November 5 2023, I reached 200 hours Zhan Zhuang. Praticing half an hour a day I reached that mark in 400 days.
I have chosen not to describe the second part of the gong as a diary but to list the most important changes in a row. They did occur in approximately the same order as described below.
Through muscle memory, the body easily adopts the correct posture. It’s a proces that takes some time and it may take you longer then expected – don’t worry! The posture is not exactly the same every day! Your body feels exactly how deep you can sink through your knees on any given day. Some days your legs have a better Qi flow than on others and the great thing is that your mind has to interfere less and less with that. Eventually it doesn’t interfere anymore.
The strength increasing in your body is much more than muscle strength. That is the famous Qi flow, which strengthens all the cells of your body, not just those of the muscles.
The most beautiful discovery I came across in the second 200 days Zhang Zhuan was that calmness arises in the body and not in the mind. It is not the mind that urges the body to calm down but the other way around! The body becomes calmer before the mind and eventually pulls the mind into silence. And that in turn leads to a relationship of trust with your body that you build or, better said, restore!
The Posture in traditional Zhang Zhuan
You will start to notice information that helps you to progress your practice reaches you at exactly the right moment; exactly when you need it. That’s part of the miraculous support of te universe, I guess. But if you start anticipating anticipate this flow of information, it will seize. Just let it happen, do not anticipate it.
After I had read the chapter on the centres merge in Dr Pang Ming’s book again, I switched to the breathing technique that Dr Pang explains in ‘methods of Zhi Neng Qigong’. This breathing technique has a great effect!
Adopt good abdominal breathing: inhale, and let the lower abdomen – the whole lower dantian – expand. The lower abdomen swells up and you collect Qi in it. When you exhale, you shift your focus from the belly to up above the head. On exhaling visualize how the upper dantian followed by the middle dantian descend into the lower dantian and the centres become one.
Let the pause between exhalation and inhalation last a bit longer. While you hold your breath a moment of complete stillness will occur. Let the next inhalation come naturally. Try not to direct or initiate it.
This is a technique that you can use every time distracting thoughts occur to return to the state of complete calm.
That moment of silence between exhalation and inhalation is golden. Use it to literally direct your gaze inwards. Hearing, seeing, feeling the processes in your body gets so intense. It’s like you gaze inside your body. You may be standing motionless, but Qi always moves inside your body. Not just the Qi of your heart, blood circulation, the expansion and contraction of your lungs but through all tissues. Hear the heartbeat, the blood circulation, the bubbling in the intestines, feel the Qi flow; just observe. There is always a transformation in progress. This feeling is mentioned in modst books about Zhang Zhuan; you see with your ears and hear with your eyes.
Three centres merge
Directing your senses inwards is the key. Second important factor: let go of all expectations. The process really got going after I started observing in peace and quiet and only became stronger when I kept my attention only on the background of silence. When you first encounter this quietness you may feel a bit of euphoria and with that the feeling disappears within the blink of an eye. Don’t worry; you will get used to it and remain your calm.
After a few days I visualized my entire body expanding like a sphere and on exhalation the sphere forms a flat disk around the lower dantian. In the pause between exhalation and inhalation the Qi flows deep into the dantian.
What happened next was I started to feel the connection between the gates on my crown (baihui), in the palms of my hands (Laogong) and the ball of my feet (Yong Guan), with the lower dantian. Qi is drawn from the gates towards the lower dantian, it feels as if Qi is also being sucked in.
The sensations I describe above is not experienced the entire half hour I practice the centres merge position; far from it. The Chinese masters say that you may reach the state of silence after standing about 20 minutes. I have the feeling that I reach this state much earlier, but I do have difficulty maintaining the Qigong state. In the last 5 minutes of practice I loose it often. If I am in good shape, have a nice calm day and have prepared myself well before I stand up, it’s easier to hold the calmness, but on busy days, or if I was a bit emotional – It doesn’t matter if it was a good or bad emotion: euphoria or fear/anger – it’s a lot harder.
