Five Qigong Tips for Managing Your Stress

Tip Number One: Master Your Breath

If you find that you are holding your breath and you cannot take a deep breath, it is time to regain control of your breath and your life! If you are holding your breath you are resisting your life. As you resist your life, things get worse. Don’t feel bad everybody does it, just do something different. Try this. Blow all your breath out. Get every last drop out and then hold it out until you feel panicked that you are not breathing and then let that breath come in. Typically survival instinct has you holding your breath as if you are about to be struck, or attacked by a bear. It is called the “Fight or Flight” reflex. This is an outdated response to our surroundings for most of us. In other words, it does not serve us, unless you are living in the ghetto, are a Police Officer or you live in Alaska with Grizzly bears. Either way, we need to turn this reflex off now and then so we can rest, recuperate and heal. One way to override the momentum of Fight or Flight in our bodies is to take conscious control of our breath. This technique is one way to begin doing exactly that!

Tip Number Two: Get Some Sleep

Get some sleep and some rest. Quality rest can be as good if not better than sleep. Sit in your tub, lie on your bed, practice resting until you are ready to go back to the world. Seated or Standing Qigong meditation can be a practice that you also employ as part of your rest, especially when you cannot sleep.

Tip Number Three: Connect with Nature. Practice Qigong by a river or a mountain or both. Breathe in through your feet and out through your nose as you draw your hands from the level of your waist (facing palm down) slowly up toward your shoulders. Inhale new Life Force and draw it up through your body. Exhale the old stagnant Chi and old stagnant breath as the hands (palm down) travel back down toward the waist. Try Thirty rounds of this practice for a quality experience.

Tip Number Four: Slow Down or Speed Up Your Body

Practicing slow Qigong movements or still, postures can be very helpful to you especially if you are a fast-paced person. If you are a fast-paced person you may also employ the practice of literally doing nothing at all from time to time. Just literally sit on the stoop and stare or gaze off for awhile. You may find over time that this helps you to make significant gains in your life! If you tend to be more of a “lazy” person, get the energy moving by going for a brisk walk or practicing a few Martial Qigong movements or Qigong practices that incorporate sounds like the sound “shhhhhh.” You can see this sound being used with Qigong techniques like Double Dragons, which can be found in some of the downloadable videos including Qigong for Weight Loss and our Online Medical Qigong Course.

Tip Number Five: Qigong Practice called ” The Waterfall”

Imagine that you are standing under a waterfall and imagine that the water is coming down over your head and washing over your body. Take a standing posture that looks like you are sitting on a horse, we call this horse stance. The wider the feet are apart the harder this is, so start at the shoulders or just past the shoulders with bent knees. Reach with your hands up toward the sky, with hands coming from out to the sides and palms beginning to face palm up. Reach up toward the top of the waterfall and as you do that breathe slowly through the nose into the belly and let the belly and then the chest fill with air. Then image the water coming down and have the palms face downward as your arms descend. Have the palms gently follow the water down toward the earth. As the hands reach the level of the hips and lower belly let the hands drift apart and go out toward the sides. You can imagine following the water with your mind as it spreads out onto the rocks at the base of the waterfall. Repeat ten times for a quality experience.