Simple Exercise for Healthy Hip Joints

When you do Taichi, dance, yoga and other sports, it is important to relax your hip joints.  Most people don't know how to relax them.  We don't pay much attention to our hip joint movement in our daily life.  If you are always tensing your hip joints, they may become stiff.  When you practice Taichi, you can not feel very comfortable as your energy is blocked and cannot flow down to your legs.  When you practice yoga, you cannot fully stretch your legs without relaxing your hip joints.  If your hip joints lose flexibility, you may hurt them.  Also, you may twist your knees, or hurt your back while practicing martial arts.  

Hip joint exercise is one of the basic trainings in Taichi and martial arts.  One is called Kai Kua Gong.  It is very good for maintaining hip joint health, however, not very easy to practice without shifu's professional instruction.   

We can try a few minutes simple exercise in our daily life.
This is another simple exercise you can try while you are sitting on the chair:

1.  Sit on a chair.

2.  keep your spine straight and vertical to the ground.

3.  Hold your arms up in front of your chest as if you are holding a pillow in your arms.  (You may try other arm movements such as Taichi cloud hands)

3.  Turn your body left and right very slowly like an earth rotation.  Imagine your upper body is a globe and your spine is the axis.  Think the axis is pulled upward while turning the body.  

Do not wring your waist like a towel.  Your headand torso (shoulder, waist, and hip) suppose to move together toward the same direction.  If your lower belly and pelvis are not moving,  you may be tensing your leg joints.  Do it VERY SLOWLY.  

This exercise will help improve your Taichi skill (martial arts, hula dance, ballroom dance, or other skills), if you do it properly.

  

How to maintain hip joint health

 According to NIH, osteoarthritis is the most common arthritis among American people.  It is also very common in Japan.  Exercise is one of the best treatments for osteoarthritis,

To prevent hip joints stiffness and pain, we teach simple movements to increase flexibility, reenforce muscles, and help you maintain healthy weight.

1,  Sit on a chair.  You can relax your hip joint in the sitting position.

2.  Keep your back straight and pull your chin down naturally.  
     Do not tense your back, neither round it.

3.  Move your upper body back and forth as you bow.  

4.  Swing your upper body left and right.

5.  Turn your upper body clockwise and counterclockwise.  

To do exercise 3 to 5, do not bend from your waist and make sure your spine is straight.   If your hip joints are relaxed, your upper body can move like a spinning top.   

Wudang Qi gong and Kundalini Yoga trainings have similar exercise.  Their goal is to let spirit out from their body.  In order to do so, they need to relax every joint to get rid of the blockage in the meridians so the energy can go through.   

We recommend this turning body exercise for hip joint health.  It may help build muscles and keep your body in fit.  It helps blood and lymph circulations as you get rid of the stiffness.  Also helps prevent injury while you practice Taichi, hula dance, and other sports. 



We instruct exercises for anti-aging, health, and beauty in Hawaiian Relaxation Qigong and Taichi class

Get rid of negative energy

氣　Qi Part 2

It may be difficult for many people to maintain mental happiness and optimism in bad time.  As a result, many people tend to attract more negative qi and downturn their luck even more.  Therefore, to improve your luck in bad time, when you do Qigong or Taichi, you have to try to forget about the issues you are facing while you practice them.

 After finish practicing Qigong or Taichi, you can think about the issues but while you are practicing Qigong or Taichi, you have to try to empty your mind (万虑抛 get rid of various thoughts) and feel comfortable.  Even if you cannot get rid of negative thoughts completely, it is better than practicing Qigong or Taichi with the mental state that is totally distracted by the issues that are in your mind.  In fact, when you have an issue, you may think too much about the issue but if you do not think about it ,  just for ten to fifteen minutes, your mind may get refreshed and you may be able to deal with your issue with new perspective.

Qigong May Bring a Good Fortune and Health

Qi 氣　Part 1

Qi is an energy that is often explained as a life energy in Taichi and Qigong.  However, qi is actually more than simple life energy that flows all over the universe.  Daoists believe that even your luck can be determined by what kind of qi you have.  Kinds of qi can be classified into positive qi and negative qi. 

Positive qi can make your body healthy and strong.  It also makes your mind calm and happy.  The positive qi can also improve your luck.  However, negative qi can make your body sick and your mind depressed or anxious. 

