Take a few breaths here sending the energy upwards and downwards following this path. You have now learned the Wu Chi position of 5 Element Qigong. Open your eyes slightly maintaining the same energic connection and feel.

Metal Element Qigong (Large intestine/Lung meridians)

Begin breathing into the Hara, feet parallel. Take the hands off the Hara and press them palms together like in a prayer position. Separate the hands but keeping the thumbs and index fingers touching. Roll your hands over having the thumbs and index fingers all pointing down and touching together like as if you were pinching a wire. Inhale raising hands to shoulder height, arms outstretched in front of the body keeping the same pinching position with the fingers. Exhale at the top of the movement. Inhale pulling arms and hands apart as if stretching elastic but keep the thumb and index finger of each hand together. See if you can notice an elastic or magnetic connection as you slowly separate the hands. This movement opens and expands the chest. Open your arms as far as possible. Exhale while turning palms up, returning the hands back in front of you. Once your little fingers touch, fold your hands over into prayer position and point the thumbs and index finger back down in that pinching position and continue this opening arms and closing movement 10 times. Next bring both hands back to your abdomen covering your hara.

While you are doing this keep the following in mind. Metal = letting in and letting go. Spirit begins to move into the unconscious mind and allows animal instincts to emerge. The associated colour is white and the season is autumn. Acceptance/openness is the balanced emotional state of metal and grief/holding on creates imbalance. Inhale white pure air and chi. Exhale grey and dirty chi. This is great for clearing and cleaning the lungs.

We’ve set up a couple of social networking sites so if you use them join our communities to get updates on what’s happening at Internal Energy Healing Arts.

Here is our FaceBook page http://www.facebook.com/internalenergyhealingarts

or check out our MySpace page at www.myspace.com/jinshindo

In the previous post we discussed the basics of health in terms of the quality of air and water we intake.  Now it’s time to look at food and/or fuel as us endurance athletes call it.  This is a huge topic and you’ll find a miriad of different opinions on what to eat, how to prepare food, how to eat, when to eat….etc etc etc.

Lets start from a mental viewpoint that we are extremely fortunate to live in a country where we can walk, bike, run, bus, skytrain or drive to a local grocery and find a huge luxurious selection of food.  We can even pay to have organic foods delivered to our doorstep.  We’ve won the lottery to be born in Canada and live where we do in North Vancouver.

Internal Energy’s RMT, Anne-Marie, learned a concept of Metabolic Typing Nutrition in terms of the foods your body requires, desires and prefers.  She did an assessment through our friend, Curb Ivanic, to find out her needs which where more proteins based as opposed the other tendencies towards fats and carbohydrates.  To find out more about this go to Curb’s website www.ultrafitness.net

In May I switched to a vegetarian diet and am extremely happy with it.  I’m probably more of the carbohydrate type.  My original intention was to cure a heartburn issue I’ve been dealing with.  I did a vega test at Delbrook Naturopathic Medical Clinic in North Van.  This is a food sensitivity test and might also identify food allergies.  The initial requirement was to eliminate caffeine and the foods I’m sensitive to are sugars, wheat and dairy products.  I’ve eliminated the sugars and dairy products and have wheat occasionally.

The vegetarian idea came from reading a book called the Thrive Diet written by a local triathlete, Brendan Brazier, and it’s a raw vegan system.  I attempted this but it was too stringent for me to follow especially with the family and how much available time I have.  I probably have 75% of my diet on the raw food principle but I love my egg omelettes, soups and steamed vegetables too much to go 100% raw.  As an ultrarunner my favourite recipes from this book include the smoothies, energy bars, salads and recovery meals.  In the last 4 months I’ve run three 50 km races and one 50 mile race with no problems at all.  The main difference I’ve noticed is in my recovery which has been cut in half.  My other plan is to train my body to go to the fats as a first fuel source and then to carbs which creates a dual fuel system so I can run faster and longer.

