Welcome to Tai Chi Gong,
Basic Breathing.
Tai Chi Gong is a system of regeneration that was founded by Lao Tzu more than 3,
000 years ago.
Its exercises are intended to connect you with nature in such a way that you learn how the body can be regenerated completely and over and over again.
So we do a basic breathing that is sometimes called the balanced breath.
There's a major meridian that runs up the spine and it's intended to come down the front of the body creating a circuit,
A circle.
And the breathing pattern that encourages this to happen is the basic Tai Chi Gong breathing and that's the one we're going to do today.
So this breathing exercise,
We'll only do it today for maybe four or five minutes.
When you're on your own,
You can lengthen it.
You'll find that it's very simple.
I appreciate you joining me today.
Let's begin.
You can be standing in one place or sitting comfortably.
What I'd like you to do now is place one or both hands over your abdomen,
Slightly above the navel.
That's the regenerative center in the body.
On the inhale,
We're going to breathe in through the nose and on the exhale,
We're going to breathe out the mouth.
We want the tongue to be placed comfortably to the roof of your mouth so that that rising chi up the spine can connect down through the elemental canal downwards.
So you can have eyes open or eyes shut.
The reason your hands are drawn to the abdomen is that you want your mental focus to go there.
So we begin.
A gentle breath in through the nose,
Expand the abdomen.
You want your hands to move just a bit and on the exhale out the mouth,
Release.
In the beginning of an exercise,
We do about 30 to 40% of the range of the breathing.
It doesn't need to be extreme and it's best at the beginning of a breathing exercise to take it very gently and then gradually work your way up.
So we breathe in through the nose,
We exhale out the mouth.
Let's do 10 or 15 breaths and then I'll interject one more suggestion.
Okay.
For those of you who have experience with conscious breathing,
You probably won't face this,
But if you're new to it,
Sometimes you feel a resistance,
Almost like it's hard to take a breath.
Some people will experience that on the inhale and some people will actually experience it on the exhale.
The kind of balanced breath we're looking for is not one where you interject your conscious mind to control your movement constantly.
In other words,
You're not going to force your inhale,
You're not going to force your exhale.
You notice I didn't talk to you about the counting and all that.
What we'd like to do is surrender the breath to the natural rhythm that you have when it's on automatic pilot.
So one way to push forward or to release into that effortless breathing is to emphasize the exhale just a little bit more.
You're going to create a bit of negative pressure in the lungs and that the lungs are naturally going to want to fill.
So you exert just a little bit of effort,
Say you're pushing toward 50 or 60% of your exhale and then release it and allow the inhale to happen as a response to it.
So you can already let go of half of your breathing by emphasizing the exhale consciously and then release into the inhale.
If you happen to have the opposite true,
You just can't get the inhale going,
You focus a little bit more on the inhale and then release completely into the exhale.
And eventually what you'd like to do over a period of minutes if you can is to release it so much that the inhale naturally happens.
It folds into the exhale without pause and that inhale dumps into the exhale without pause.
A continuous fluid breath,
Gentle in the abdomen,
Which is your regenerative center.
Pull your chi down into your peace center.
So let's do the exercise for a few more minutes and then we'll bring it to a close.
Gentle inhale through the nose,
Gentle exhale out the mouth,
Tongue is to the roof of the mouth,
Mental focus is just above the navel in the regenerative center.
Good.
You you Now as we draw this breathing session to a close One simple way to do that Is to allow the inhale and the exhale to gradually get smaller and softer Over the next half minute to a minute or so