Also, the negative qi can downturn your luck.  Qi can be guided by your mind.  If your mind is happy, you naturally attract positive qi and if you are unhappy, you naturally attract negative qi.  Therefore, even in hard time, it is believed to be better to maintain optimism and be happy so that you attract positive qi, which improve your luck.  

Wuji in Taichi(Taijiquan) and Qigong

Wuji  無極

                When you practice Taichi (Taiji) stances, you first start from Wuji.  In Wuji, you stand straight but your whole body must be relaxed and your mental state must be in rujing.  Wuji is the state of things in which yin and yang are totally harmonized that the things are neither yin nor yang.  According to Daoist cosmology, before the universe exists, the world was in the state of Wuji.  At this point, not only things but even emptiness did not exist.  When Taiji, which is yin and yang, emerged, existence and emptiness emerged.  From this point, everything in the universe emerged.  However, the universe will gradually decay and in the end, the universe goes back to the state of Wuji.  The universe than grows again thus there is an endless cycle of emergence and decay of the universe.  In Daoist cosmology, a human body is considered as a small universe.  Therefore, when a person practices Taichi, the person is supposed to follow this principle of growth and the decay of the universe.  Thus, before you begin Taichi, your body must be in the state of Wuji.  Your body is in the state of Wuji when your mind is in rujing because when you get into rujing, yin and yang of your body is completely harmonized that your body is neither yin nor yang.  Daoists believe that your mental state affects your physical state.  When your mind is in rujing, your mind is supposed to be empty and this leads your body to be relaxed and rested.  When you begin the Taichi movement, you can start flow your qi by using your imagination and at this point your mind is not empty so that your body is not in Wuji.  When you have imagination, your body is activated by your images so that your body has cycle of yin and yang which is Taiji.  After you finish all the movements, you go back to original posture and empty your mind again so that your mind goes into rujing again.  By taking this process, your body imitates that cycle of birth and return of the universe and Daoists believe imitating this cycle can enhance one’s physical and mental health.

Tao Wellness Taiji Institute

Hawaiian Relaxation Qigong and Taichi Class

Meditation Rujing8入靜) ２

入靜方法 (Method to get into rujing)

                
One of the easiest methods to attain rujing is to practice Daoist standing meditation.  First, one needs to stand straight and open legs to shoulders width.  One should make sure that his/her back is straight but relaxed.  Arms should be dropped naturally and knees must be relaxed and bent slightly.  Next, imagine that one has cluster of energy in dantian (丹田) which is the lower belly.  Try to relax whole body as much as possible and feel the energy inside dantian.  Breathe naturally and do not try to control breathing intentionally.  As one breathes naturally and feel energy in dantian, one should start to feel calm and mentally peaceful.  There may be a moment that one feels totally selfless and mind is clear that there is no thought.  This is the state of rujing.  When one is tired, he/she may feel sleepy.  If one becomes sleepy he/she should stop standing meditation and lie down and go to sleep because his/her body is requiring sleep.

Meditation Rujing(入静)

Understanding Rujing（入靜）in  Taichi and Qi Gong

In Chinese martial arts and Chinese medicine, there is a concept of rujing.  Rujing means to get into the mental state which your mind if tranquil and peaceful.  This mental state can be achieved by meditation.  

Rujing is equivalent to Buddhist mental state of Samadhi.  In Chinese medicine, the state of rujing is believed to give various positive effects on human health.  For example, in the state of rujing, your brain can take a rest.  When people are not in the state of rujing, people continuously have various emotions such as anger, sorrow, and excitement.  These emotions can give stress to their mind/brain.  Some people may think that having sensation and excitement is good but even pleasurable sensation and excitement are form of stresses and continuously having these sensations will tire one’s mind and brain.  When people’s mind gets tired, people may have emotional problems, depression, or hallucination.  The extreme stress on one’s mind can affect one’s body negatively as contemporary medical science has proven.  For example, people who have extreme mental stress may have intestinal problems.  Therefore, by constantly having the state of rujing, one can have healthy body in addition to healthy mind.  Other than giving positive impacts on internal organs, rujing can give positive effects on one’s muscles, tendons, joints, and blood vessels because when one’s brain is relaxed, one’s whole body is relaxed as well.  When human body is relaxed, it will naturally heal its problems.  Therefore, by frequently being in the state of rujing, some people could cure their physical problems such as back muscle ache and knee joint problem.