Another important reference for me is Dr. Michael Colgan.  I’ve read a number of his books and his monthly enewsletter is a great resource.

Foods are important.  The better and fresher the food the less supplements you need.  You can either pay for your health now or pay for it later.  And paying for it later is not only in the currency of money but in the currency of your health and how you feel.

Instead of telling you what to eat, which you need to find out for yourself, perhaps I can encourage you to purchase your foods from local suppliers.  Yes the big chain outlets employ people in the local community but how about supporting your local farmer’s market.  In North Van, Organics@Home have an open market on Saturdays.  Check’em out.

Happy trails and happy eating.

Before one pursues a health plan the basics of mind, body in spirit need to identified as a starting point.  Lets focus on the body at the moment while remembering that each of these 3 components directly effects the others and focusing on only one of these sections will not remedy deficiencies in the others.  The body can be the easiest place to start for most people and before you go searching for the next super healer, super doctor, super tonic, super gem or magic pill you have to look at what your are putting into your body.  What are the three main substances that we put in our body, that we have control over, for it to function correctly?  Water, Air and Food.  Other external factors that affect our body’s health are exposure to light, darkness, noise, weather, temperature, micro-electric pollution and a myriad of environmental stresses.

Air

Before looking at external factors lets get back to Water, Air and Food.  Water is the easiest substance to control. Air can be controlled; however, this often involves a decision based on where you decide to live.  Air quality has to be a factor of some importance especially if you live in a polluted urban area.  If you live in an area of poor air quality then make a point of making a minimum of one weekly trip into an area of better air quality where you can do at least couple of hours of exercise like hiking, walking, running and biking.  Driving up to Squamish or Whistler for the afternoon in your Mini Cooper for lunch doesn’t cut it.

 While your are exercising you can bring your attention to your breath and visualize breathing in white pure air/energy and exhaling black poor air.  This is great for opening the lungs and expelling bad chi.  In warm conditions you can even visualize every cell in your skin opening to allow for pure air and energy to be absorbed into the body and again exhale stagnant chi out of the lungs.

Water

There has been a huge explosion in the popularity of water, shakes, smoothies, juices and sports drinks in our west coast lifestyle.  Lets consider water first since the others are actually foods or fuels, a huge topic on its own and we’ll cover in a separate blog.  As mentioned before water is the easiest substance to control in terms of the type that you wish to hydrate yourself with.  The 3 basic types of waters are Purified, Spring and Mineral waters.  Purified waters are mineral free and processed via distilling or reverse osmosis purification filters.  Only consume Purified water if you have a compromised immune system where you can’t take a chance at a virus being in the water.  You need to have minerals in your water to replenish your blood.  Long term consumption of mineral free water is said to be harmful for your heart and cardiovascular system.  Furthermore it depletes your system of minerals because of the excess urination it causes.  Some sources indicate that altering the molecular structure of the water reduces the assimilation of purified water into our body.

The majority of your water consumption should be Spring water if you are living on the west coast of Canada and complimenting it with a litre or two of non-carbonated Mineral water a week is ideal.  Our tap water is Spring water; however, the chlorine in our tap water is unhealthy to consume in the long term.  The difference between Spring water and Mineral water is the mineral content.  The dividing line is somewhere around 250 ppm of dissolved solids.  A water with more than that is classified as a Mineral water and less than a Spring water.  Due to the geological makeup of our land on the “wet coast” we have somewhere around 40 to 50 ppm of dissolved solids or minerals in our water.  Once you get to Chilliwack and further east the mineral content increases.

Water Sources

Where do you get your water from?  Options: in house water filtration systems, bottled water delivery and smallpack water bottles like 500mL bottles.   The smallpack industry exploded the last 5 years but has recently been reduced because of the environmental impact.  Remember the green motto of reduce, reuse then recycle.  If all waters were available in glass bottles then we wouldn’t need to worry about both the environmental impact of recycling plastics and a potential contamination of the water from the plastic bottle itself.  But transporting heavy glass containers does have an impact as well.  Brita and other pour through filters are not good enough as they only capture the chlorine.  You want to have have a filtration system that has 2 or 3 filters in it and the smallest filter being at least a 0.5 micron filter to pull out the smallest contaminants.