It happened to me once that I seemed to notice an acceleration of time. I always put on a background sound; chants by Tibetan monks (you tube video). In it you hear a bell about 4 times per minute.
One day during the meditation I heard that bell being struck one after the other with hardly any pause in between. As if time was speeding up. Unfortunately my mind immediately went into a state of euphoria – this was of course very special, and then I fell back into reality very hard. There is no point in trying desperately to recreate this sensation. Consider it as progress and just continue.
Opening of Ming Men
I already described in the first part of the diary that on day 30 I felt Ming Men (energy gate on the lower back) was opening. This feeling became much stronger in the second 100 hours. The feeling is that there is literally space between the vertebrae of your lower back, that the vertebrae are pressed together less. Your posture changes. In the beginning of the process you tend to let your weight hang on your lower back. Watch out! Let your lower back bulge outwards and your tailbone remains hanging in the middle of your pelvis like the clapper of a stationary church bell. Imagen a string pulling up your crown towads the heavens and release all tension in the lower back. If necessary, you curl it a little forward so that you have the idea that your lower back is even more rounded. That forward curling disappears by itself as soon as you allow the relaxation in your body.
In the first 200 days I reached the point where I actually felt my crown (Baihui) being pulled up, which created more space between the vertebrae of the lower back. Now that feeling has been transformed again. I now feel as if the lower cervical vertebra is also being pulled to the sky with a thread. I now feel the stretch up to between my shoulder blades. The vertebrae below that get even more space.
Eventually you also take this open feeling with you into your basic posture and thus into all other Qigong exercises that you perform.
It helps to bring the attention to ‘Ming-Men Palace’. Min-Men Palace is located in the lower back, in between the kidneys and has an aura 45 centimeters around the lower back with Ming-Men as the center. Ming Men palace feels like a concentration of Qi in the lower back. The Qi accumulating in this area is more pure since it comes from the horizon at the back. Qi from that horizon is not affected by our senses which are directed forward.
Serious training = not settling for less effect.
The great thing about letting a gong continue this long is you will reach a point where you are no longer satisfied with a half-baked exercise. Just standing for half an hour is not enough. You want to work towards concentrating for the full half an hour. There is no point in getting stuck in distracting streams of thoughts. Real inspiration arises in the void. But that distracting thoughts will arise; that’s inevitable! The point is not to get carried away by these thoughts, don’t follow, let them go. I had to build up some confidence that all information I receive during practice will be remembered if it is worth remembering.
Dealing with distracting thoughts are things that, if you don’t learn them the right way, are learned the hard way. If you let yourself be carried away by your thoughts, the Qi rises to your head instead of descending into the lower dantian. And then you are stuck with the consequences. Tired of the struggle I went through a period where I let the monkee mind run its course. That was until I couldn’t sleep anymore.
But don’t worry: the whole process takes place inside you and who says you can’t fall flat on your face every now and then? Fortunately, you quickly realize where the sleeplessness came from and then it’s not so difficult to unlearn the bad habit of letting yourself drift along on your thoughts. You simply don’t do that anymore. You save that for later when you brainstorm for writing and then it’s all the more enjoyable. A free flow of ideas.
I’m sleeping deeply again now. Still quite short, (5 to 6 hours) but I’m well rested when I wake up. I use the extra hours that I’m awake to relax. Using them to do more work on writing, for example, is not (yet) an option.
As with all the gongs I have done, a curiosity arises as to what the exercise will lead to. It goes in all directions; the release of old Qi goes hand in hand with the transformation of new Qi. Don’t long for results. It is not a desire. There is no end to the process, so you know that you are not striving for an end goal. You let go of all expectations and practice because the practice alone yields enough merit. Nothing you discover really comes as a surprise; everything is already there. Things you dreamed of; such as peace of mind, a powerful body that you trust, the capacity to face yourself, to let go: all that is already there. All that was already there. You just did not see it yet.