Ba Duan Jin - A 15 minute Practice to Energize the Body and Mind

Vector illustration credit: https://www.vecteezy.com

Disclaimer: The content here is only the author's understanding of the subject. It may or may not be true. Do your own research to get the right information. The author is by no means any expert. The author is just a beginner in this path sharing his enthusiasm.

The Magical Chi:

In my understanding Chi (Qi or Prana or Life force energy or Vital energy) is an energy that flows in our body the source of which I don't know but I know that it exists. It needs a certain awareness to be felt.

The flow of chi keeps the body healthy. From my experience, by performing exercises that affect the chi, the physical, mental, emotional and energetic states are also affected. You can become happy if you keep your chi in a certain way. In those states you'll simply be happy without any external reason.

There is also an internal side to martial arts which makes use of the chi. By using chi, one can generate unimaginable amounts of force. The internal martial artists don't use muscle to generate force, they use chi. Chi has applications everywhere.

Indian yogis also have a great understanding of this life energy. All those magical feats we've heard in the Indian epics are probably done because of the mastery of chi (What if I told you, there might be a technique to shape-shift if you knew what to do with your life energy!!!!).

Ba Duan Jin - Eight Pieces of Brocade:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/377809856222293397/

This is a set of exercises in Qigong (Qigong - "Life energy cultivation"). There are many great techniques in qigong and this is just one. It is primarily designed as a form of medial qigong, meant to improve health. It consists of eight separate exercises.

From my experience, it take 8 - 15 minutes to do it, depending upon your pace and it can energize your body and mind. Its great to do when you are feeling lazy or drained or non-energetic or lethargic.

I can clearly feel the difference after doing it. Sometimes I'm just so lazy and numb in my whole body and after doing it (even after the first exercise), I can feel the energy, the aliveness fill my whole body.

Its a great exercise that I do whenever I feel like I need some energetic flow in me. When I have the, what I call, energetic flow in me, I'm driven to do. It brings me the energy to do.

Energy is inner fire. Being energetic is having it set ablaze. Its a kind of thrill to have it ablaze. Its the same thrill one feels when one is passionate and inspired. Its the fire set ablaze.

One thing that I consider important while doing any form of exercise related to life energy is to be aware of my body especially how I feel "within" the body. So I usually do the exercises slowly.

If you are aware in a certain way, you can actually start to feel the chi. For me, I easily feel it in the palm of my hands. It feels like they occupy the space between the palms and any movement of one palm can be felt in the other as a compression or expansion of the space between. According to qigong, there is a chakra point (energy meridian) in the center of the palm. That's where I can feel the energy going in and out. Different people feel it in different places and each have their own experiences.

Youtube link to Ba Duan Jin exercise

Final note:

All exercises related to the life energy are supposed to be done properly and accurately. If done wrong it may do harm. So try to do it as properly as possible. Just putting out the warning there.

I've been doing it for a lot of months and I haven't felt any harm, I've felt only positive things from doing it (Sometimes you gotta risk it if you want great stuff to happen :D).

I think only some exercises are meant to be done accurately and I guess this baduanjin can be done fairly accurately without causing any harm. Usually the techniques that are supposed to be done very accurately are guarded as secrets passed directly by the masters to the right disciples. They are very powerful when done right and very harmful when done wrong. So these usually aren't taught to the public. Ba duan jin is a popular Qigong form, so this means this can be done by beginners easily.

I thought of sharing the technique with you because of how well it has worked out for me. I'd love it if you'd practice it for at least a week with mindfulness, then share your experience with me.