The latest MLM scheme is water ionization and PH filtration machines.  Yikes.  You may want to consider what your dropping a few thousand dollars on here.  Most of these machines only have a 1 micron filter which is not sufficient.  Furthermore the machines add a further processing of your tap water through an ionization system.  These machines also adjust the PH balance of the water.  It’s better to drink a water that is alkaline versus acidic.  Minerals equals alkaline; therefore, a Spring or Mineral water is better than purified or a mineral-free water.

Bottled water delivery is also a viable option because you can get filtered Spring water delivered to your doorstep.  The Canadian government declared that polycarbonate “is safe for use in water bottles” and “that their latest scientific assessment determined that the migration of bisphenol – A (BPA) into food and beverage products from polycarbonate is not a concern.”  If you are not sure if you want to consider the government’s findings as the gospel then we recommend you keep your water bottles out of direct sunlight.

We also don’t recommend drinking cold water.  Although this may seem to have a cooling effect it actually is stressful on the body in terms of quickly shocking and chilling the internal organs and secondly affecting the chi in the body.  Drink room temperature water even on warm days unless you are doing extreme exercise.  Not all of us live outside the city and have a well to draw from.  If you’re lucky to have your own well then go with a 3 stage filtration system with a UV ray to kill any bacteria.  If this sounds all confusing now please ask us for further clarification.  Happy breathing and happy drinking.

Once one has become an expert in a martial arts system ki needs to be added to the techniques in order to truely master the art.  Some martial arts systems include the development and application of ki at the beginner level.  Ki can also be added to other martial arts sytems that don’t typically include this theory like sport versions of Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Kickboxing, Judo and Jui-jitsu.  Some martial arts that include ki in their training are Aikido, Tai Chi, Taiki-Ken Karate and the indian system of Kalari Payat.

Ki pronounced “key” is a Japanese word also known as Chi or Qi in Mandarin (pronounced “chee”), in Sanskrit: “prana”, in Arabic: “rhor”, “ruach” in Hebrew, ”prana” in Sanskrit, “Spiritus” in Latin, “pneuma” in Greek, “nilch’i” to the Navaho, “ni” in Lakota, “ha” in Hawaiian.  Have you ever wondered why the Europeans and it’s decendants don’t have a word for this?  Hmmmmmm?  George Lucas called it the Force.  This bio-energy is developed by combining breathing and concentration directed by your intention.  When mastered it can produce effects not only within the body but also at a distance from the practioner.  The intent in a martial arts application is used by shouting a kiai.  In the kiai, literally called energy union, is when the energy of the entire body and spirit is focussed into a shout.  The kiai is used at the moment or point of impact.  A powerfully developed ki can be used in all parts of the body in many different ways.  Ki can be focused in the hand to create a weapon or it can be used to heal wounds and diseases.  From a defensive point of view ki can be used as a protective shield.  Some martial arts systems also direct Ki from the body into a weapon.  The belief is that if the weapon was made from a material in which Ki flows easily then Ki can be directed with great effect.  Hence a weapon made of wood would accept ki better then a weapon made of metal.

Ki has nothing to do with ordinary muscular strength.  This is often difficult for the western mind to capture due to our western mind’s inability to discipline itself to maintain a daily practice of ki development.  The ki must be first developed in the hara before it can be used.  The location of the central point of the hara is known as an acu-point called Sea of Energy or Conception Vessel Six (Cv 6).  It’s location is one and a half of your finger widths below the naval and 2 thirds of the distance into your body.  The basics of starting one’s own ki development is to learn the basic breathing system and then move onto to Qi Gong exercises.  Once the ki is developed in this manner one can apply ki to martial arts techiques.

To start on your own ki development type breathing system in the search box at the top right of this page.